Isla Es Vedra

Es Vedra rises an impressive 380m out of the crystal clear waters of Cala D'Hort.  The best view of this enigmatic island is from the Torre de Savinar - the old pirate watchtower - designed by Juan Ballester de Zafra - in the San Jose area.  The island is an impressive limestone rock that juts out of the sea about 2km off the South West of Ibiza.  There is very little here in the way of flora and fauna with scrub here and there and only goats and lizards being industrious enough to hack the harsh surroundings here.

y

The intrigue of this little island, however, doesn't lie in all its statistics but rather in all the mystery that surrounds this tiny dot on the map of the Mediterranean. There are many myths and legends that surround this island and here are a few of the more popular ones. Some are fact, some are fiction.  See if you can work out which is which.

  • For some unexplained reason, compasses go haywire around this island.  No plausible reason for this has yet to be offered.  The island is limestone so there are not metals present that could explain compasses behaving so badly.  See if you can solve the mystery for us.
  • In Homers' Odysseus epic, Es Vedra is the island of the Sirens.  The fisherman who have seen the light that radiates from these waters would find it hard to argue with this fact.
  • Es Vedra was the holy island of Tanit, who came to Ibiza as the Phoenician goddess of fertility and love.  Many sacrifices were made to Tanit on this island to honour her.
  •  Es Vedra is actually the tip of the long lost city of Atlantis that sunk into the Med all those moons ago. 
  • Some of the stone used to build the great pyramid in Egypt was mined from the Island of Es Vedra
  • The island of Bali Hai in the classic movie South Pacific was actually filmed on Es Vedra so if you ever wanted to go and see it, make sure you head to the Med and not the Pacific.

All in all this amazing Island offers a little something for everyone, whether it is simply enjoying the sheer beauty of this almost barren rock or the complicated intrigue of all the conspiracy that surrounds it.