This is the end of the island where the beach clubs thin out and the landscape opens up into flat white salt flats, a lagoon full of flamingos in winter and spring, and a long beach called Es Cavallet where the dunes hold their shape.
The salt is the clue to the island's history. Phoenician settlers arrived about the eighth century BC and founded a trading settlement, and the pans have been worked ever since, with Carthaginians, Romans, Moors and Catalans all taking their share. The salt was one of Ibiza's reasons for existing, and it is why the town, Dalt Vila, its fortified old quarter, and the Puig des Molins necropolis, a great Phoenician and Punic cemetery on the edge of the city, are now part of a UNESCO site that also includes the sea-grass meadows around the island. The Posidonia, a flowering plant that grows in vast underwater fields, keeps the water here clear and turquoise.
For riding, Ibiza is better than its reputation. The roads are small, tarred and fairly empty outside high season. The route south from Ibiza town towards Sant Josep passes through pine, fig and carob groves, with red earth and low stone walls, and the road along the salt pans is flat, open and breezy. In July and August traffic is heavy and the car parks fill, so aim for May, June or late September, when the water is warm and the light is gentle.
Ibiza town, thirteen kilometres away, has everything in the way of fuel, food and rooms, and Sant Josep, a little closer, has a few pumps. The island has no great mountains, though Sa Talaia reaches about 475 metres, and you can see Formentera across the strait on a clear day.