Ca Na Xica

Ca Na Xica

Most people arrive in Ibiza by the coast and stay by it. The island's interior is less visited and, for those who find it, considerably more interesting. The central plateau of the island, running north from Santa Eulària toward Sant Miquel and Sant Joan, is Ibiza's agricultural core, a landscape of ploughed fields, thousand-year-old olive trees, almond orchards, and the kind of quiet that comes from being genuinely off the tourist circuit. The village of Santa Gertrudis, a short drive south, has become over the past two decades one of the island's most quietly fashionable addresses, its central square home to a handful of good restaurants, a few independent galleries, and the kind of expat creative community that moved to rural Ibiza precisely to avoid the version of the island everyone else was coming to. La Paloma in nearby San Lorenzo, a family-run restaurant in a garden, is one of the better lunch spots anywhere in the Balearics. Cala Benirrás, a deep rocky bay with a famous Sunday drum circle at sunset, is twelve minutes from the hotel. The north coast is close. Ibiza Town is twenty minutes. Ca Na Xica is a former finca on a working organic estate between Santa Gertrudis and Sant Miquel, converted in 2016 into a 20-suite boutique hotel with an intelligence and restraint that most rural conversions don't manage. The original farmhouse holds six suites with the traditional Ibizan character of the building intact, thick whitewashed walls, dark wooden beams, terracotta floors, the architecture doing the work without assistance. Fourteen Premier Suites in a newer, more contemporary wing are built in clean cubic forms that frame views of the surrounding fields and the pine-forested hills, each with a private terrace and a glass-fronted bathroom opening onto its own bamboo garden, so that showering feels like standing in a private courtyard. The saltwater pool is long and serious, edged with cypress and olive trees and taupe loungers, and functions as the social heart of the property. The spa has a hammam, sauna, outdoor jacuzzi, and three treatment rooms, and the fruit and vegetables on the menu at Salvia, the open-air restaurant, come largely from the estate's own garden. This is for the person who wants Ibiza but finds the idea of a beach club hotel somewhat exhausting. The countryside version of the island is slower, more personal, and more genuinely Ibizan in character, and Ca Na Xica understands that without needing to make a statement of it. Guests tend to be well-travelled couples who chose the north deliberately, who will spend their days between the pool, the spa, a long lunch at La Paloma, and an afternoon at whichever cove the concierge quietly recommends. Closes October, reopens April. The short version: A 20-suite boutique hotel on a working organic finca in the rural interior of north Ibiza, between Santa Gertrudis and Sant Miquel. Six suites in the original whitewashed farmhouse, fourteen contemporary garden suites in a newer wing, a long saltwater pool among olive trees, restaurant Salvia cooking with estate produce, and a spa with hammam and outdoor jacuzzi. Ten minutes from the north coast beaches, twenty from Ibiza Town. The countryside version of the island for people who know the difference.