The fifteen-minute crossing from Puerto de Benidorm to Illa de Benidorm carries passengers over waters that have served as a maritime corridor since Phoenician traders charted the Costa Blanca coastline in the eighth century BCE.
The island itself, a triangular limestone outcrop rising eighty meters above the Mediterranean, was uninhabited until the twentieth century, when a single family established a seasonal fishing camp on its southern shore. Today the islet remains car-free and structure-free, protected under regional conservation law since 1987.
The glass-bottomed observation panels installed in many vessels reveal seagrass meadows and the occasional Posidonia oceanica bed, a UNESCO-recognized marine habitat that filters coastal water and provides nursery grounds for Mediterranean bream and sea bass. The crossing itself follows a fixed route southwest, threading between the twin beaches of Levante and Poniente before opening into deeper water where the seabed drops from twelve to thirty-five meters within a single nautical mile.
The island functions as a day-use marine reserve. No permanent structures exist beyond a seasonal information kiosk and a composting toilet block installed in 2003. Visitors walk a single unpaved perimeter trail, roughly eight hundred meters in length, that ascends the southern ridge and offers sightlines across Benidorm's urban skyline to the Aitana mountain range inland. The northern cliffs host nesting colonies of Audouin's gulls and European shags, monitored annually by the Generalitat Valenciana's biodiversity division.
Most benidorm boat trips party tours include a forty-five to ninety-minute stopover on the island before returning to Puerto de Benidorm. The underwater observation component occurs during both legs of the crossing, with crew narration available in Spanish, English, and German. No food service exists on the island itself; passengers bring provisions or purchase snacks at the harbor kiosks before departure. The conservation fee funds the island's waste removal and trail maintenance, administered by the municipal environment office since 2011.
2 hr 30 min
