Cabanas de Tavira

Cabanas de Tavira (pron. IPA2|kɐ'bɐnɐʃ dɨ tɐ'viɾɐ; Portuguese for "Tavira's Huts") is a former fishing village on the east-southern coast of the Algarve, Portugal. With a little more than one thousand permanent residents, it has become a popular tourist destination in the summer because of its beautiful beach, Praia de Cabanas, located on an island just offshore (Ilha de Cabanas), which belongs to Ria Formosa Natural Park . Cabanas is a very recent freguesia, established in 1997. This freguesia belongs to the municipality of Tavira, the nearest major town.

The town is a long line of low-rise shops, bars and cafés facing the Ria Formosa with several hotel and apartment complexes scattered around the outskirts of the town. Moored fishing boats line the seafront, although the town's economy has drifted mainly towards tourism rather than fishing in recent years.

Transport

Several buses run from Tavira to Cabanas and back each day. The nearest [http://www.cp.pt/StaticFiles/Imagens/PDF/Passageiros/horarios/regionais_2007/vrantonio_lagos.pdf train station] is in nearby Conceição which is on the Tavira to Vila Real line. It is also possible to rent a car at the [http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=EarthTravel&Number=874744&Searchpage=1&Main=874744&Words=+CybeRider&topic=&Search=true local rent-a-car dealer] .

Access to the popular beach is by water taxi from several points along the harbor area. The water taxis are small outboard boats operated by local watermen and by at least one company. The company offers round trip tickets for purchase, and the watermen collect a small fee for each direction which as of August 2008 was 0.60 €, making a round trip cost 1.20 €. Each boat may be identified by a colored flag on its stern so that you can easily identify which one to take back to the mainland when leaving the beach. The water taxis run until 8pm.

Entertainment

Cabanas has a large number of bars, cafés and restaurants which run along the riverfront and are also dotted around a couple of blocks inland.

External links

* [http://digfish.mine.nu/sampage/ Sampage - Personal page devoted to Cabanas (in Portuguese) ]
* [http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=37.133772,-7.602711&spn=0.028876,0.077677&om=1 Google Maps satellite photo]
* [http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=cabanasdetavira+OR+%28cabanas+AND+tavira%29&m=text Cabanas de Tavira photos hosted on Flickr ]