How to Visit the Ria Formosa Islands

By boat, for almost all of it. The Ria Formosa is a natural park of about 18,000 hectares: a shallow lagoon behind a chain of sand islands, along some 55–60 km of coast. Five islands and two peninsulas wall it off from the Atlantic. Praia de Faro, on a peninsula, has a road, and Barril beach on Ilha de Tavira can be reached on foot. Everywhere else needs a boat.

Faro’s island tours pair two of the five: Ilha Deserta, which has no village at all, and Ilha da Culatra, which has three. For a first look, the boat we’d book is Islands 4 you’s Faro islands tour, with 45 minutes on Deserta, 45 at Farol and 11 people at most. It’s from $48 on the booking platform when we checked and rated 4.7 from 2,980 reviews, more reviews than any other boat on this site.

The barrier, west to east

The chain runs from the Ancão peninsula, home of Praia de Faro, through Barreta, Culatra, Armona, Tavira and Cabanas to the Cacela peninsula below Cacela Velha. Tidal inlets separate the islands, and the currents near them are usually very strong. Swim at the lifeguarded beaches, staffed only in the bathing season, and keep away from the inlets.

Ilha Deserta (Ilha da Barreta)

Deserta is the popular name of Ilha da Barreta, and nobody lives there. There’s one restaurant, Estaminé, a beach concession with toilets, showers and sunshades for hire, and some 10 km of beach curving round to Cabo de Santa Maria, the southernmost point of mainland Portugal. A boardwalk of about 2 km crosses the dunes. On a 45-minute stop you can walk it if you keep moving; on a shorter one, pick a swim or a walk. Ilha Deserta by boat covers the rest.

Ilha da Culatra: three villages on one island

Culatra is a sand island six or seven kilometres long, with no roads and about a thousand residents, most of them in Culatra village. It belongs to the municipality of Faro, though its year-round ferry leaves from Olhão. This is where “three islands” in a listing title comes from: most island-hopping tours here make three stops on two islands, because Farol and Culatra are villages at either end of this one, and Deserta is the empty island next door.

Farol, at the western end, is named after its lighthouse, the Farol do Cabo de Santa Maria, which has guided ships into Faro and Olhão since 1851. It is about 46 metres tall and still working, but you can’t go up: visits are suspended indefinitely while it is renovated (as of October 2026). The lighthouse authority usually opens it on Wednesday afternoons, so check before you plan around a visit. In summer several cafés and bars open, and Praia do Farol has lifeguards in the bathing season.

Hangares, in the middle, is the quiet village; tours pause there for photos. Culatra village, in the east, is a working fishing village, not a resort: sandy lanes, a church, a school, seafood restaurants, and oyster and clam beds out on the flats at low tide. A boardwalk crosses the dunes to the ocean beach. Check the flag before you swim.

Armona, Tavira and Cabanas

Armona is the easy island: 15 to 20 minutes on the public ferry from Olhão, a village of holiday houses by the pier, and a boardwalk to a beach that empties out the further east you walk. Fuseta beach, at its eastern end, is part of Armona, not a sixth island.

Ilha de Tavira has boats from Quatro Águas, Tavira town centre and Santa Luzia, and its Barril beach can be reached on foot or by a mini-train. Cabanas, the last island, has beach bars but no village. None of the boats on this site goes that far east.

Which boats land where, and for how long

The listed times are for full-length runs, and afternoon departures cut them. An Estrela passenger on an afternoon run in September had about 40 minutes on Culatra instead of two hours, and Odyssey’s afternoon Culatra stop is 45 minutes to an hour. In summer Odyssey swaps Armona for what it calls the deserted beach, a quiet beach reached only by boat, which its website lists separately from Ilha Deserta. Formosamar’s sunset trip and the solar boat run by Lands - Turismo na Natureza land nowhere.

With one morning in Faro and both kinds of island to see, the empty one and a village, Islands 4 you is the simple answer: 45 minutes on each, with a guide on board.

Check dates for the islands boat

Where each boat leaves from is in Faro or Olhão, and ferry or boat tour sets the public ferries against the tours. Every boat is compared on the homepage.

Sources: Faro council, the EU islands secretariat, the Turismo do Algarve beach guide, the lighthouse authority and the nine listings. Checked October 2026.