Ibiza’s infamy as the best clubbing destination in the world is legendary. This island in the Mediterranean Sea, a few hours off the coast of Spain, sealed its notoriety as a party town when Mike Posner’s song ‘I took a pill in Ibiza” hit the charts. Its repute balloons even bigger blown by scandalous celebrity exploits in its shores printed almost simultaneously in tabloids as they occur.
On a 3 day visit to the island, we tested the scene showing up at 11:00 p.m. to where hotel staff directed us to, allegedly, the most popular hangout in the area. The place was dark and empty when we arrived except for the bartender and the DJ blasting an unrecognizable tune.
We were there for the mood; so with drinks in hand and comfortable in seats with high visibility, we waited eagerly snapping our fingers and swaying to the beat of the music. Dizzy after nodding our heads for 30 minutes, Walter asked the bartender why there was no crowd; to which he replied; “people start coming around midnight. It is too early to party”.
With neck cramps and splitting headaches at a bewitched hour way past a baby boomer’s bedtime, not even the deafening mash-up remix of Beiber, Selena, Bruno and Rihanna could halt our yawns. Yes, we took a pill in Ibiza, specifically, an aspirin.
Visitors who come to this playground for its energetic nightlife are treated to more than just thumping ultra-clubs and star-studded sightings. By day, the harbor town is a sampler of a sun-drenched Spanish-island living with some 50 beaches in more than 100 miles of coastline, waterfront bars and restaurants, trendy boutiques, and even a UNESCO-designated fortress.
The fortified old town of Dalt Vila is strategically located on a hill next to the sea and overlooking the island. Constructed in concrete several feet in depth and height, the fort displays impenetrable strength.
From a drawbridge crossing a moat, we ascended up a slope to the entrance of an enclosed passageway about a third of a mile long that spills into a cobbled stone courtyard of home-based shops and restaurants.
Narrow paths with steps that adapt to changing surface levels lead away haphazardly from this plaza to living quarters with quaint doors and windows where blooms and newly washed clothes hung to dry yield a bright contrast to whitewashed walls. The laborious climb up twists and turns provides sporadic breaks at terraces that offer a glimpse of the magnificence that waits. Those who navigate this labyrinth are rewarded at the summit with a breath-taking blue scenery.
Exploring south of the island, we stumbled on Playa Las Salinas which we inadvertently learned was a clothing optional beach. Here, we were amused by the spontaneous convergence of dudes apparently in deep discussion of current events a few feet away from where a nude sunbathing senorita was applying tanning lotion. What are the chances of these two incidents happening simultaneously?
A few miles off shore from this beach is Es Vedra, a small rocky uninhabited island where only goats live. It is on this barren site that Beatified Carmelite Friar Fr. Francisco Palau self-exiled in search of solitude and experienced powerful visions as documented in his autobiography “My Relations with the Church”.
Es Vedra is the mythological birthplace of Hercules. It is allegedly, the tip of Atlantis, a secret UFO base and the third most magnetic place on earth next to the North Pole and the Bermuda Triangle. Though, we cannot report of an actual alien or interstellar sighting, our vacation in Ibiza definitely gave us an out of this world euphoria.
On the way to the beach, the radio blasted Bob Dylan’s “How does it feel, to be on your own, with no direction home, to be a total unknown, like a rolling stone”. With toes cooled by the brush of sea water, Otis Redding echoed “Sitting by the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away”. As the gentle breeze shoveled ripples through the sand, the Temptations howled “Papa was a rolling stone, wherever he laid his hat was his home”. Such is life in Ibiza.
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