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March 27 - April 2, 2005

Ibiza Off-Season

Closed Hotels, No Discos, and Empty Beaches

Manfred P.

Keywords: Ibiza, Eivissa, Baleares, Santa Eularia, Sant Antoni, tourist, travel trip report, travel log, travelogue.

Remember 1983? Remember the pop song "People from Ibiza"? Whenever Ibiza comes up in a conversation this song starts playing in my head and my brain creates fictions of wild disco parties. Despite the fact that I am not at all interested in loud music or wild orgies, we decided to use the Easter week to visit Ibiza. We were surprised!

Surprise 1: All Closed

We strolled around Ibiza and the neighboring villages and realized that most of the hotels were closed; shut down for the off-season, barricaded and closed tight until to be awoken from their long hibernation in June. Whole villages were like ghost towns, empty and filled with dust, doors painted, public telephones removed, silent and dirty swimming pools, etc.

Surprise 2: Dirty and Poor

Ibiza City is a slightly poor city; certainly not glitzy or rich. Some images reminded me of Morocco or Tunisia. For examples, many of the roofs of the old town were left in construction state with steel wires sticking out and uninviting cement slabs. Only few have used the opportunity to turn the flat roof tops into an inviting place to sun bath or enjoy a dinner in the open.

Apparently there is little money in the city coffers for cleaning the city streets or parks. The dog shit the litters the empty tourist hotel ghost towns is disappointing.

Surprise 3: Colorful, Avant-garde Painted Cop Cars

Most countries or cities have rather dull cop cars with boring, official looking paint jobs. Black and white are not only the favorite colors in the US. Here in Ibiza the city has the most colorful cop cars I have ever seen: The bottom half is bright yellow, the top a bright red and the middle a white that fades over into a deep bluish purple. Very eye catching!

Surprise 4: Empty Beaches

It was especially nice to arrive at a beach and find it empty and to be able to enjoy it in its natural state. Finding an empty beach was not the exception but the norm. As a matter of fact, even though it was Easter, nearly every single beach we visited - and we visited some 25 of them - was devoid of visitors. We didn't have to share these beautiful spots with hordes of sun seekers or noise makers.

Surprise 5: The Original Ibiza

The original Ibiza still exists: Just a few kilometers away from the beaches and in a couple of spots even right at the beach (e.g. Les Salines Beach) the original state of the island can still be found. At least that is what I imagined. I visualize that a hundred years ago, Ibiza was a rural island, living of agriculture and fishing and most of the surface of the very dry island was covered in pine forests. These pine forests still exist and invite to pleasant slow walks in these wind-battered low-growing trees.

Ibiza, island of surprises. I am sure that starting June or July it will be a completely different world: hot beats, sizzling night-life, overcrowded hotels, jammed streets, overflowing beaches and unbearable heat. Timing is important.

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Travel with Manfred