Fog, serious fog

I've never experienced a place with more changeable weather than Ibiza, it actually varies a whole lot within the island as well. Yesterday driving back from a blue sky Jesus (in the south of the island), we hit a valley of fog in the north. Driving into it it got 5-6 degrees colder and hard to see and then we came out on the other side and looking back I managed to snap this pic on the move. Looked completely magical.

Oh and I've made some carrot cake! Pretty proud of myself, it was edible and everything. I might even try to make some bread today (gulp).

16 casa de campo's later...

We've now seen a whole 16 flats and houses of various types in our hunt for a place in Ibiza for the summer. It has not been for nothing (despite the fact that we're still homeless), cause I've really enjoyed seeing some of the places (some incredibly dire, some too small this or too little that or too much those and others yet with too bumpy a camino - which is a small dirt road, the island is full of them). The most memorable one was a little, largely hand-built Alice-in-Wonderland kind of house, lovingly built over the years by a self-confessed hippie called Jose (he lived in a camper-van a little way down the road). We met up with Jose at a coffee shop in Sta Gertrudes and he addresses me in Swedish... turns out he lived in Sweden for 16 years in the 70s (I even took a pic of his old Swedish driver's license that he was still carrying with him - note that he's got the same birthday as me!). We ended up spending several hours with Jose, and even though we didn't rent his house (turns out it wasn't actually available for the whole summer anyway... Ibiza! *sigh*), I walked away with some great stories of him demonstrating outside of the Spanish embassy with Stieg Larsen (yes the Girl with a Dragon Tattoo one), when he went to see Jimi Hendrix with a mere 300 other people etc etc. I really think he wanted to meet up just to practice his Swedish and reminisce. Also, one of the takeaways is that James now know the phrase; "Ta't lungt", cause Jose's old Swedish girlfriend used to want to go to Smaland and "ta det lugnt" in the weekends. The phrase is obviously already getting somewhat overused since its not exactly my strongest of traits.

I'm in love

Meet Zero (at least I think that's what they ended up calling him, I wasn't really listening, too busy adoring the little thing).

Wild goose chase?

I'm quickly realising that things are done in an interesting manner on this island. This is particularly evident due to some project work I've taken on recently. I'm working on helping locate a Casa de Campo to rent for the summer. The problem is that Ibiza's population ten-folds from 100,000 to over one million in the summer months, so I'm not the only one. However, it goes something like this; 1/ You run into "Brad" at the local coffee house, 2/ "Brad" tells you to get in touch with "Sam on the mountain" cause she might know someone who has something, 3/ you call "Sam on the mountain" and she says there's a house owned by "Carmen and Vincento" two houses down the mountain from her, check with them!, 4/ you drive towards "the mountain" to try and locate Sam's house so you know where to start looking from... you're unsuccessful and start getting a little disheartened, 5/ magically "Brad" drives by and guides you in the right direction, 6/ you drive up a private road and find a nameless, but helpful living soul who points out "Carmen and Vincentos" house, but also informs you that their place has been rented for a month already. This is but one example of the crazy, but charming way people go about their lives here.

Calçot party

Yesterday I went to my first ever calçotada (loosely translated: spring onion feast). It's a rather messy affair all in, both the cooking and the eating - but mainly the eating. Your fingers get black and sticky and you're pretty likely to spill some of the sauce (but OMG what an amazing sauce) all over you. However its all very much worth it as it tasted delicious.

Diario de Ibiza

It's amazing how amazingly busy you can be without a full time job. I guess the fact that everything in Spain seems to take quadruples of hours longer than in the UK (which is no mean feat) adds to the busyness of my schedule. Yesterday we spent about an hour getting an ad into the local newspaper and another hour at the Vodaphone shop... and then there's the siesta.

Salinas beach

Off season Ibiza is just as great as it sounds. Although the weather is not always as lovely as this particular day, the ocean is just as beautiful and you can be as silly as you want to cause no one is watching.