1995

3 Months

NYC

A Jewel

Eivissa

Tree Abuse

ECO

Black Friday

Bocadillo

Danger!

Estofado

Sangria

Rave

Cannibis

Camino Viejo

Neutrinos

Weather

Roosters

JCS

The PM

Plongeé

Smila

Customs

O. J. Verdict

1995 Eivissa (Ibiza): Fish Monger

A Roar

MacWorld

Padinkos

Bye E, Hello GC

Gran Canaria

Where

A Tour

How

Food

Yumbo

Las Palmas

Playa

1995 Gran Canaria: Potpourri

Norteños

More Food

Irishmen

Heading Home

USA

With Dad

Back at Home

Saturday 9 Sept 1995

This, by the way, was one of the eating establishments I passed up in favor of the Illy espresso café I wrote about. Named "Robot" (look at the top of the picture), this 5-meter-square cube-noid factoria de comestables comes with its own uniformed worker droids, each earning the Spanish equivalent of minimum wage. It was clean, and the food appeared to be fresh, but it just didn't say "travel experience" any any positive sense of the phrase. I think that what tipped me off was that not one traveller stopped to partake of their fare, while the espresso café was crowded with throngs of vacationing and business travellers.

Above is the control tower and complete airport terminal complex of Ibiza airport. I took this as we got off the plane. Just as when we got on the plane, my fellow passengers stampeded off the plane, even though we'd have to wait fifteen minutes for our luggage.

This is the entrance to Eivissa Communications Organization, or as it's known on the island, ECO. This is the small business that my uncle Daniel has run since 1987. It started out as what we call an answering service, but in an area where to this day most homes are far away from paved surfaces and don't have phones, it serves a different function than do our answering services. It's become an organic foodstuffs market, a new age crystal and jewelery shop, a place where tourists can pick up sundries and locals can get one of several local newspapers, including Diario de Ibiza. It still does its original function, acting as an information clearing house and message center, including the ability to send and recieve faxes. ECO will even be on the Internet shortly, if I do my job right. (I'll be doing some web pages for ECO, so I won't repeat myself. When they're done I'll just insert a pointer later in my travel log. If someone reminds me, I'll add one here.)

I should probably explain about "Ibiza" and "Eivissa". They're one and the same place (shown by the cross-hairs on the globe at left) although I'll be using both names as context dictates. I'm sure many of you have heard of Generalissimo Francisco Franco (yes, he's still dead). [If you didn't understand that joke, I suggest you sprint over to your local video rental outlet and get some Saturday Night Live episodes.]

It seems that the Generalissimo was a very masculine-oriented kind of guy. Whenever he took control of a place, he renamed everything in a macho sort of frenzy. So the gentle island of Eivissa became Ibiza. The hamlet of Sant Joan (as in Joan of Arc) became Sant John (a sort of bureaucratic sex-change operation). This didn't endear the Generalissimo to the islanders, neither the Eivisaians nor the Canary Islanders (the second half of my trip). When I was last here, seven years ago, some radical leftists took to spray-painting traffic signs with their original, pre-Franco, feminine names. In the intervening years the clutched hands of the still-dead Generalissimo no longer hold Eivissa so tightly.

If you're still having a hard time imagining where Eivissa is located, here's a closer look at Europe and Northern Africa. Again, the red cross-hairs bracket Eivissa. You should now be able to see that it's the middle of three islands, the largest by far of this archipelego. I'd like to give the maker of this map credit, but the machinations I went through in locating it through "Yahoo" have long since been forgotten. (You know, finding on-line maps of any quality can be a real bear.)

Anyway, back to my trip. One of the pleasures so far - it's been only five days since I arrived - is the almost complete isolation from what we consider newsworthy in the USA. I don't know what's going on at the O.J. Simpson trial, I haven't seen what the "Dancing Itos" have been doing, and so on. Interestingly, one of the few things I know about is the US Open (pictured at left with the only television in the house), in which my hosts are feverishly interested. It's made for some wonderful late nights, as the games are being shown live from New York (six time zones earlier).

Now don't let all this narration let you think for even a moment that I'm not here writing my second book. Far from it. Each morning I'm up early, and in town with Daniel. There, at Fernandito's (to be described later) I spend about six or seven hours, writing on my PowerBook and sipping caffè con leche or, when it's really hot out, chandi, a 50/50 mix of beer and Fanta lemonade soda (pop). Mmmmmmmm. (I'm writing these web pages late at night. For example, it's 02:40 now.)

I mentioned the heat: what's the weather like? Well, it's hot and humid - about 28 C (80 F) with between 70 and 90 per cent humidity. Tee-shirts don't work in this climate because they don't let air circulate around the body, evaporating perspiration.

The picture at right shows me "going native" - my cousin Mayra took this photo today. I'm sipping a chandi as I model the latest in topless (no cat-calls from the peanut gallery, please) local clothing: a lewn-ghee (an knee-length wrap-around lightweight cloth printed in bright colors). The dark brown bracelet around my wrist is an uli, a spiral tree root that was given to me during my last time around. Those of you who know me personally see that a rather comprehensive haircut has taken place - the last five year's worth of growth (and the resultant pony-tail) are gone. I'm thrilled with the freedom this lack of hair gives me in this salt-water-laden tropical environment. T'were it not for being recently shorn, I'd be living in my host's shower - what with hair prone to frizzing and all.