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1995 Eivissa (Ibiza): Ecole de Plongeé
Saturday 30 Sept 1995
Shortly after breakfast I grab my fanny-pack and head off for town via el camino viejo, the old trail. I have three goals in mind:
Peligro de Muerte 
Amik and I arrive in Sant Joan around noon. Amik goes into the ACT Garden, right next to the indoor patio where Mayra is taking Flamenco dance classes with Jeffrey (shown at left). I go across the street to Fernandito's; Thomàs sees me walking over and a caffè con leche is waiting for me.
It's there that I meet Chris Baker, a Londoner. We talk about the books we're reading, and about bookstores, the British Film Board and censorship, and finally, about our experiences on Eivissa. Chris, who's staying in Eivissa Cuidad, wants to get into less touristy surroundings. He's bicycled north in hopes of finding peace and quiet. I send him to the penzione just up the street. Before I can find out whether he's scores a room I'm called over to ECO to help fix Daniel's ImageWriter II printer, which has gone out of alignment between changes of ribbon.
One item of note is Chris' mention of AMOK, a Los Angeles publication that has to do with "extreme sources of information". It sounds interesting; if I find out more about it I'll post a note here.
1400 Schrada comes to town to take Daniel, Djamal, and me to Benirràs. We take off in her little Toyota Land Cruiser (which is not the vehicle for bumpy roads) to Sant Miquel de Balansat. Daniel gets to speak with Ute while I glance around the main part of town. A three-day festival begins tonight so everything is covered in bunting and flags. I don't get a good feel for the character of the town and so I make a mental note to return for further exploration.
(Something that I forgot to mention a few days ago was the bicycle race I saw while on my way to Benirràs that first day of walking. Bike racers in colorful nylon jerseys and police officers on motorcycles carrrying red warning flags came from the direction to which I was walking. I was told this was an around-the-island event.)
Daniel once again called the repair facility in Barcelona. The story today is "we thought we had motherboards, but now we're not sure, and we just can't say anything until Monday." I guess I can't recommend that you use "Cut and Paste" if your Mac needs repairs in Spain.
As I walk around Eivissa Cuidad I notice repairs of all sorts going on, both small (such as fixing a building's facade, shown at left) and large (the five-year reconstruction of the old city, including the removal of above-ground telephone and electrical wires and poles and the drastic reduction of automotive traffic allowed inside the old walls). It's a welcome change, counteracting many years of neglect and environmental wear. (Eivissa has Europe's greatest concentration of cars; the pollution doesn't do the old buildings much good.)
cafés are the center of daytime social living; the discos are their nighttime counterparts. Each café has its own personality and clientèle; they vary as much as between the Croissant Show (at left; another view , linksTo:"croissant-show-2.jpg">here), which caters to the young tourists and hip expatriates, and the Bar la Maravilla (at right), which caters to the elderly residents of the city. The terms "bar" and "restaurant" (and even "café") seem to interchangably used; Fernandito considers his meetingplace a bar. The two eateries are just around the corner from each other, only a few meters from the entrance ramp to the Old City (thumbnail below).
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Amic (at left), the family dog, decides that he wants to accompany me into town. I can't dissuade him with shouts and emphatic finger-pointing, so we continue on as a team. I find old twine to use as a makeshift leash for times we'll be near cars or other dogs. Later I replace the tuine with a bicycle inner tube.
The trail is quiet, and a bit dark (from the same clouds that are sprinkling a fine mist on us). I'm most worried about how Amik will respond to the dogs in the kennel, which is the main reason for the leash. But the kennel appears to be empty, and we pass without incident. It's only a few minutes later that the dogs return to the trail-side of their kennel and barking ensues. We're far away enough so that Amik barely notices or cares.
