No Regrets!

Dave woke up feeling horrible, unable to move, and pussed out on the sailing trip. So Matt and I headed out for our Ibiza Boat Club “Formentera with Benefits” day trip. I was pretty excited about this one. The itinerary made it sound like we’d spend the day on a lively party boat, with drinks, music, and paella, cruising around Formentera, a beautiful island off the coast of Ibiza.

We met Tony at the dock and boarded. The priority tickets we’d paid extra for, meant to give us first choice of seating, turned out to be useless since the boat was only about half full. Once aboard, we were offered watered-down drinks, followed by some bread, cake, and melon. Due to some sort of regulation about being near a wildlife preserve, there could be no loud music. Half the passengers, including Tony, promptly lay down and went to sleep.

This was nothing more than a ferry to Formentera. Matt and I were pretty disappointed.

We did stop for a quick swim. I didn’t get in the water, but Matt did because he’s a real man. His first time in the Mediterranean. Turns out Matt has a fear of sharks, which is less urgent when he’s in the water with other, slower people.

We were dropped off on Formentera and told we had several hours to explore before catching the return boat to Ibiza. Matt and I had booked e-bikes to cruise around the island, but customer service when picking them up was rude. Things kept getting worse.

The e-bikes were kind of fun, but it turns out Formentera is not a very pretty island. We visited beach after beach, hoping to find some real beauty, but never did. There’s just not much to see or do here. The one thing we saw plenty of were the cocks and testicles of old men, as many of the beaches featured seniors unabashedly airing out their junk.

We stopped for a laughably expensive lunch at a beachfront restaurant called Juan y Andrea: 28€ for a good but tiny tomato and tuna salad. Then some more biking around the island before heading back to the boat.

On the return trip, dinner was served: paella heavy on buttery rice but chintzy on everything else. Bleh.

Then the music started pumping, and it finally turned into something resembling a party boat. The mood was right, but there wasn’t really anyone to enjoy it with. Matt and I spotted three lesbian couples aboard, which seemed like an unusually high concentration for a boat with only about 35 passengers. Naturally, I had to run the numbers: we’re talking somewhere between 1 in 94 and 1 in 680 odds of that happening.

Increasing clouds dashed any hope of catching a sunset from the boat. We returned to Ibiza at 7:45pm, earlier than scheduled. Overall, the day trip was a bit of a bust.

We returned to the hotel room to find Dave not entombed in a chrysalis of phlegm and snot. On the contrary, he was conscious and able to track us with his eyes, an improvement over the previous 24 hours. Still, he decided to take it easy for one more night while Matt and I headed out for drinks.

Fed up with Ibiza Town, we headed to Playa d’en Bossa, a much livelier neighborhood with a slightly younger crowd. Tony joined us for drinks at a bar called Tantra. But Matt soon tapped out, leaving Tony and I to enjoy one last drink at Murphy’s.

On the way out, I was groped by, you guessed it, prostitutes, who along with drumming up some business may have also been trying to pick my pockets. Good times.

I’m finding myself increasingly disappointed with the social experience of Ibiza. I came here specifically because I wanted a more exciting social scene than we’d found in Hawaii and Japan. So far, I’m beginning to wonder if we’ve made a terrible mistake. Are we in the slow season now? Are we not going to the right places? Are we just old?

I have high hopes for tomorrow. It’ll be our first big club night at the famous Pacha to see Purple Disco Machine.