It is the opening night of Ibiza’s hottest new
venue — the Beach Caves — and a classical/modern American musician named Lo-Fang
is conducting a soothing welcome ceremony,strumming a cello on the terrace of the Cave
Royale suite. An alluring modern sorceress ina headdress wafts towards me blowing
scented ash smoke into my “soul” while whis-pering aphorisms of elevated wisdom.
Welcome to post-pandemic-age Ibiza, theone that has undergone a lockdown conver-
sion programme, where a collective search forredemptive consciousness and benediction is
sweeping across the island. Think a lot lessfrenetic than the techno years, more enlight-
ened than the acid-trip ones. Even the musichas bifurcated from trance, house and techno
to Afro, South American and Ibicencan beats.Ibiza, are you feeling OK, I can hear you ask.
Better than OK, I am happy to report.I’ve just returned and the licentious, new-
age-pagan, tree-hugging, naked-yoga shamansand wizards of old are once again rising from
their Hobbit holes to take centre stage. Butthis time round they are not to be laughed at,
because haven’t we all changed as we embracegoodness and now party in a way that is
collectively good for the planet, for MotherNature?
“Oh, it’s not like it used to be,” a mournfulBrit told me on my first trip to Ibiza in the late
1990s. What the hell was it like before,I remember thinking. One night at the
notorious, now-closed club Manumission Iwatched a couple having sex on a trapeze
above my head. A few days later at a partydown an endless dirt track, I was invited to
help myself to a buffet that included, amongother comestibles, bowls of Ecstasy and
cocaine, while beautiful, naked fire-eatersdanced around and Simon Le Bon played an
Vassi Chamberlain
returns to the original
party island and finds it
has had an enlightened
upgrade. Shamans,
nudity and a ‘mushroom
concierge’, anyone?
IBIZA...
UNPLUGGED
18 • The Sunday Times Style