Waterparks. What do you think of when you think of water parks? Screaming kids, feeling like a big kid, slides, pools, bright, fun, being just a little bit scared and splashtastic thrills? Well that’s exactly what Aguamar water park in Ibiza was like, except the majority of the screaming (of joy) was coming from us! Slipping, shooting and often tumbling out of the slides, giggling and squealing all the way. Probably not the most wild/giant park you have ever seen but it was excellent! Among our favorite rides were black hole, spiral slide and foam speed racer. We had a delicious picnic lunch to refuel before we continued to amble up and down more stairs than we could count. Once we had our fill of thrills we went back to the hostel to dry off before our romantic night out at the San Antonio sunset.

Getting lost is something I don’t mind doing. That is if I am happy wandering around, exploring a place, not locked into any time frames or deadlines. Otherwise I hate it. Especially when it’s hot, you are tired and potentially still hungover/sick from antics over the last day and a half. We thought we knew where we were going. We had a plan and even a map! A paper one! With a mark on exactly where we were meant to go to catch the bus to the other side of the island! How could it have gone wrong you ask? Well the mark on the map was wrong of course. Made by the local hostel receptionist. Now granted that was not our fault, but as frustration ensued it may as well have been. We found where we were instructed to go easily. We saw the bus we were meant to catch fly past as and not stop anywhere we could see. We asked people at the bus stop but they had no idea and were also lost. We walked along the highway to what was supposed to be the main bus station and found no buses or humans, just empty office spaces. We wandered up and down the same streets. We tried to find a wifi place to google it. We tried asking other people for directions/help and none of it worked. After an hour of searching and wandering, seeing 3 of the buses we wanted to catch drive past, and once the feeling of despair set in we finally found our savior. She was a polite, non-English speaking, middle aged local woman and I could have kissed her for showing us the way to the bus. Well at the very least (due to the language barrier) to the map that lead us to the bus! Despite a minor concern/potential overreaction (as one has in these situations when overseas and feeling unwell) that one of us had about an allergic reaction and imminent death (no stress it’s all good) we made it to the destination unscathed! Only a little extra help was needed from some nice guy wearing a “disco bus” bright yellow t-shirt. He even came running up to us straight afterwards to correct his instructions as he had confused left and right. Hooray! 

Over the last few days we had thought to ourselves “maybe Ibiza is more than just a party island where you find loud, drunk, sunburnt British people”. We were wrong. We found them all, hiding out on the other side of the island. Scantily-clad individuals with bad dye jobs stretched as far as the eye could see. And tramp stamps. Everywhere. Dodging to avoid them stumbling drunkenly into our path, we made our way to one of the most treasured parts of Ibiza (I kid slightly about the dodging…it only happened once or twice). 

Ibiza’s famous sunset strip has an array of bars, lounges and restaurants where you can sit by the shores of the bay of Caló des Moro and admire the stunning sunsets over the Mediterranean Sea and enjoy some food and drinks to a backdrop of ambient music. Café del Mar is the most well-known of these establishments and was the first to open its doors in 1980. It is a beautiful restaurant, designed by well known Catalan architect Lluis Géell the bar adopts the look of a yacht with sail like coverings which house a seating area and beautiful bar. Because of this you 100% need to book in advance (and there is a minimum spend at all of the restaurants) so we went to a lesser know place called FRESH. To stretch out our time at FRESH and to hold our beach front table (despite our earlier cufuffle we had still arrived 3 hours before the sunset – however the place was pretty packed 2 hours before) we ordered a series of nachos/starter plates and sangria/cocktails. Everything was delicious and the waiters were lovely, commenting “we run like chickens without heads” when apologising for the delay in service when they became very busy. There was just one more hiccup – there was haze. This was the sunset we were promised….

This was the one we saw.

I mean it was still beautiful but we could not stop laughing about the effort that it took us to get there when we missed out on seeing the sun disappear over the horizon! Good thing every sunset is special – till next time Ibiza (hopefully with less mishaps 😉)