Inside Ibiza: how the party town got woke | Style | The Sunday Times

Better than OK, I am happy to report. I’ve just returned and the licentious, new-age-pagan, tree-hugging, naked-yoga shamans and wizards of old are once again rising from their Hobbit holes to take centre stage. But this time round they are not to be laughed at, because haven’t we all changed as we embrace goodness and now party in a way that is collectively good for the planet, for Mother Nature?

“Oh, it’s not like it used to be,” a mournful Brit 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 I watched a couple having sex on a trapeze above my head. A few days later at a party down an endless dirt track, I was invited to help myself to a buffet that included, among other comestibles, bowls of Ecstasy and cocaine, while beautiful, naked fire-eaters danced around and Simon Le Bon played an acoustic set. It was a shockingly glorious holiday, especially in the eyes of the prim little square I was back then. But that’s the thing about Ibiza: it draws you in and then holds on to you for life.

The island has changed dramatically since then. Not everyone is happy about it. Too many rich people, too many package holidays, say the old-timers. The local police, fed up with the clubbers and their antics, started cracking down, imposing curfews, limiting crowd numbers, and even shutting down private parties. It will be interesting to see what happens this summer with Pacha, Ushuaïa and Amnesia reopening after two years of being put out to pasture. These huge clubs have long been a bone of contention. “The VIP area killed the club scene,” the journalist Maya Boyd tells me. “All those cordoned-off areas, with their €2,000-a-pop vodka bottles and rigidly excluding guest lists. It’s just not the real Ibiza.”

I hope no one tells them I flew in as a guest of the swanky new shared private jet service, Aero (Farnborough to Ibiza from £2,800 return), where the complimentary flight bag includes Dr Barbara Sturm recovery serums.

But that’s just a part of what makes Ibiza so endlessly fascinating. What’s clear is there’s a renewed spirit coursing around its shores: a change in tempo, a return to something more intimate and authentic. There’s a welcoming of “conscious creatives” such as the model Arizona Muse, now a sustainability and climate activist, and her husband, Boniface Verney-Carron, an osteopath and the founder of the Oona Series wellness platform, who recently moved to the island with their children.

This bohemian renaissance is very much being driven by the Brit hospitality supremo Ben Pundole, for one. He ran London’s Met Bar when he was just 22, and he’s the man who Studio 54’s co-founder Ian Schrager brought in (after a personal recommendation from Madonna) to add some contemporary spice to the Edition hotel group. He’s also the man who New York club queen Amy Sacco, of Bungalow 8 fame, hired to run her Manhattan venue Lot 61. The investors of Six Senses Ibiza (which opened last summer on the much-in-demand north side of the island, overlooking the quiet Xarraca Bay) appointed him creative director of the hotel’s new, intimate underground village, the aforementioned Beach Caves. It’s a secret maze of beautifully designed bars and club spaces, a restaurant, a recording studio and six suites under the rocks, where the beds are gigantic (14ft long) and live music and art installations will feature regularly.

After sunset cocktails on the terrace of Bar Segreto on the opening night, we sat down for dinner — oysters with pink mezcal granita and chimichurri Rubia Gallega beef served on plates made by local artisans. I sat next to the artist Carsten Höller, who told me about his new Stockholm restaurant, Brutalisten, where part of his menu is devoted to dishes of only one ingredient. That feels very Ibiza now, I commented. He nodded gently. The TV show Nine Perfect Strangers came to mind as we decamped to the Xarraca Room, where the DJs Benji B and Cincity played sets.

The next day we headed off for lunch at Tierra Iris, a nature-based community offering wellness, conscious eating and syntropic farming. A rigorously handsome, man (possibly in his early sixties) sporting a long white beard appeared at the entrance. A placid (possibly stoned) donkey stood by his side. He later undressed to nothing and performed yoga metres from where we sat, as the farm team served us vegetables that had been cooking on coals underground for hours. A young Johnny Depp lookalike sang under a tree about clouds and ice cream. He might have mentioned drugs too. It wasn’t clear if anyone knew who he was.

Back at the Beach Caves, it was time to get ready for another Ibicencan all-nighter. I don’t have time to visit the white ceremonial amphitheatre at the Sabina Estates and Clubhouse, where La Paloma, Ibiza’s favourite restaurant, now has an outpost. Or the new hot restaurants El Silencio and Casa Jondal. Food was never particularly the point on this island, but the offering is now first-class.

And what about the buffets of old? They’ve survived. But they are now presented more discreetly in private houses and include a newer and more sustainable selection, curated by “concierges” who wax lyrical about the wonders of mushrooms and ayahuasca. So yes, things have changed for the better.

And while you might laugh from afar, don’t, because the batshit-crazy, beautiful Ibiza of way back is still alive and well. “It’s so boring when people talk about the old days,” says the South African businessman and art collector David Leppan, who first came to the island in the 1970s and bought Roman Polanski’s old house. “The point is anyone who chooses to come to Ibiza is here because they already are an interesting person. It keeps pulling you back. The magic will always be here.” I wholeheartedly, and consciously, agree.