Ibiza in the off-season. The big resort hotels are shuttered, the beach bars sealed up, the superclubs powered down until their showy reopening parties get the summer started again in late April. By July, the ratio will be back to 20 visitors to every one resident, but for now the island is as empty as it gets.
The sun is shining though, the air bright and warm, the sky a salted Balearic blue. And crowds still gather, here and there. At the Trotting Races, for example, in the Sant Rafael hippodrome in the centre of the island. A peculiar island tradition that supposedly began with charioteers during Ibiza’s Roman occupation, the sport requires jockeys to ride on little wheeled carts harnessed to horses that keep a briskish, semi-hurried pace, as if slightly late for an appointment. Kids and old boys seem to love it, the latter laying small bets on the races and dropping shots of brandy in their coffee. My horse, Maldiva des Puig, comes a distant third.
