Hippie sighting in Ibiza (2nd part)

(by Pablo Burgués)

Hi, friends, as I promised last week, here you have the second part of my surrealistic meeting with the great Whistles, a hippie that calls himself “one of the real ones”. If any of you haven’t read the previous post, you can do it clicking here. Let me tell you that if you don’t read it a couple of innocent pink unicorns will die. Let your conscience be your guide…

As I was telling you… In saying farewell to Whistles he invited me to the hippie-cave where he lives and I promised upon Jimi Hendrix that I’d go. A couple of weeks later I decided to keep my promise, so I took my car and there I went. I didn’t remember the precise location of the place but I knew it was near Es Vedrá vantage point. Once there I left my car at the car park and I walked along the path that leads to the cliff area.

The place was full of people: tourists, families on a picnic, an army of Argentinians selling meat pies, a guy with a drone… It was clear that couldn’t be the faraway and quiet place where I imagined a full-grown hippie lived. So I decided to go away and walk towards an old and lonely watchtower on the top of a nearby hill. When I reached the top I saw some old blankets lying on the ground and the remains of small campfires. That was indeed beginning to look like the habitat of the Iberian hippie. Like a hunting dog I began to track the area looking for some small path or a broken branch that could point out to the secret path leading to the caves. But after a good time climbing among rocks the only human leftovers I found were behind a tree… stuck to some small pieces of newspaper….

The sun was rather low so I decided to turn round and go away. But, when I got back to the vantage point, among the crowd I saw the unmistakable figure of my dear Whistles. I quickly made my way among the people, stepped beside him, called him by his name and offered my hand. He shook my hand with that I-don’t-know-what look that we all offer when we have no idea of who the hell is that smiling human being in front of you. In such cases usually you conceal your mental gap and pretend you’re lifelong friends. But the hippies have a natural gift that makes them settle those misunderstandings in a much more clean and elegant way than the rest of us mortals. Whistles looked into my eyes and without blinking he said: “I have no fucking idea of who you are, boy, but if you want I’ll show you where is the cave where we, the hippies, live”.

I didn’t want to break the spell of that sincere declaration of love with cold explanations on our old friendship, so I just told him that it was OK, that I was ready for the long walk that would take us from that hellish turmoil to the oasis of peace where the noble hippies live. Whistles looked at me with a look of “this guy is very weird” while his hardened forefinger pointed towards the place with more tourists per square meter: “There is our home”.

My romantic idea of a lost place in the forest suddenly disappeared. I tried to get close to the cave but there were so many people that I decided to come back another day, when the area was quieter. But, when I was about to leave, it happened something magical, that made all that chaos became a stony silence all of a sudden: A great ball of fire that was slowly going down had just settled on the horizon and it was hiding behind, little by little. As if it was a much-planned flashmob, everybody took his or her cell phone at the same time and began taking photos non-stop. The grandpa that lives inside me was about to shout at them that the red thing was called Sun and it goes down every day of the year everywhere around the world… But the human being is a contradictory animal, my friends, so I took my cell phone and joined the group of adventurous reporters.

When that red thing completely hid behind the horizon everybody began to clap and scream, and a minute later everybody left the vantage point. I seized that moment of peace to get into the cave.

There were two things that quickly attracted my attention: the first, that it was very small; and the second, that I’ve seen Chinese shops less crowded per square meter than that place: photos, Tibetan flags, a smoking skeleton, a fluffy toy of the Pink Panther, a number plate from Panama, 500 € fake notes, handwritten love letters, candles, empty bottles, necklaces… Instead of a cave, that seems the nest of a magpie with Diogenes syndrome. But in his defence I have to say that the place was extremely clean and tidy.

From the depths of the cave a nice hippie crept out. I’ll call him Ouija, who, after the appropriate introductions, told me one of the most amusing and insane stories I’ve heard in my whole life: the story of the Russian Nazi who practices Vodun against the hippies… But I’ll tell you about this next week ;)

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Translation: Dora Sales