I was five months pregnant in charge of a three-year-old and wondering if I was on the wrong holiday. Everyone else on the late-night plane to Ibiza was beautiful and fashionable. I was pregnant and wearing my friend's second-hand maternity clothes.
The Italian next to me, with a mohican, elaborate tattoos and hipster trousers, was on his way to DJ at Pacha. It was the height of the summer holidays, but oddly, my daughter and a couple of seven-year-olds behind were the only kids on the flight.
As the DJs, pop stars (yes, there was a boy band), their minders and clubbers sped off into the night, their hire cars thudding to the beat, Hanna and I headed off to a villa near Santa Eulalia on the east of the island.
Next day, we found ourselves in Roca Llisa, up a dirt track, sitting on the terrace with Mary Carmen whose family hosted me here as a Spanish exchange student aged 13.
Bougainvillea splurges all over the house, down walls and out of pots. The trees around the pool are heaving with ripe figs. Mary Carmen's dad Cayo is grilling pieces of home-reared chicken on his wood-burning oven. The smell of the fire stoked up with rosemary branches is delicious. Mary Carmen's mum is wearing the same style of house coat she wore 21 years ago and offering up the same delicious chips from home-grown potatoes cooked in fruity olive oil. There are mammoth water melons from the garden for dessert and piles of juicy green grapes.
'Shall we have the good wine, or the very good wine?' asks Cayo. He's now in his seventies. The good wine'll be fine, says a nervous Mary Carmen who's home for the holidays (he shouldn't be drinking with diabetes, she mutters). He disappears into the cool cellar and produces the 'very good wine' (Cosecha 1960), the colour of sherry and we all take a glug with our chicken and chips (like you've never tasted chicken and chips before) on the veranda overlooking the pool. Daylight Ibiza is good. Very good. Who needs nightclubs?
We're staying three miles away in a pretty villa just outside Santa Eulalia. The guest book is full of comments such as 'we have come here for a friend's wedding and can't believe how nice it is'.
Ibiza isn't just nice, it's beautiful, serene, spiritual. This is the Ibiza that attracts the likes of Jade Jagger, Elle Macpherson, Noel Gallagher and Mariah Carey. You could, like us, spend a fortnight here in peak season and never encounter a clubber or package tourist, especially if you are heavily pregnant and living in the time zone of a three-year-old child (up at dawn, to bed with the sunset as opposed to up at sunset, to bed at dawn like the clubber).
We head to my favourite beach, Cala Oliveira, a tiny cove down a bumpity-bump lane from Roca Llisa with a few pebbles, gin-clear water and shelved cliffs where the nudists hang out. There's a tumbledown cottage on the way, inhabited by a few kids from the mainland camping for the summer and there's a leathery eastern European bloke, in white string vest plus gold medallion who lays out a sunlounger and sunshade each morning offering massages. 'I give you massage for free. You don't know what you missing babe,' he tells Mary Carmen. There's a delicious smell of marijuana wafting across the sand. Four Andalucian boys park their car right on the beach, open all five doors and whack up the sound system full blast so we all have gypsy rock. The nudists come to life. A big row in Catalan ensues. The boys back off.
One of the first things I do on this visit to Ibiza is book lunch at Bigotes, a small restaurant on Cala Mastella beach run by a fisherman of that name. He has no phone, so the only way to secure a reservation is to turn up days before and plead with them to book you in. This is the second year in a row I try to get a booking. Not even a royal title will necessarily get you in. The king of Spain who was passing on his yacht from Palma to Ibiza one summer sent a minion ahead to get him a table. But Bigotes refused. No reservation. No table. Sorry.
We arrive at 10.30am on the first day of a two-week August holiday. A lone Bigotes is sitting on a rock by his fishing boat after bringing in the day's catch. Water gently laps against the rocks. I know it's him by the long, grey handlebar moustache. 'Can we make a booking?' I call over. 'When my relatives get here,' he calls back irritably.
The only free day I can get is in two weeks, just before we go home. But it's worth the wait. The restaurant is a shack on the side of the beach. You either get there by swimming in the turquoise water from the beach, or by driving up a mountainside and down the other. We sit at long wooden benches in the shade, the water comes right up to the side of the deck and fish dart at our feet. The first course is a huge pile of bullit de peix (boiled fish) including fish head, fins, tails, even stingray (I miss out that bit having swum right up to a stingray on Cala d'Hort beach the day before). You tuck into the communal serving bowl with whomever you happen to sit next to. Next course is a huge pile of saffrony, soupy rice cooked in the stock of the fish that was served for the first course - great. It's a long slow afternoon. We stagger out at 5pm.
We spend a blissful fortnight going from beach to beach, paella to paella. Hanna goes the colour of dark honey and hair yellow as sunflowers. Mary Carmen takes us to her favourite haunts.
At Anita's, the old village post office in San Carles, we drink hierbas - the medicinal tipple clanking with ice. San Carles is a tiny whitewashed village and Anita's is created out of a flagstone floor built underneath a huge tree. It's full of greying people wearing tie dye who look suspiciously like an older version of the first set I encountered all those years earlier. At Santa Gertrudis, another white-washed village, we swig Rioja at low outdoor tables munching small portions of jamon iberico and chopped-up pieces of manchego. Fifty or so jamones hang from the ceiling at Bar Gosta. This is where you come to eat bread, ham and cheese. But better than any ham and cheese you've tasted back home.
At Cala Boix we stretch out on black sand - it's August and there's barely anyone else about - not even Spanish. We eat tapas at the beachside bar - tortilla, mixed salad, macaronis, chicken in breadcrumbs and spicy chicken wings. At Cala Xarraca, a toddler-friendly beach backed by low cliffs and pine trees, Hanna bathes in natural rock pools. At Aguas Blancas, a huge long sandy strip, backed by cliffs and beloved of surfers, we jump waves for hours on end before end ing up in front of another beach paella (size of a cauldron) - stirred by a bloke under a tree - containing huge hunks of crab, prawns and moist saffron. It smells of the sea.
For the last few nights we move to Cala d'Hort on the west coast and check into a restaurant on a beach in a nature reserve with eight rooms upstairs. We watch the most fantastic sunsets each evening and are first on the beach in the morning, picking up shells and admiring the tiny fish that swim up to our feet. Here we eventually encounter our second English person in two weeks (the first was an Observer journalist we spot in the New Agey village San Juan) who tells us he discovered Cala d'Hort through an article in... wait for it, Escape.
He raves about how undiscovered it is, how the English don't know what they're missing, that he must think about buying a villa... And it's at this point I start to feel a strange emotion descending and for a moment realise I'm experiencing possessiveness. Will I regret writing about the side of Ibiza best known to the Spanish, but few Britons have still discovered? It's much too good to share.
Factfile
Jeannette Hyde stayed at Los Mochuelos villa in S'Argamassa near Santa Eulalia which sleeps six and costs £1,435 a week through the Owners' Syndicate (020 7801 9804) car hire. The Owners' Syndicate features a selection of villas and apartments on the island costing between £390 and £4,775 per week excluding flights.
Getting there: No-frills airline Flybe (08705 676676) has introduced new services to Ibiza from Southampton. The thrice-weekly service on Friday, Saturday and Sundays costs from £78 return including taxes. EasyJet (0870 600 0000) has flights leaving Stansted from £50 return including taxes in low season to £150 in mid August. Seat-only operator Avro (0870 458 2847) has flights from Gatwick to Ibiza from £99 in low season to £189 in mid August.
Eating out: Bigotes - the set menu of Bullit de pescado y arroz is ¿13.50 (about £10). Open weekends in March, then from April to November daily.
Reading: The Mini Rough Guide to Ibiza and Formentera edited by Iain Stewart.
Where to stay: Restaurant Del Carmen (00 34 971 18 74 49) in Cala d'Hort has eight rooms for ¿60 (£43) per room. Open mid February to 20 October.
