Ibiza: The place and the people

In fifteen years, we’ve never taken you to Ibiza. This October, we’re running our first yoga retreat in Ibiza, and everything about it has been worth the wait.

The place

Picture the quiet of early morning, before anyone else is awake. A wander around the pool with your coffee while the light is still soft, pine drifting on the air from the hills around the villa, the valley below just beginning to show itself. The sound of the chef quietly preparing breakfast, then watching it laid out on the terrace, ready for you to help yourself to whatever you fancy. The mood is calm, slow and tranquil.

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That’s the rhythm we’re building this retreat around.

Say the word Ibiza to most people and they picture something else entirely. Clubs, crowds and noise. That’s one side of the island, but it’s not the side we’ve chosen.

Our venue is a beautiful villa in the north, secluded, with its own pool and views that run straight out over the valley. It’s the kind of privacy that makes the villa itself part of the experience, not just somewhere to sleep between activities. Quiet beaches and some of the island’s best hikes are a stone’s throw away, you step outside and you’re already there.

But as well as the calm, adventure is a big part of this retreat too. Like all our retreats, this is a yoga and wild swimming retreat at heart, so we wanted to swim, hike, kayak and paddleboard, and this place delivers all of it. For our swims, we’re heading to quiet, secluded bays rather than the beaches everyone already knows, yoga and wild swimming in Ibiza the way we think it should be done. Ibiza has a real advantage here too, nowhere on the island is more than a forty-five minute drive in any direction, so whatever the weather is doing, we can always find a sheltered cove for the perfect swim.

After fifteen years running retreats here, we knew our guests wanted more. We’d been looking for a couple of years to move beyond the UK, and it took real searching to find it. I took trips to Portugal and Italy, had countless calls and conversations, and none of them felt right the way this one did. It came highly recommended from several different people, and with a capacity of just twelve, it’s exactly the kind of small group yoga retreat we’ve always run, the group element on offer called to us straight away.

We’ve chosen October deliberately, the perfect timing for an autumn yoga retreat. By then the intense heat of summer has passed, and it’s still gloriously warm, exactly the temperature you want for hiking and swimming. We wanted quiet, autumn stillness too, the island at its calmest, without the crowds summer brings. Nature is at its most vibrant, the landscape lush rather than baked, the water still warm enough to swim in.

It’s beautiful, obviously, we’d never have chosen it otherwise. But it’s the stillness we found here that we couldn’t stop thinking about.

I cannot wait to be heading there, along with our team.

The people

A place like this is only ever as good as the people who hold it, so here’s who’s holding this one.

I’ll be leading the yoga, as always. Alongside me is Mel, one of our own Zest Life chefs, flying out to cook with Xime, a local Spanish chef, so the food on this retreat carries both the flavours you already trust from us and the ones only Ibiza itself can give you. Simple food, done well, mostly plant based, with some fish, because it would be rude not to.

And then there’s Marel and Sarah, our guides on the island, with over ten years there between them. They’re the reason we’ll find the coves, the viewpoints and the quiet corners you’d never come across on your own, the kind of local knowledge that can’t be looked up, only earned.

It’s the same principle we apply everywhere we go. We don’t just choose a place. We choose the people who know it, and build the retreat around what they know.

If you are interested in joining us, look at our Ibiza retreats here. We look forward to you joining us.

Laura Bell is the founder of Zest Life and has been leading yoga and wellness retreats in the UK and abroad for over a decade. A qualified yoga teacher and experienced retreat leader, she designs and hosts small group retreats rooted in nature, movement and genuine care. Laura also works with organisations to design and deliver bespoke corporate wellness programmes and retreats - bringing the same standards of quality and thoughtful facilitation to workplace wellbeing.