It is 12 noon in Vila and the thermometer is over 30 degrees. The Vara de Rey promenade is full of tourists looking for some shade to protect themselves from the heat wave. Waiters come and go without stopping to serve their customers. One of these workers, from the CBbC Ebusus Restaurant, Lara Monserrat, takes advantage of a few minutes to enter the establishment and drink some water. “When she can stop to drink, she stops. It’s quite hard and exhausting“, she declares in reference to working under the strong heat of this month of June.
One aspect that Monserrat stresses is patience, since most customers, she points out, want to be served quickly at this time of year when temperatures are rising: “People, with the heat, don’t have much patience either. Everyone wants it now.”
Another circumstance that makes it harder to work under the sun is the uniform: “They make us wear long sleeves and long pants,” laments this waitress.
“I fight the heat by drinking water and do the best I can,” insists Monserrat, who also explains that when it’s time to eat, “we’re not very hungry either. Maybe they’ve made roast chicken and, with the heat, I don’t feel like it. I feel like something cooler,” she says.
To cope with the high temperatures during a heat wave, Monserrat says that “if she were a tourist”, during peak hours, she would go to the beach or to the swimming pool, instead of walking along Vara de Rey. “Although in the end it’s good for me because they give me work,” she concludes.
Other hospitality professionals, if they are a little luckier, work in a place with more shade. This is the case for one of the waiters at the Born bar, Guillem Brull. Although he has a workspace with plenty of shade, he recognizes that it is “hard for everyone” during a heat wave.
In this corner of the Plaza del Parque there is more breeze, so “we cope better than in other areas,” admits Brull.
“Drinking a lot of water and changing my shirt” is this worker’s remedy for not being so hot. And he recommends taking breaks, plenty of hydration and sun protection and, above all, “taking shelter as much as possible”.
In the port area of Ibiza, a shipping company worker, Antonio Mateo Vizcaino, is grateful not to spend his entire working day in the sun during the heat wave. “We wear hats and sunscreen”, he says, although “we still get a lot of sun. We are almost half an hour in the sun between the boarding and disembarking” of passengers.
‘Oh, it’s so nice in here’
In the town of Jesús, a tobacco shop employee, Eva Pérez, explains that inside the establishment they are fine because of the air conditioning: “Everyone who enters says: ‘Oh, it’s so nice in here’“, she emphasizes.
However, when it comes to delivering supplies, Pérez stresses that the situation changes: “Cool clothes and air conditioning in the car” is the key to combating the heat wave and sweat.
“Your legs get twice as tired”, stresses this worker, who advises drinking water and using leg gels or sitting down, if possible.
Tourists strolling around also suffer from the high temperatures, as could not be otherwise. “Water, water, please”, asked a woman next to a supermarket.
Heat wave hits Sant Antoni with 36.7 degrees
The highest temperatures recorded in this June heat wave on Ibiza, according to the delegate of the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) in Balears, MarÃa José Guerrero, was 36.7 degrees suffered in Sant Antoni last Wednesday. And yesterday they reached 36.6 degrees. On Formentera on Wednesday June 15th it reached 35.2 degrees.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.