“Mas buenas chicas,” said Auntie M, our sprightly septuagenarian hostess in Spain, “playa…fuego grande…”
My conversational Spanish is limited to picking out the odd word from conversation, and maybe adding an, “Oiyoiyoi! Que calor?”
I gathered from the words ‘fire’, ‘beach’,’nice young girls’, and a few translations from Ramon, that the Spaniards in Punta were going to celebrate on the beach all night. Even if midsummer’s night is short, they would party hard, and as if there were to be no tomorrow. The night before this in Punta, a relatively small fishing port and beach destination, there had been running battles between stilt walkers and firework jugglers throughout the streets to advertise clubs like ‘Mad Cow’ and ‘Cocobongo’. A big night out promised to be fun.
A few beers and vodkas into the night, we looked out onto the beach and saw no fires, no dancing pagans celebrating any equinox. It was around midnight, so we figured there was no fun to be had through other people’s flames. Being practical people, and having some primitive desire to burn things, we set off into the night with a box of matches and a newspaper I had conveniently stuffed down my trousers earlier.
After some speed trudging, we rounded some dunes and could see lights and hear sounds of music above the crash of the waves. In the way that only happens when you set off with no plan, we had happened upon a beach party. Or so we thought until we arrived at the beach bar. A young muscular man in very tight and very short shorts was tending to proceedings, and most of the clientele were wealthy looking men. These men proceeded to eye up the newcomers from the dunes, and then eye us down. The only decent thing to do was to have a beer, and then run off into the night. A perfectly executed plan, although Ramon’s running was slightly hampered by the wicker chair he had picked up for firewood, and the mad cackling which accompanied his departure.
Eventually we came to more dunes, and decided a pleasant campfire on our own would be a sensible idea. Twigs were collected, flame was applied and heat was released from wood. In comparison to the 35 degree days, the night was cool, so using unparalleled good thinking, I decided to stay up until 5:30am tending and feeding the fire. Folklore says that dreams from midsummer’s night will come true. Personally, I forgot to sleep or to have any dreams. So far nothing has come true, but I don’t think this proves anything in particular.
We decided to walk home at about 6am. After a half hour of slightly sober, and not-quite-as-much-fun-as-the-outward-journey trudging, we came to what Auntie M had possibly meant. Mas buenas chicas were still wandering in and out of a vast nightclub on a different part of the beach as the sun came up. They didn’t look like they were hunched alcoholics wedged shivering between dunes, occasionally foraging for dead wood.