Midsummer Bonfire On Lanzarote
Midsummer Bonfire On Lanzarote
I Love this time of the year. Its June. Its summer. It’s Midsummer Bonfire On Lanzarote. 
Every year the 23th of June we celebrate the Midsummer Bonfire on Gill’s RANCH in Arrietta. Gill is a friend of mine. She is British and one of those people, who seem to be born to entertain. She is so good at it!
When I and many others of her friends are invited to her ranch “Great Times” are guaranteed. This year we had a musician playing JAZZ on his Saxophone, while the
Barbecue was on and later during the night we had the pleasure of music delivered by a DJ who played all the great hits from the EIGHTIES & NINETIES. Oh lord, this music made us dance!
What I find interesting during these kind of celebrations, like Midsummer Bonfire, is the amount of different people you meet. Some of them you already know from previous celebrations and others are new to you.
Sometimes you’ll find there are a few people from every single country in Europe. It’s so much fun. Especially ONE PERSON in particular. It`s Pedro. He is Canarian. Born here on LANZAROTE and he’s Gill`s neighbour. He´s in his early eighties and he never misses out one single of of Gill`s parties. He doesn’t speak a single word of 
English, but I never doubted for one moment that he’s having fun! He loves to dance. He demonstrated that once again during our Midsummer Bonfire night!
While we were sitting around the tables earlier that evening enjoying our Barbecue food, I actually asked Pedro what he liked the most about the parties at Gill´s Ranch. Since he doesn`t understand a word of what is being said his answer really surprised me. He told me, he likes all the DIFFERENT kind of people he gets to meet. He thinks we are all great FUN, and he would never let an invitation from Gill down. “When you get an invite you have to show up”, he said with proudness in his voice!
On several occasions, while living here on LANZAROTE, I have felt differently. Not in a bad way. I am different. There is nothing that can change that. As a foreigner, your background and your upbringing is so dissimilar from the people born here so of course, me and lots of my friends have had some good laughs talking about it. And that`s where Gill comes into the PICTURE once again….
In the beginning of this year Gill had some family members from Norway on holiday visiting her. Young people. It was their first visit to LANZAROTE. They decided to go for dinner at the local village in Arrietta, just 2 minutes by car from Gill`s Ranch. It got later than planned, because the young couple stopped by the local Bar after dinner.
When they finally decided to return back home to the ranch it was pretty late night and extremely dark, because Arrietta has no lightning on the roads. They decided to ask the local police service for help. When explaining to the police officer what the ranch they were living at looked like and that Gill, the owner, was blond and tall the policeman exclaimed “I know who she is. That’s “Lady Gaga”!!
Thanks to the kind police officers, the young couple was guided safely back home to the ranch at two o`clock in the night with plenty of blue lights blinking on the police car in front of them..
And on our Midsummer Bonfire Eve there were plenty of lights too, BUT these ones where
placed on the palm trees, on the terrace and used as decorations! When we were done with the barbecue, we went down to the garden area where Gill set fire to a huge homemade impressive bale of wood, branches and twigs. Plenty of photographs were being shot while we were standing admiring the beautiful scenery of Midsommer Bonfire Eve….
So welcome to “The foreign world”, Welcome to “Being different” and happy Midsummer’s Eve!
Midsommer Bonfire
This year was no different from any other year. IRONMAN is, and will always be, a huge event on LANZAROTE. The most important of the year actually. We get participants from nearly every corner of the world coming to our Island to participate in the IRONMAN event!
I myself was standing in the street the entire day. The atmosphere was fantastic and at the same time quite tense. The music was good and loud and played by a professionel DJ with a nice smile on his face. Happy day, A lot of the people in the street, where family and friends to the participants or people like me, curious and wanting to cheer and give support.
But having his family there waiting for him and cheering made a huge difference. His time was 13 hrs and 18 min. WELL DONE John Davies.
The other day I went for a walk with a small group of friends taking off at The Flamingo Beach in Playa Blanca heading towards the “Faro Pechiguera” (The Pechiguera Light House) It’s the absolute Southern point of the Island.
It`s a 9.5 km long walk. But it`s absolutely wonderful. When you return back home you should be amazed and proud of yourself – you were actually able to go through with it!
stunning view. It`s amazing to stand there. Just you and the mountains. Silence. When standing there it’s difficult to calculate the real distance down to the sea because of the evenness of the brown colours of the mountains. Everything around looks like it goes into ONE piece and like one big brown carpet, with no points of reference.
the Mountains. Hundreds of them. I find it quite amazing how they can walk kilometres and kilometres on their tiny feet on the steep slopes o the mountain hills without falling down on my head!
It’s almost the last chance to explore the green scenery of Lanzarote’s amazing landscape.
country.
We walked straight over to the Restaurant 300 meters from Volcan De La Corona, where we enjoyed plenty of delicious, great tapas and lots and lots of water.
We park our car there, completely free of charge, and then we start out on our walk over the dusty hills along the coast. Up and down. All along the raw and fascinating coastline, where the changing landscape all along the way to the small marina Puerto Calero never ceases to amaze us. 
Back at the car park in Puerto del Carmen we realize that we have walked a total of 9 kilometers! And we haven’t hardly noticed.
