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