  Wednesday was the dia de San Juan. For the preceding 2 weeks I had heard about this festival and how fun it would be. I was a little skeptical because I´m not that into big frat party style festivals (Mardi Gras, etc) but I went and I am so glad that I did.
It was absoltely amasing. Even if I had had a miserable time in Tenerife the three weeks would have been worth it for this festival. We arrived at the Playa Jardin, the largest beach in Pto De La Cruz at about 9PM. There were probably 2000 or more people there. The entire beach was jam packed with people on towels and many people had made little fires in the sand. Some of them were fires with wood or paper, and others were indents in the sand where the people had placed candles.
Some people had put flowers all over the inside of the fire hole as welll. Beautifull. We put our towels down right in from of this structure that looked like a spider made of scafolding. Inside the scafold spider, on a stage, there was a guy wearing wings reading a newspaper. He contined to read the newspaper until the sun went completely down and then he jumped up and started shouting ¨Es Ahora! Es Ahora!¨and yelled for everyone to come into the center of the spider. Anneliese and I jumped up and went into the center of the spider while the music started and he began to explain that we were in for a great show if we could get the angels to fall from heaven. So he led us in an exercise to call the angels from heaven. And lo and behold, they CAME! They fell down from the sky and landed on the upper arms of the scaffold spider and flew around inside it for awhile.
Then, once they had all fallen they began to put on the most amazing show. It was a very moving acrobatics show. Lots of flying around, sometimes on swings. One part of the show was a romantic dance between two angels, one with red hair, one with blue hair. They danced and flew around together and apart and it was beautiful. Then there was a guy who about gave me a heart attack, because he was swinging on a loose rope and fell forward and caught himself by his feet! He kept doing it and I was a nervous wreck the whole tiem. Then, at the end there were two mortals hanging out with the angels, one was a clown and the other a futbol player.
They each were killed and became angels. They seemed happy about it. :) After the show was over a band started playing traditional Spanish muscic and a couple of us went to looka round. We walked amid the people and their fires and ended up, serendipitously in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. We had stopped to survey the beach right where is stars to slope down to the water and suddenly the fireworks went off right in frong of us!!!! BEAUTIFUL fireworks. The, as if on cue, once the fireworks were over the whole beach got up and headed towards the water.
So I ran back and put on suit (no one else would coem with me) and went for a swim at midnight! I was cleansed of my sins for another year and had a fabulous time in the water. The waves were strong and it was like being in the center of the world, with no control over your movement. I loved it. Then I returned to the shore and the music had changed to a Brazillian band and so we all danced in the sand! The music was fabulous and Marcio, a brazillain taught us all how to dance. I, as usual, couldn´t figure it out!
We danced for about an hour and then went back to our spot in the sand and THEN there were more fireworks!!!! Also very amazing and magical. After the second fireworkd people started to leave. We hung out and talked and walked around and looked at fires until about 3AM when we headed home. It was amazing. It was beautiful. It was inspiring. I know that you cannot know what I mean, because you weren´t there... but I kept thinking how every single person should be a part of this magic. 
