El Dia de San Juan

As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, I decided to go to the beach for El Dia de San Juan—the fiesta celebrating the shortest night of the year.


It was almost exactly like the other party on the beach. We convened at a certain point at the beach, and we had a large group of students from our school. We all brought our own rations for the night. As none of the students have coolers, we mostly enjoyed warm beer, wine, and tepid sangria that you can buy in boxes here (the same way you find juice and milk in the grocery stores). There were also potato chips, peanuts, and various other munchies, and bocadillos for dinner.


What set this night apart from the other beach party is tw- fold. First, every other group on the beach made a little bonfire. In the photo above you can see folks from our group digging the hole for the bonfire. It looked kind of cool in the dark to see these little fires all over the place, but it smelled….well….like bonfire (whoop!). In fact, I still smell it today as I type this on Sunday afternoon. Too bad we don’t have smellivision…er…or something.


Second, the tradition on San Juan is that at midnight you have to jump 7 waves and simultaneously think of three wishes. Your wishes will come true during the year. So at midnight a bunch of people flocked to the water. Even I went (those are my post jump we feet you see up there), but the waves I jumped were only small ankle deep ones. Please. I don’t do ocean, remember? Fortunately my wishes were small ones like 1) I wish someday soon my clothes won’t smell like bonfire, 2) I wish I could leave the beach now, and 3) I wish I had a COLD beer. I’m still waiting on number 1 and 3, but 2 worked out for me pretty well.


There were millions and millions of people on the beach. It was really incredible. I left around 2:30, and I think I heard Serena come in at 7:30. In the morning. I think the point is to spend the entire shortest night of the year there, but that wasn’t going to work out so well for me.


All in all it was a fun night, and I can die knowing that I’ve adequately celebrated El Dia de St. Juan.