Summer in Mojacar really begins when all of the tourists leave!

With the arrival of September, for those of us that lived here through July and August, our summer fun begins. Finally a place to park. Getting back to normality is the norm.

We can all start making plans in seriousness again. Short trips punctuated with short stops greeting old friends, visiting old haunts and warning them all: “I’ll be back.” 

Our Indian summer can well last through December if we get lucky. It is truly a time of re-conquest and assertion of the rights we once had before the invading masses claimed all the parking. All the money we saved by eating at home will be blown in this next month celebrating our reclaimed rights.

For it is the secret covenant held by all that live here not to boast too much to everyone about what a perfect climate we will enjoy for the next three months. 

Oh glorious summer, bring it on. Blue seas, white foam bubbling into the moist sands and cold beer celebrate our return. We linger and visit with friends that also have been in hiding. It is a real homecoming and the bars and restaurants appreciate it too.

Joyous receptions are shared, even though the tips will be even less than the tourists contributed. We’ve all got tales to share. From the owners we learn how unruly and ill-spending the tourists were. “Expending little and constantly demanding more food, quicker and ice.” The heathens.

Messages of greetings are usually shouted between tables. We again learn more about how little the invaders spent. Cheap snacks indeed! Our food orders are complicated. One chicken leg cut into four parts. Some salad for my Tortuga Mora. One Coke and five straws and lots of crispy fries. 

When it arrives it almost always comes without eating utensils, no serviettes and warm white wine (uncorked). The joke is played both ways. Protocol demands that these shenanigans last just the first week after the tourists leave as it all gets damn old fast.

But, the entire town becomes ours again. The village and the beach and Sopalmo too. The more hearty can trek over the mountains to Carboneras past the derelict monument proclaiming and insulting Spain’s current  political crisis of weak-willed indecision and certain corruption.

But such haughty reflections are not to be considered when a new born freedom of movement exists to be celebrated. New travel plans can be dreamt and maybe even carried out. Once again we are free to roam, bounce about with never an hourly agenda considered in our endeavors. Just living has become important again.