After Mijas, Geoff dropped us off at the hotel for a few hours of relaxation and getting ready for the annual International Fair of Fuengirola, an annual week-long event in town. And we just happened to be there the last night of the fair.
As we walked through town to get to the fair, we joined larger and larger streams of people heading to the same place. It’s quite the party.
The fair was originally started as a celebration of countries with a Spanish heritage, but now any country that wants to pay for a tent can, such as the United States, Ukraine, England, and many other non-Spanish heritage countries. This year, 33 different countries had booths.
As we got there, it was clear the fair is a mob scene. First we had to wade through the rides and games for kids (like an American county fair, only far crazier). Loud music was playing, and it was so loud we couldn’t converse, much less think our own thoughts. It was a far cry from the Sussex County (New Jersey) Farm and Horse Show I went to every year as a kid.
Once we got into the adult section of the fair, it was still packed, but just not quite as loud. Each country that buys a tent does three things – sells their country’s alcohol/beer, sells food representative of that country, and has live music and dancing to entice people in.
Making our way through the wide walkway between the two rows on either side of countries was incredibly hard, as everywhere was a chokepoint of humans, and it was even worse at a popular country which drew lines to get into the tents, lines to buy beer, and lines to buy food.
Geoff bought he and I beers from Germany (naturally), and then we went into Greece to meet some of the friends he’s made through belonging to a local tennis club.
After chatting some, and watching Greek dancing (don’t worry, I didn’t partake), we made our way to other tents. The places with the best food weren’t worth the wait. Argentina, for example, had a massive pit of fire and meat (see pictures). I of course wanted it, but the line was quite long. (Don’t worry, any cooking is done outside, not in the tents.)
We finally got dinner from some Latin American country where there was a much shorter line. Honestly, I don’t remember the country we got dinner from.
We went into many country’s tents, even if only briefly. Australia was a favorite, England offered excellent beer, and the USA tent featured southern rock and sticky floors. Geoff was shocked at how little spacer the American tent was this year – he noted that semi-jokingly “Trump wouldn’t be happy if he knew how much smaller the American tent is compared to last year!” The menu looked to be pretty representative of American food, and the floor was so sticky with beer I thought I might be in a Texas honky tonk.
Carol and I stayed later than I expected, but part of that is it took time to fight through the masses of people. We checked the next day, and Geoff stayed till 12:30am, which is pretty impressive given that he’s over 65 years old!
We enjoyed the fair – between the locals and the tourists, half the Costa del Sol was there. It was quite an event.
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