Isn’t it strange, how tired the heat makes you? On a day so hot that all you can do is spend it in the pool, only to come out to eat and to have a siesta with the fan on maximum speed, I think about my childhood. We used to go to Spain, and my dad used to always get mad at the Spaniards for taking a nap on the hottest part of the day. He hated the -according to him- favorite Spanish expression mañana por la mañana, but today I feel, more then ever, sympathy for those heat-tormented people. Spanish or other. Productivity goes down rapidly in these hot summer  days.

But then the son goes down, and something magical happens. Not in the city of course, but outside. Apart from the mosquitos, the frogs, the grasshoppers, and all the other animals and insects, there is something more fairylike, it are the fire flies.

They are the strangest little things, they flash lights while flying and make the grass look like it is full of shiny diamonds. I ventured outside, fascinated and forgetting to put mosquito repellent, taking camera and tripod with me. The more I stood quiet, the more there were and the closer they came -it felt absolutely magical!

But even on a pitch dark night, at new moon, it is never dark in the Argentine country, where light polution is as good as inexistent, and not only is the sky full of stars, here they still have a milky way. That is something that I had imagined forgotten, and something that most teenage kids of today, born and raised in Western Europe have never seen before.

We tend to take things like this for granted, but nature at night, can be absolutely stunning…

I couldn’t get enough of it, and when I finally went back to the house, I found it locked. I was locked outside with my camera, and the noise of the buzzing mosquitos was taking over the then lost magical moments I had been enjoying. I knocked  on the door, no answer. It seemed like every one was sound asleep. I then banged on the windows, loud, and finally, just before I started to panic, someone let me in…