Maspalomas

Text by
Danny Calvi
With
Ryan Small and Pablo de la Barra

GAY BEACH

This Spring, consider booking a long EasyJet weekend to Las Palmas. At the Southern-most tip of the island, in Maspalomas, you can have a swim at the coast in the morning, and enjoy an afternoon of recreational sex (something that might normally take a lot of admin to get sorted back in the city). It sounds somewhat transactional, but it’s also quite civilized in that there’s a kind of etiquette involved in the game — for the hunters and the hunted.

The resort itself is a kind of leftover from the European all-inclusive tourist boom. Skip all that and head down Avenida de Tirajana, the main road which runs the length of Playa de Ingles, toward the Hotel Riu Palace Maspalomas. Walk straight through the hotel until you get to the strip for foot traffic just behind it. You’ll pass a few nice restaurants on either side, and eventually hit a wall. Take a right, then walk until you get to the opening where you can jump off the concrete onto the sand. You’ll see footprints. Follow them until the trail forks. If you go left, you end up at the gay beach, if you go right you’re headed toward the cruisy area. The trails are well-signed for a nudist beach, but except for some locals selling deck chairs, there are no facilities along the 15-minute walk to the beach, so bring plenty of bottled water.

The shifting dunes and indigenous shrubs create a kind of natural labyrinth with lots of secluded pockets — something akin to a darkroom or sauna, but then… You get the odd German pensioner-swinger-types: under a giant umbrella, he’s got his nose buried in the latest issue of ‘Der Spiegel’ while his lady’s getting banged by a young Canarian. Behind a sea-grape bush, two men and one woman go at it. The first man records everything with a pink Flip camcorder, he’s also like innocently petting the second man’s ass.

Further on, there’s a bear-type dude who has his whole area staked-out. He’s set his ‘trap’: a small semi-circle of rocks with a couple branches held up by a piece of found cloth. Like a teepee, just big enough to sit in comfortably. He keeps poking his cock with a stick, keeping it just… so…

You know you’re ‘there’ because you see men’s heads popping up and down from the scrub. At a clearing in the Tamarisk bushes, 10 guys are standing around jerking off, all eyes on 11 getting blown by 12. A third of the guys have their trunks around their ankles, or are walking around completely naked. You zero-in on one guy — he’s hesitating, he’s up against a Canary Palm, he keeps looking back. You walk up, grab his cock. He pulls away. He places a hand on your shoulder, and gives you a stoic nod. A game without words, apparently. You both look out at a shimmering patch of sea on the horizon.

Published on 03 May 2011