Rocket Festival 2005

The hills are alive for Jeep. All morning he's been staring through a plastic beer glass up at the mountains, transfixed on the ghostly outline of an elephant's face etched into the cliff-face which stares down over us. We only met him this first morning but already he's ranting, clearly relieved that the sun's come up to illuminate some perspective on our Spanish surroundings. "We're sitting on its trunk", he chokes through giggles.

At Rocket Festival you're either looking up or down, flitting between a raised gaze up towards the jagged mountain-line to the sprawling green valley below. We're literally velcroed to the side of the mountain, the site resembling a doughy pizza base slapped onto a wall, gently sliding down, a fist of 60 ft granite puncturing through the middle of the natural arena giving it a focal point for punters to navigate around, as well as to gather on top of for sundown drinks.

Despite being only half an hours drive from Malaga, it's in the middle of nowhere. So much so, that by the time VF's poor driver has routed the same bit of highway three times over, we give up looking for signs and choose instead to be dropped by some old mountain or other. "That one over there!" seems to be good.

Organisers have spent the last three weeks lugging an entire festival up here via one dusty dirt track - and they've done a magical job - like Glastonbury's Green Fields given a makeover by a busy tribe of anally retentive Ewoks. But in reality, the hard work has been done by volunteers, travellers and hippies, friends of a Europe-wide collective of party-heads under the banner of Brighton's Innerfieldz sound system. It may explain why half of Brighton is here, but it's a fact that puzzles none the less, especially as it gradually dawns that no Spanish are arriving.

The intention of the Rocket Festival was always to unite north and south Europe in an armada clash of hillside hedonism, blending the unquenchable enthusiasm of Spanish party lovers with the care and expertise of Britain's travelling tent contingent. Walking around the site, it's easy to see how it could have worked. It's sublimely laid out, a clutch of sound systems suitably spaced out to avoid sound-clash, each one flamboyant enough to decry an identity of its own. Tribal Funk is the outstanding example, shrouded in the snugs of the twisted slope just above the campsite, fluorescent sculpture and its low, blanketed canopy giving it a beach-bar quality that at first appears more suited to the Thai islands, with a similar atmosphere buoyed by chunky house and funky breaks - and just like on Ko Tao in the Thai Gulf, raving on Saturday afternoon involves jigging with tribes of dogs (only these ones bark along to the tunes!)