We woke up, packed for the music festival and set out for Santiago. Kier was already there because she went over and stayed at the Posada with one of the bands. It’s not as wreckless and groupie as it sounds. She went with a family who are friends of ours.
The rest of us headed for the boats. Logistically speaking, getting to the music festival was one of those lessons in tolerance, patience, flexibility, all that annoying good stuff. Bargaining for a price to get to Santiago, I find a tad annoying because I know the regular price is 10 or 15Q for local people. The gringo price starts at 20 or 25 Q and goes up from there. Kids up to teenagers are free. We gave them 20Q for 4 of us and then he wanted to charge us for Cali and her cousin, who aren’t even close to the cut off point. I told him that I know kids don’t pay. He basically said mine do. I told him we’d get off and find a different boat, then he lowered the kid price, I told everyone to grab their stuff, let’s go, then he said ok. I’m already paying the inflated gringo price, but charging for kids just adds insult to my already inflated gringo price. I have my limitations.
When we got on the boat he said they’d take you directly to the music festival, and I suppose that was kinda true. What may have been more accurate would have been to say we will get you as close as we possibly can by boat, but then you’ll be walking… for a while. I got off with the girls while Paul and my sister stayed on the boat and dropped off our stuff at the Posada hotel. I thought it would be easier not to drag everyone on tuks to the hotel and then from the hotel to the festival. My mistake was that Paul had all the money in his pocket at the time, and we were just going to wait for them at the gate to the festival. Turned out to be a couple of hour wait.
We were dropped off at the pier of the Bambu Hotel, we walked out to the street, didn’t see any music festival. It just so happened that a boy that goes to Madi’s school was also on that boat so he at least pointed us in the right direction and said if we walked on the road for awhile, it would be in a field on our left. He was right. Good thing, since I didn’t have any tuk money. We could have waited in our chairs by the side of the road for Paul and Mia to go by if we got too tired. But we made it to the gates of the festival just fine and waited there for them. We ended up waiting for a very long time. My email and phone call reservations got messed up and they had to do all sorts of creative shuffling at the hotel to get us in. They did what they had to and we ended up with a three room house, something bigger than we had originally booked. That part worked out because the entire town is sold out, room-wise, on music festival night.
When we got in to the festival we saw lots of people we knew. The place was almost all gringo, likely because of the 100Q entrance fee. In a way that is unfortunate because the people who couldn’t afford to come in would watch over the make-shift fences made of plastic.
The bands played until midnight. When the two bands played of people we knew, we went up to the front and danced. There were so many people smoking weed I’m pretty sure you could get high just trying to stay alive. The music was varied in type and quality, but it all worked. There was some reggae, bluegrass, latin rock, folksy women’s group, kid’s choir.
They had makeshift bathrooms available, with a sign that said if you’re a guy and you just need to urinate, do that on the wall over there. Sure enough, guys were following those instructions. I felt embarassed that I turned to see if that was the case.
Since the audience was 89% gringo, I was feeling a false sense of security, food-safey-wise. My friends could vouch for the food-safely of most of the vendors. I ate one of everything there was being made. I had a fruit and cream crepe, a chicken and cheese crepe, some of Madi’s pizza, a falafel plate with salad, two candybars, part of a tamale, peanuts, bbq chicken with potato salad and some sodas. The running joke started if someone wanted to know how some food rated, they could come and ask me because I’d tried everything. The chili and pickled eggs scared me, so I skipped those. I also didn’t have a burger, how’s that for restraint.
Paul and Mia took the girls back to the pool for a while to swim because that’s all they could think about. Madi saw all of her teachers there. There was a trapeze set up in the camp ground that was adjacent to the festival. Someone had set up a trapeze, so she was over there with her teacher for a while swinging on it. We were sitting in a huge group of people and had many great conversations.
Madi and her cousin got their faces painted. That was a big hit among all the kids, and a few adults.
Eventually we saw Kier. Throughout the day and evening she would check in with us for a few seconds, then she was off again. I guess some of them were sitting on some rock in the lake for the longest time talking and making bracelets out of reeds.
Mia went back with the younger two girls first. They were tired and needed to go to bed. Next Kier went back with some friends to hot-tub it at the hotel. Madi was having lots of fun playing hide-n-seek with two of her friends and was the last person ready to go back. It still wasn’t too late, only about 9. There were still 4 more bands to play, but honestly, I couldn’t stay awake any longer. There was a large campfire going, people sitting around with guitars ready to pluck and sing till all hours in the morning on the camping side, which is apparently what happens. Lots of Woodstock like activities, I’m told, not much sleeping happens there (interpret that how you will, and you’ll likely be right). Kier decided she would sleep at our hotel and not camp with her friends. I don’t know how wild that place gets although friends of our were also camping there and had room in their tent if she wanted to stay.
At one point in the evening my friend and I were tired of dancing and decided to go and sit on their blanket. We pulled the blanket on the ground, which happened to be over the huge electrical chords which ran to the stage. Simultaneous to us knocking that chord the entire music festival goes black. We looked at each other in panic. We tried to see if we had pulled apart the chord somehow, but it had nothing to do with us. We did not wield so much power. No, we were not drinking or smoking anything, although the air around us all day was suspect and may explain our paranoia and having the munchies.
When we left the festival there were many many tuks waiting at the gate, and they were rather aggressive, somewhat unusual behavior. The drivers were pushing each other to get our business. We drove by the lake, which was beautiful at night.
Really a great day.