Cosquin Rock

So I went to bed early Sunday night, and woke up late Monday morning - the best way to live on days off. What I learned, if I wake up at breakfast at 11 (which is a yogurt) then they wont feed me lunch at 12 (they give me a piece of fruit), so its better to wait till 12 to show up so I get lunch (like I did today). But anyway, I left at 1, and went to the Terminal de Autobuses. Luckily while riding that bus to the bus station, we (Courtney, Ryan, and I) saw some people wearing the Cosquin Rock t-shirts, so we followed them. When they got off, we got off. When they stopped walking, we stopped walking. They caught on pretty quick that we were following them but they were cool with it, and even showed us where to get tickets and then which bus to take.

That bus terminal was larger than some airports I've been in, so it was really helpful to have guides. So we make it to the festival, and I'd never been to a festival so it was all totally new to me. And we just start walking following the crowd, which worked for us because it was at least a mile walk with several turns to make it to the Aerodromo. First we pass some vendors and then food. The first thing I said when I saw the food was "I could really go for a cup of fries" like 3 vendors later they were selling cones of fries so I was in luck. And that was my first experience with street vendor food here, and I'm still alive. We finally make it to the entrance after seeing many more interesting things going on around us - like tons of security with clearly displayed guns. Inside the fence the place is huge. It was like 2 football fields by 4 football fields (the easiest way for me to measure). And if it was to hold 80 thousand people comfortably I guess it had to be.

So we walk in the gate after 3 checkpoints and an intensive bag check (and ponytail check for Courtney). The first thing that happens is I am handed a #1 finger like at sports events, and a free condom (a first for me). And I was like, after that start to a festival - this has got to get good. At 4pm the place isnt too crowded yet, the sun is still up and its pretty brutal. So we take a lap, and during this lap we were handed these large granola bar looking things which when I examined close later turned out to be rice bars so I could even eat them! Over the course of the afternoon we also get 2 more bars, several orange bracelets, a chocolate milk similar to yohoo, and 2 cups of yogurt with cornflakes. I was enjoying all that free food that I could eat, that doesn't usually happen for me.

The music was decent, it wasn't my favorite but I enjoyed the experience of listening to it in that setting. Oh, I guess I should describe the setting. First of all, we just drove straight out of the city of Cordoba for like an hour and a half until we get to a dirt road and then the bus just stops and we get out. We walk past all the vendors and into the area and the view is incredible. Straight in front of us was the Cordillera, a mountain range that looked like it was right there next to us. And the sunset over the land on the other side was very pretty too! There were 2 big stages, and a small one with some hardcore metal music. On one big stage was rock music, and the other one was reggae. There was definitely a difference in people between the two stages. At the rock stage it was just like a huge mosh pit. Everyone was jumping and purposely bumping into each other, I did not get close enough to participate in that on purpose. By the reggae stage the only thing you could see was people smoking marijuana. It was difficult not to stare when someone would just pull the stuff out of his pocket and roll it up and light it; it was hilarious. I just haven't been exposed to that prevalent of drug use before.

Also, the brothers who are the cousins of Adriana who invited me there, were very helpful with the little things. Like they got us in line to get a bracelet for something that the only word we could understand was acrobats and 9:30. So at 9:30 we went to find the acrobats and apparently the bracelets got us inside the fence so we could see closer, and that show was super awesome. I'm totally just going to plagiarize what Ryan wrote because its so much easier, and its completely accurate:
"Fuerzabruta at the Cosquín Rock Festival: They have everything. They have descending swimming pool ceilings full of scantily clad interpretive dancers, styrofoam tiles full of confetti to break over people's heads, massive truck horns, a Mad Hatter-esque DJ, gale-force wind fans, sprinklers of different sizes, and fake houses full of lawn furniture and convulsing people. It's like straight from a Stefon Weekend Update interview. — withCourtney Dean Dunnigan and Grace Arney at Cosquin Rock » Santa Maria de Punilla." 

The descending swimming pool with the ... dancers

We really just had a good chill time at the festival and really enjoyed ourselves without putting ourselves in danger. I didn't take many pictures because I didn't just want to pull out my iPhone there and start looking like a tourist. Courtney took some so I will add those when I steal them, probably from Facebook.

And on a different subject, waiting for lunch today was totally worth it: she made me spaghetti from rice noodles with tomatoes and chicken. It was very good. And vegetables and beef for dinner that I got to help cook, they are finally kind of letting me in the kitchen. Though today it could have been from the overwhelming 3 kids surprise dumped on them when Betty's son went out with his wive so there are 4 kids under 10 running around this house screaming right now. Its cool. Its also 11pm and I have to get up at 8 tomorrow and I don't think they are going anywhere anytime soon.