To celebrate, Medellin hosted a three day music festival called the Festival Altavoz, this year being the 30th year. Day 1 was Heavy Metal, Day 2 was Alternative Rock and Day 3 was Reggae. I had good intentions of going to all three, but did not. It is currently the rainy season down here in Colombia, meaning that for the next two months the country is subjected to random rainfalls that are both short and long and light and heavy. This weekend happened to be the start of all-day rainfalls.
The moment I arrived onto the scene, at around 3pm, it was a sea of black t-shirts and black jeans. I knew I was at the right place. Only metal heads will wear all black in 80+ degree fahrenheit temperatures (well, also New Zealand rugby players). Within ten minutes of watching the first band, the rains came down hard. I was fortunate to be next to the only shelter- a stairwell that went to the third floor of an adjacent building.
After hanging out in a packed area for three bands, the rains subsided and I decided to walk around to see the other stage and check out the food area. The other stage was sad - only thirty people hanging out watching the band. The food area was where it was at, but mainly because it was under a couple large tents. Not much to say about the food options - burgers, dogs and fried foods. I did buy a fruit medley of strawberries, mora (Colombian blackberries) and cantaloupe with sugar water.
The sun had set and I made my way to the main stage only to have it start to rain again. It wasn't too heavy, so I stuck around to see the show. It was a band from Cali called Kronos- the lead singer was wearing a helmet that was on fire! As the rains continued, I started to get cold and decided to head back to the hostel.
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| yes, the photo is blurry, but you can see the flaming helmet on stage |
Overall the music was what I expected, but I didn't need to suffer to listen to loud guitars (which was a good thing) and the evil-metal voice (meh) in Spanish (I assume they were singing in Spanish, couldn't really tell because I can never understand the lyrics when they sing in the the evil-metal voice). The rain wasn't stopping and I was getting cold. Time to leave.
I didn't bother to go for the other two days of free music. At first, I was under the impression that the whole weekend was Metal. But on Monday, I was corrected by a metalhead at the hostel who told me the program for the whole weekend. I was tempted to check out Reggae Day, but the rain drenched the festival on the two previous days early and I had plans to leave town on my day off (see the next entry).
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