Womad

Every year New Plymouth hosts WOMAD, which is an international music festival that is also hosted in other countries. It seems like the whole town takes part, so of course we had to go check it out too. The weather forecast wasn't too great for the weekend so we only bought tickets for the Friday night. The venue couldn't have been any better as it was in the middle of the city park. There were 3 or 4 stages set up around the park with different bands and musicians playing at each one. We've never heard of any of the artists playing as they were all international (and not super famous), but they were all pretty good, some better than others...

The picture below is what the main stage area looks like in the park on a normal day.

And now all ready for WOMAD!

My favourite stage was tucked away in the corner underneath the trees. There wasn't a lot of room so it felt like you were at a small private concert. What a backdrop for hanging out and listening to beautiful music! It felt like we were in the middle of the rainforest.

This particular singer was from Hawaii:

They also had an international market set up with lots of things to buy, especially hippie things. Music festivals seem to attract all kinds :)

Apparently they trust party goers here way too much as they were selling bottles of wine with plastic cups at the concessions. Bottles! There were a lot of drunk people. Some not even using the plastic cups, as you can imagine. My one regret of the evening - that we did not partake in the bottle drinking festivities. You can't find that in Calgary!

The international marketplace

Shell sponsored!

Kimbra. The only artist we've heard of, she's featured in Gotye's "Someone that I used to know."

I loved that the park was lit up with lights at night time! They host a festival of lights in February that we missed, but all the lights were still in the park so I guess they decided to turn them on for WOMAD. It's like Christmas in the summer :)

Love the waterfalls :)