Living La Vida Loca : Canberra Multicultural festival

So this years adventure began for us heading up the Hume highway, Thursday evening after work, our first stop being "Abancay" the homestead of Ada & Freddy Gasser of Latin American Camping fame. Karen & I left work a few minutes earlier than the prescribed 5:30pm to hit the road by 6pm for the three hour drive northwards. A quick pit stop at one of the Multinational Service centers to gas up and purchase supplies and we were off.

We arrived around 9:00pm , just as dark was falling to Ada siting up for us waiting with a nice cup of coffee and a friendly chat. We gossiped and caught up on social events for about an hour, Mr Sandman was making an appearance as we all felt drowsy as we thought about tomorrows early start, and destination Canberra.

Nest stop was Gundagai about 5 hours up the freeway from Wangaratta, and the

Dog on the tucker box an interesting Australian folk tail about a dog that waited for its owner to come back from the war.We kept planning to stop for a bite or a coffee, but as the road was so easy going, dual lane freeway virtually from Melbourne to Canberra, the need to stop and rest wasn't that great. Any way were being entertained by the music of Inka Marka at full blast, singing along with the tunes we knew, and making up the words to those that we didn't.

We finally made it to Canberra with an hour or two to spare before the first nights Appearance for Inka marka on the Latin American stage. We still had to find our host, Aline to collect the key to her apartment where we were staying and contact Jose & Michel to find out where to meet them and where the stage was located within the festival precinct as some last minute changes had been made by the organizers and stage locations moved and performance times changed.

Our local man on the ground, Andy Jaragui Singer of Los Chavos fame was going to help out on the stage. We also had to locate him and make sure he knew the set list of songs before the guys headed on stage.

From left to right, Jose, Andy, Karen and Michel

Karen in her Otavaleno ( from Otavalo in Ecuador) costume

Jose & Andy in serious moment also wearing Ponchos from Ecuador.Pretty funny for 2 Proud Bolivians to be wearing the National dress of a neighboring country, They looked great on stage, and that was the main motivation.

Later that night we wandered around the Canberra walk, checking out the many other stages Food stalls and Information booths.

The next morning we headed out early, but not early enough it seemed as when we arrived, Jose & Michel had already set everything up.

Next morning , set up in our allocated position to provide some Street Entertainment for the duration of the 2 day festival , all hyped and ready to go.
The day's weather prediction wasn't good, but we managed to get a few hours in before the rains came down. Although Canberra wasn't hard hit, we heard later that just a few hours up the road, Hail stones the size of Cricket balls had fallen, and that this town had been "attacked" as the local news report stated from the devastating size of the ice balls and the destruction they caused

Inka Marka playing a few tunes from the festival. Hit the link below to see a great little video clip A beautiful tune from Ecuador

Hard at work trying to sell a few CD's for the band, and hand out Business cards and generally SCHMOOZE

TROUBLE:

After two days of playing, singing, dancing and generally performing till they dropped, the Inka's gave Karen & I, Sunday evening off. I might add that was because the festival had officially ended as far as our participation went, and we could now relax and enjoy the final evening of events. We hooked up with our beautiful host, Aline, and headed off to a search for an exceptional dinner, We had spent literally all weekend staring at the Peruvian and Ecuadorian food stalls, strategically placed near Inka Marka to generate interest in that part of the world.

Whilst we thoroughly enjoyed the smells of the food cooking, by the time we got to purchase any, it was all gone , most of the food was meat based, and had lashings of spicy "picante "or as we call it EXTRA HOT BUM BURNING CHILI in English !

We finally found somewhere civilized where we could sit down and enjoy a Sangria or two, or three. Our final resting place for the night was a 2 block walk to Aline' place, so safe to imbibe a few of the local drinks. As you can see Karen only had one !