RIPPON '08

oh, it was absolutely fantastic! got up to the house friday night...it was a beautiful 4 bedroom house. had margaritas and the first group of us were in bed before the second group even arrived. the concert was great, at a vineyard, looking at the stage with the lake behind it and mountains all around...BEAUTIFUL! A few of the others were being all judgemental about the bands, but I was absolutely in awe of the scenery and that I so lucky to be at such an awesome concert in NZ...did I mention how beautiful it was?! Music started at 11 am and the last band came on at 11 pm. Music was great, wine was great...we drank too much early on and then didn't drink at all in the evening. it was hot. Surprisingly, I only danced a bit...with one of the girls during the day, but then she got heat stroke and ended up having to go back to the house. I did stand up and dance on our tarp...mostly cause my hind-end hurt so bad from sitting all day. And finally Luke wanted to go to the dance floor (I found out later that he also had wanted to go up there earlier). My favorites were the first one, Anika Moa and then a band called Shapeshifter and the second to last band, Kora, which is the one Luke and I went to the dance floor for. The last band was ok...very different from the rest of the bands, much more hard rock, loud with lots of smoke that was making me sick, but it was the only band that I knew one of the songs as it's played on the rock station here. I'm proud to say we made it through all the bands...the rest of us girls left before the encore of the last band. on sunday, we had breakfast, cleaned the house, had coffee in town, drove around town and went down to the lake where Dee showed off her rock skipping skills and where as my rocks made one single plunk right into the water as usual. I'll get pics up later. On the way home we stopped for ice cream blended with real fruit, and then stopped at one of my favorite wineries from that wine tour I went on...Black Ridge, where the owner is a real story teller...we tasted all 10 wines and between 4 of us we bought a case...I bought 3 bottles...did I mention I'm broke?! ha! they are really cheap wines comparatively so how could I pass them up? got back to Dunedin and I was starving since we only had ice cream and wine for lunch so Dee and I picked up Burger King on the way home...my first fast food in NZ...whopper with cheese value meal...the only thing different is the size of the pop was a bit smaller. What a fantastic weekend!
http://www.ripponfestival.co.nz/