womad

Today began with a nice big breakfast, then we backtracked a bit to the town of Otaki, shopped for a bit and had a nice salad-y lunch. We got a message from Ann’s mother, who’s been in the country for a week and a half or so but keeps hitting place a day or two after us, saying she’s headed to Whanganui for a few days. We had tickets to the last night of WOMAD (World of Music, Art and Dance), a festival in New Plymouth, so we had to drive past Whanganui today but we made plans to come back down tomorrow to meet up with Ann’s mom and her husband.

We arrived in New Plymouth around 5:30 and decided to get set up camp and get some dinner before the festival – we weren’t thinking about the fact they’d have great international food there! At the festival, we sent a text to the Pujjis to try to meet up with them, but didn’t realize there were six different stages so wasted a bit of time standing around looking confused at what we thought was the main stage while they were off at another. We found Arvind and Jane after a nice wander around the vendor section, where Ann finished up her Christmas shopping, and took their advice on which shows to see. Our favorite by far was a male modern Polynesian dance troupe – they were phenomenal. Oh, and they also happened to be shirtless and have great abs, but we were just paying attention to the cultural side of things.

Another memorable performance was Neil Finn of Crowded House and Split Enz – used to hear one of the Split Enz (why does love…do this toooo meeeeee….) songs nearly every night at the pub so it was interesting to see him in person. In addition to Jane and Arvind, we met up with Dean who stayed at the Pujjis for a month back when I was there in September – it was a little reunion!

Back at camp, we did our laundry and I decided I wanted to do the coastal walk tomorrow morning before we drive back down to Whanganui.