The WOMADelaide Festival, an annual festival which takes place in Adelaide, South Australia, features some of the biggest world music acts.
Everything from Blues from Touareg Nigerians (Etran Finatawa) to chinese classical music (Wu Man) to Mexican Folk Songs (Lila Downs) to Argentinian Electronica (Gotan Project) to even some of the local brew (Poppy Country Blues stars The Waifs)...
And also as far reaching as the captivating Mongolian Throat Singers.
The festival takes place in Adelaide's Royal Botanical Park. It's great to have the trees all around you as you listen to global grooves on an especially sunny day.
Instead of moving constantly from one of the 5 stages to the other to keep up with all your favourite acts, some people lay out blankets or create makeshift umbrella covers as you can hear one band or another from most of the spots in the park.
And most of the trees seem to be decorated with various crafty artefacts, like this one adorned with lampshades.
This display was also really interesting and especially colourful.
Even many of the food stalls were creatively decorated.
I dared to have a croc sausage here. Tasted like a regular sausage for me.
They also had a Chai tent which serve tasty treats as well as a variety of hot and cold drinks... including chai of course, but also this especially tasty mint, ginger and lemongrass refresher. Yum!
Loved the look of this umbrella. I'd feel cozy just sitting below it.
This is the inside of the Chai tent. Very hippy !
My friends Phil and Malcolm who joined me for the festival also seemed to have just as much of a good time as I did (even though there was a little too much ginger in Phil's tea for his liking).
During the festival, random comedy and artistic acts would wander around entertainingly. I thought these bouncers with uber muscle outfits and on pogo stick legs (so that they could literally bounce around) was very good. Can you figure out which one is a girl?
And this kids' act was a "Dinosaur Petting Zoo"... where the zookeeper would tell kids about the dinosaur and then they could pet it afterwards.
I can't get over how real this dinosaur looked. The zookeeper kept making subtle jokes during the presentation so that it wasn't just the kids who were being entertained, but enough so that he wouldn't ruined the "story" for the kids sake. (for example, telling the kids about the dinosaur's habitat being near waterholes and then slipping in the fact that this guy will actually probably go to a nearby waterhole after the show for a cold one)
There were other kids activities at the festival... in fact there was an entire section dedicated to kids craft activities and workshops that took place throughout the weekend.
Volunteers helped the kids make crafts that they could carry and show off as part of the Sunday afternoon parade.
