Calle 13

At 9 am this past Saturday we were in front of the back entrance of the San Pedro Mall waiting for a bus to take us to Palmares, CR... about an hour and a half outside of San Jose. Gabby, (Matt's old teacher), her boyfriend Oscar and their best friend Mariana invited us to go to the all day festivals and concerts there. Calle 13, a hip hop group from Puerto Rico was perfoming in the evening with several opening acts. I am not sure if I ever have experienced one million people in one place before, but the newspaper said that they anticipated one million people...it felt like it, that's for sure. We waited in line to get into the concert from 12:30 until 3pm. The concert was outside and after finally getting through the entrance barricades, we were literally sandwiched between people. Not sandwiched like in the States...It was like that scene in Selena when the people near the front of the stage almost get trampled. I didn't walk, the crowd just literally moved me. You had to just suck it up and start pushing people to move the direction you wanted to go. We ended up climbing a metal structure near the entrance and I literally straddled a metal bar for the next 5 hours. It was a sight to see. Beer flying, dancing, lots of PDA...from our birds eye view we saw a lot. I was thankful to be above and not below. Around 8 pm I couldnt do it any longer. Matt and I left during Calle 13's performance (they were good, the band was amazing...trumpets, drums, sax...). I couldn't handle fighting the crowd in the dark though. Plus, the structure was shaking pretty violently by that point, since hundreds of others had figured out they could climb it as well... We got some food (chalupas, pizza, cotton candy, cookies...state fair x3) divinely found Gabby and crew later on in the night... we caught the bus back around midnight. We got back to our apartment at 2 am. Up at 8 though to clean the apartment for company...