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Did you ever buy tickets to a festival that was cancelled? We did. Want to know how did we handle it? Keep reading
Our crazy adventure at Jamming festival in Colombia. That's what I would have called the post if the festival was not cancelled at the last moment. This post is the story of how everything happened for us and what we did to sweeten our sour experience.
We want a music festival
Picture this: It’s mid-February, it’s warm and rainy, we are sitting in our apartment few months after we moved to Santo Domingo, having a beer and watching some new music videos. We still did not have a vacation off the island, and we were often talking to take advantage of the opportunity to visit close-by places while we live here, the major would be our Easter vacation, in which we decided to go to Mexico.
How we didn't go to Mexico
At some point of the evening Lucy turns to me and says “I feel like going for a concert”. “Whose concert?” I ask, and a Guaynaa video comes on the playlist. As background, Both me and Lucy like Latin music, we are very fond of Reggaeton and we have our favorite artists and one of these artists is Guaynaa. As a response I casually search for Guaynaa concerts, and discover that there is one in Monterrey, Mexico in April. What a happy coincidence! We quickly decide that we go there and combine the concert with the easter vacation we were planning anyway. As fast as we decided to go to that concert, ten minutes later we decided not to go for it. The logistics of moving our vacations, making a one-two days stop in Monterrey just for the concert turned out to be to much, and to put the last nail in the coffin we saw the price of the tickets. We are not going to that concert, conversation over.
Jamming festival
Or is it? Twenty minutes later Lucy shows me this amazing three-day festival in Ibague, Colombia, featuring hundreds of amazing artists, a lot of which we actually know and like, paradise of Latin and Caribbean music: Hip hop, Reggae, Reggaeton and everything in between. Sounds too good to be true? I also thought so, so I went to check the price first, and to my amazement, the price was affordable! We decided to go, regardless of our other vacation plans. I went to ask for our prolonged weekend vacations from our respective jobs, after they got approved, we bought the tickets (3 days and bus from and to the location of festival and Bogota). It’s official, we are going to Jamming festival!
Even after all this time, we still make rookie mistakes
Fast forward two weeks ahead, we realized that we did not book accommodation. I’m sending messages to every place related to the festival to see if I can still buy the camping space (it took them one week to respond that they have run out of space, thank you for the heads up), and at the same time trying to book anything close enough to the festival (everything is booked!). I even paid to reactivate my CouchSurfing profile (even the CouchSurfing hosts were overwhelmed by the people coming to the festival). We decided to wing it, we’ll find what to do once we are there, we’ll meet people and they will help us. We also decided to cut the line the day of arrival and retrieve our tickets before, using a friend of a friend that lives in Bogota (thank you both, if you are reading this!).
The day of our filght
Fast forward another two weeks, we are excited to go, listening to mixes of playlists of the festival artists, waking up on the day of the flight and going to work knowing that we are going to our first music festival in just a few hours. That’s when it happened. We got a message with a screenshot from Facebook “Is that your festival?” and we realized that our festival has been cancelled, two hours before our flight.
What are we doing now? We are still flying, no question there. Are we going to stay in Panama instead of catching the connection? What will we do in Bogota? We don’t like the city that much…
We decided to go to Bogota.
Jamming festival
The first thing that we did was to retrieve our tickets from the friend in case we will need them to file for a refund (we did!), although I am skeptical that we will get anything… After that we went to visit the place that sold us the tickets and discovered that you don’t mess with people in Latin America like that… The place was trashed, graffiti everywhere, calling them liars, broken windows, eggs on the walls, not a pretty sight. We even witnessed few people live streaming to their social media exactly what they think about the organizers.
So that ended up badly, and I hope that someday there will be justice for the people that just wanted to hear some music.
Things we did instead
In the meantime, we spent our 3 days in Bogota, chilling, with 3 things we will remember:
Some of the artists did the gentleman thing and threw a free concert in Bogota. Because hey, they were in the same boat like us with the cancellation. Kudos to them for doing that (and it brought A LOT of people)
The original graffiti tour in Bogota was amazing, both of us enjoyed it and actually learned something.
We went to the La Chorrera waterfall near the city, which was a nice hike. You can get the metrobus to La Chorrera station and from there take a bus to La Chorrera, or even take an Uber until the parking before the hike.
The hike itself is an easy one, takes about an hour and a half each way, and presents two waterfalls, one of them is the highest in Colombia, and the 60th highest in the world. The entrance to the park costs 35000 Peso per person and it gets you a bottle of water, some snacks and a small bag. We enjoyed our hike and of course had a beer break on the way. The way back we rode on the back of a truck until the bus stop, and took the bus back to the city.
Final thoughts
We are still making jokes about our first music festival, maybe we will repair our experience in the future, time will tell.
Like the story? Want to hear more? Are you a victim of Jamming festival cancelling as well and need someone who understands a bit of you feeling? Leave a comment, send us an email, or just give the post a thumbs up!
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