Yesterday was a very nice day. We set out in the morning headed for the Santandar Escuela to make up the performance that had been rained out. The sky threatened of rain again…but thankfully no rain caught us. Woo hoo. We arrived at the school and walking in was a bit different this time. No mad mob of kids ready to knock us down or tug on our sleeves to ask us where Juanes was. There were several kids in the courtyard, but for the most part…they were all pretty calm. Maybe it was because we arrived during lunchtime. Regardless of the reason, we started getting our gear out of the truck and within a few minutes the kids started crowding around, so we cordoned off the tent where we’d play so that we could set up without all of the niños crowding us. Set-up took no time and soon we started our set. Imagine this…hundreds of kids piled in front of us….many of them almost right on top of each other…some sitting right in front of the blaring speakers. I don’t know how many times the Captain asked them to please back up so that the speakers wouldn’t be so loud in their ears. They’d back up a few inches and before you knew it, they were right back where they started. It was a lost cause really. We played about 10 or so songs and half way through, the dental crew who’d come along with us, had a dental hygiene presentation. It was cute. They brought along this giant tooth suit and one of the guys got in it and walked around. The kids were totally diggin’ our music and I’m so happy that we got to play for them and that we didn’t get rained out again. Actually they liked it so much, that when we finished our set, they shouted “OTRA, OTRA” over and over again, which means that they wanted us to play another one. So what did we do? A Juanes song…”La Camisa Negra” that I faked the whole time! I think I’m a pretty good actress/faker and this time it worked to my advantage because they knew most of the lyrics so if I forgot, I just pointed the mic at them, just like the REAL rockstars do…and they sang them…SCORE on that one! It turned out great. Now, once we started to tear down…mayhem almost commenced…almost. We tried our darndest to keep the little ones at bay and away from our stuff. It was hard though. We finally got everything put away and loaded into the truck and got out of there. We got back to the BLZ and some of us loaded the boat headed for the ship. The ride started off very well and then you would have thought we hit a hurricane because the boat started jumping and tilting…Holy smokes! One of the boat passengers stood up next to the skipper (or the boat driver) and he got SOAKED! It was crazy. I put my Gortex coat on, but it didn’t matter because while my top was dry, my bottoms were soaked through. It was wild! The boat was bobbing and weaving and shucking and jiving the whole 40 minutes back. When we finally arrived at the ship my eyes grew very WIDE! Again, we were bobbing up and down like crazy and then we had to get beside the lifeboat to do the transfer. If you don’t remember from a previous post, the transfer is the most stressful part of the day for me. With the boats slamming together and people yelling, it takes everything in me not to freak out! So I get up to the side of the boat as ours is slamming into the lifeboat that is bobbing up and down and I grab the helping hand that reached out to me and the lifeboat goes into this crazy stir and they yell at me “GET BACK!” So I get back. It settles so I try again, and my foot gets caught in tarp on the hospitality boat. My God I thought my leg was gonna get caught in between the boats. Thankfully it didn’t and I stumbled into the boat and found a seat. As the rest of the crew loaded into the lifeboat, it slammed violently against the side of the Comfort, jarring all of us and splashing more water on us….I say again…that is the thing I like the least about this trip. The boat transfer! Other than that…things are going well. We have a performance tomorrow at a beach party of some sorts…I’m lookin’ forward to it.

Thanks for stopping by….
Keisha