Envision or Invasion?

After the Singing Alive weekend, we spent a couple of days of energy recovery and relative solitude prior to heading down to the Envision Festival where we would be encamped surrounded by 7000 festival goers, often with a scant few inches between tents.

  Sandy and I were conservative in our approach, reserving time each day to escape the throngs by  walking up the beach far enough to  find a quiet place or taking a taxi to the waterfalls above Uvita, and climbing high enough above the main pools to find a smaller pool that we shared with toucans and freshwater shrimp, but only the occasional festival goer who had wandered our way, usually with the same intention (of finding a more quiet place to enjoy the river).  Hence, after a dip in our pool, and perhaps a short conversation, they each continued upstream to find their own quiet pool.

This energy renewal allowed us to fully jump into the festivities daily, but especially on Saturday and Sunday nights when the festival lineup was at its juiciest.  Sandy and Sophia's friends from  Guaria joined us at our camp, bringing with them a Boruca elder, Don Memo and his granddaughter, Sandra. Sandy and I took Sandra under wing for an incredible night of dancing on Saturday, creating a tribal dervish  space of whirling, interactive bodies within the crowd of listeners and dancers to Beats Antique, the band at the Sol Stage.  We danced to every song in the 1 1/2 hr. set, then found a DJ at the Lapa Stage who had the mob jumping, so we created space again and resumed the energized revelry.  We finished out the night about 2:30 or 3:00 after returning to the Sol Stage for Santos and Zurdo, a spectacle of pole clinbing and cloth crawling among Latin-infused rocktronica where we again refused to quit dancing until after the final encore.

Sunday night began in a slower fashion.  Once again, Sandra and Sandy and I forayed into the crowd  at the Sol Stage, finding space close in, and readying ourselves to dance.  However beautiful the musicality of Elephant Revival, though, it didn't inspire the type of dancing that we were ready for, Sandra and I, so Sandy sent us packing, allowing her to find rhythm that we weren't privy to.  I went back to the camp for some hammock time to ready myself for the next band, Dirtwire.  Once again, Sandy found the connection with the music, but Sandra and I wanted something faster  than the swaying that we found around us in the milieu, so we exited.  However, I hadn't stayed up until midnight to be a non-participant, so I walked Sandra to the camp, infused my brain with some meditative breathing, and returned to the fray to dance to Dirtwire.  The breathing technique worked its magic, and I stepped into the rhythm of Dirtwire's final number and several of their encores.  Those few songs helped bring me to a space of acceptance and open-mindedness for the next band, Dimond Saints, on the Luna Stage.

They turned out to provide the perihelial dance event for the two of us. We wended our way slowly back to the camp, wanting both sleep and dance, with no clear course as to which would win out.  But the festival goers would be leaving that morning in hordes or red taxis and  private cars, queuing up to return rental tents, and retrieving valuables from the secure lockers,  so our plan was to arise  at 5:00, grab coffee, and decide whether to break camp or go dance to the Human Experience on the Luna Stage at sunrise.  Practicality won out.  After coffee, we broke camp, turned in tents, retrieved valuables, and were ready when one of the Guaria friends, Scott, collected us to give us a short ride up the coast  in his rental car to our next accommodations in Matapalo Beach.