Road to Oppikoppi Part 2

This is part 2 of a 2 part post – check out part 1 here

SATURDAY AUGUST 8TH

My first nights sleep at an Oppikoppi was hellish. At first it wasn’t all that bad, mostly because I had passed out in a rather drunk state and was somewhat oblivious to the cold. However as I slowly sobered up, I started feeling the cold and trust me at Oppikoppi it gets fucking cold at night. I was in the backseat of a Nevara freezing and trying to turn it on every twenty minutes to warm it up which wasn’t working at all. When I eventually did fall asleep, I awoke boiling in the backseat of a now sundrenched car.

Now one thing I forgot to mention in part 1 is the importance of a fire at your campsite, at Oppikoppi everyone makes fires. They are the lifeblood of your camp. Without one you will hate life! You also need to plan for a fire, something we had not done. We ended up making a hole with a small hammer, which almost killed a friend when he leant forward and got a hammer in the back of the head. You also need DRY wood, the wood you find lying around is shit and will not work – all it will do is make smoke. So plan and bring fire ingredients [Ingredients? - Wood, Firelighters].

Now one of the things I really enjoyed about Oppikoppi is its a pretty rustic experience, don’t get me wrong you have all the food courts, and amenities you need but the fact is you’re camping next to a music festival. Everyone has fires going at night and there are braai’s everywhere you look, it’s a far more rustic experience than other festivals I’ve been to. So my next mission was to try and get food, luckily my campsite was pretty waxed so we wacked together some bacon and egg rolls and started drinking again.

After spending a couple of hours getting hammered again we headed for the festival area. As you walk around Oppikoppi each day the surroundings get more fucked up as people wreak havoc throughout the night. There were definitely some extremely creative drunks at this year’s festival as various different creations grew and mutated over the course of the festival. Such as the tree of beer below

I was extremely excited for the lineup on the Saturday, it was the day that sold me on coming to this years Oppikoppi. It was also my first full day at the festival so I was pretty amped to check everything out

Some notable experiences include:

• The Queue for the fucking ATM – Holy shit this was one of the longest and worst queues ever! If you ever go to an Oppikoppi make sure you bring a shitload of cash, just so you can avoid this experience.
• Water Station Douche - One thing I was pretty impressed about when I first arrived was you had access to “free” purified water. Little did I know there was a huge catch, you had to have a specific water bottle that you had to buy in order to qualify. Now I’m down with that, what pissed me off is they ran out of water bottles, and when we asked if we could quickly quench our undying thirst using a similar bottle we were told unceremoniously to fuck off – Ok he didn’t say fuck off, but he may as well have!
• Best beer tent area ever – There was an awesome open aired beer tent area that overlooked the main stage with loads of seating. We spent a large potion of the day here, and it was awesome! Nothing beats open-air beer drinking in the sun!

TIME FOR THE MUSIC

Zebra and Giraffe

I had seen them before at a few gigs and I’ve always enjoyed them. They lived up to their previous performances but I had to leave a song or two in to catch P.H. Fat. We were spoiled for choice and had to make a call, I made the call to watch P.H. Fat for the second time in two days and I wasn’t disappointed!

P.H. Fat

Fucking hell! The photo above sums up the P.H. Fat show. They absolutely killed it. It was awesome to watch, they even had the crowd screaming and jumping around for a pack of avo’s and a half eaten sandwich! Because they care about your health!

Spot the Gorilla

Billy Talent

After rocking out in Cape Town – Read our Cape Town “Drunk vs Sober” review here, Billy Talent did not disapoint at Oppikoppi. I had heard rumours they were shit live and all he does is scream – All Bullshit. They were awesome, and sounded brilliant. They were awesome with the crowd, even tuning Jose Quevo at one point for having a VIP viewing deck up on the mountain. The one guitarist was also celebrating his 21st birthday – Fucking 21 C’mon. Tough life!

Weird Moment - A guy dressed in a Gorilla outfit ran out on stage, messed with some wires, and started dancing on stage. Spot him in the pic above. [Anyone know who or what this was]

Jack Parow

Jack Parow was awesome. I Hadn’t seen him live yet and he didn’t disappoint. The crowd were loving it and he was awesome to watch rocking out on the main stage. I was pretty wasted by this point so things are becoming harder to remember – But you can read our previous interview with him here

OVER & OUT

I’m sure you were expecting more about the acts, trust me so was I. By this stage in the festival I was fucked! After a long day of extreme heat and loads of drinking I was done! So after a long walk back to camp, where we got lost for roughly an hour, which leads me to one last piece of advice - Remember where you camped. The roads around the camping area all look the same at night and you can get lost seriously easily. Half my campsite got lost at least once. I got back to the campsite and was lucky enough to have a sleeping bag and a tent left behind by a fallen soldier who had left early. So my second night’s sleep was far better, but still not great.

MONDAY 9TH AUGUST

By this time all you want to do is get packed and fuck off home, which is exactly what we did. Packing up takes ages though so be ready. We eventually hit the road only to find ourselves stuck in the most hellish traffic ever, our trip home took 5 and a half hours. So a word of warning for anyone heading through next time – TAKE THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED – NO IDEA WHAT IT IS BUT FIND OUT!

THE END

Oppikoppi 2010 was truely awesome, I enjoyed it thouroughly and I will most likely make it an annual excursion. Take heed of my warnings and if you couldn’t be bothered to read the whole 2 part post, just check out the Dont Party Oppikoppi Guide – It’s got the majority of my lessons learnt covered!

MORE

• Check out – The Road to Oppikoppi - Part 1 | Part 2
• Check out the Photo’s from Oppikoppi - Part 1 | Part 2
• Check out our guide to Oppikoppi - Here