WE'RE GOING TO LOLLAPALOOZA IN CHILE!!!!!!!

Friday, March 23^rd, 2012

Whilst hanging out on Thursday, Ryan and I talked about our plans for Semana Santa and I happened to mention that while I was going to Mendoza, I was totally jealous of the people going to Lollapalooza in Chile. Little did I realize that within 48 hours of discussing this, I’d be one of those people too.

On a whim, we made the decision to look into making Lollapalooza happen. Originally, the buses seemed to be booked, but we found one that had enough space finally. Ok, it was decision time. The bus tickets alone were almost $300, in addition to the festival tickets, the hostel, food and additional costs that always pop up. I called up my financial guru—aka Mom—and asked for a summary of my statement. Prognosis: you can go on this trip, but if you do, you’re kinda done with trips and you’d better live pretty frugally unless you don’t want to buy that return ticket back to the US. Alright. Given that we have just one more long vacation at the end of April, I’m willing to sacrifice that to go to Lollapalooza. And we can hope like hell that a ~$500/month budget will hold out ‘til the end of July…You may think that’s crazy, but even that can be modest.

After SIX attempts to purchase my bus ticket on plataforma10.com, it finally worked. Now we needed tickets to the festival. And I learned the hard way that you should always verify the exchange rate before you just guess. Because I was way off on the rate between CLP and USD…oops. In case you’re curious, 85.000 (which is 85,000) CLP = ~$180 USD. So yeah, I just dropped almost $200 on concert tickets, which originally cost 30.000 CLP had I bought them when they first came out, but I didn’t even have that thought a month ago…

Ryan and I justified it by the fact that this will be the type of experience that we will remember and cherish for the rest of our lives. Plus when you consider that it probably costs $30 to see these bands anyways, it’s not a bad offer…we just had to pay it all at once.

What are those bands? Well, I’m hoping to see:

Thievery Corporation, Bassnectar, Pretty Lights, MGMT, Band of Horses, Foo Fighters, Bjork, TV on the Radio, and SKRILLEX! Just kidding, I hate Skrillex. 

Overall, with bus, tickets and hostel, we paid $420. Not too bad, but reeeeeeeeeeally a lot more expensive than had we booked this a month ago (and had I not booked Mendoza first...), but I’m not even sure that would have been possible. Every vacation here, I’ve booked by the seat of my pants.

Oh and did I mention that I’m going to Mendoza, city of wine nestled in the Andes, just 3 days after this happens?

HOLY CRAP IN A PITA. Not real. BEST EASTER EVER. And I’m non-theist! And actually, this may just be the best week of my life…*

Moral of the story is:

• If you want to go to a music festival, buy the tickets eaaaaarrrrllllyyy even if you’re not 100% sure. You can always sell them to someone else, or just realize, oh yeah, this is gonna be awesome, why wouldn’t I go?
• Don’t buy bus tickets in the wrong order…(Had I booked this correctly, I could have saved myself about $600 pesos and ~40 hours of travel by bus…crap…)
• Live fearlessly, with vigor. The money matters, but don’t let it tell you no if your heart wants otherwise. Because I want to go to Lollapalooza like crazy.

*Until the end of July/first part of August…you know what I’m talking about.