We woke up early and Cassela and I went to shower. The queue for the girls bathroom was far too long so we both snuck into the men's, where there wasn't a single guy. We showered and scurried out and of course there was a line by the time I was done but I just smiled as I walked by the guys who were quite surprised to see a girl walk out of their bathroom. We had a quick breakfast and packed up the car. We shopped around town a little and also hit the liquor store at 9 in the morning. Then headed for the next holiday park we were to be staying, where we were hoping we could check in early. We set up our tents and I went off to straighten my hair.
We started drinking the little cans of sweet mixed drinks and Cassela made sandwiches on the roof of the car and we all got into our New Years outfits. We broke into the first bottle of vodka and took it with us into the bathroom to do hair and make-up. There were a lot of other girls our age in there too getting ready so we shared our booze and cosmetics. We met two Kiwi's who were driving to the festival and they said we could catch a ride with them. Back at our camp, we got the rest of our stuff together and all of us felt the drunkenness coming on, and it was only 2pm. We met up with the other girls and headed towards the festival.
We rocked out on the way and took sips out of our three full flasks. Once we rolled up to the festival, they were checking everyone's vehicles for unauthorized items so we chucked the flasks and thankfully, we still got in. I don't remember much about walking up to the entrance and showing them our tickets but somehow Cassela got in without her passport. We got our wristbands which we loaded with money so we could purchase food and drinks. The five of us walked about a bit and headed towards the smaller stage and up to the cool hammocks on the side of the grassy hill and sat in the sun while listening to a comedian who was performing.
Cassela was pretty wasted and kept walking off away from us so we had to go chase her down a couple times. We got a really good pizza at one point and also hung out at the main stage. We danced to the band that was playing but mostly just walked around checking out all the different areas. The big grassy hill that overlooked the big stage had a massive R☀️V sign that we walked up to. A lot of people were chilling on this big hill and up on top of it was a huge beer area for VIP patrons.
We attempted to keep our buzz going but Michealla and I got sober pretty quickly. This was around the time that we lost Cassela. She ran off like she kept doing and we just lost her. There was too many people and too many places that she could be that it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. We walked around for quite some time looking for her and we asked one of the security people if there was a place where they might have sent our drunk and lost friend. There was no way for us to get ahold of her, I had her phone in my purse and it doesn't work here in New Zealand anyways. We were mostly worried because if she needed to get food or go anywhere, she had no money and no ID on her, all she had was her GoPro and was just wearing a thin dress.
We got ahold of the Swedish girls we met in Tauranga and hung out with them for a bit. Michealla and I were completely sober at this point which wasn't fun at a festival and being surrounded by other drunk people. We both had killer headaches as well. We got Pita Pit and sat down to eat so I checked my phone and saw that a random person messaged me and I figured it was Cassela trying to get ahold of me using someone else's phone but no one replied to me. We walked around more and went up to the right of the grassy hill to where some music was playing and lights were flashing. We were overlooking a small dance party to some good dubstep music but there was this weird box/shed thing that people were piling into. We had no clue what it was until we saw someone put a bag of ice through a hole on the roof and we saw that it said fridge on the front of it. So people were cramming themselves into a big fridge and dancing, quite interesting... I looked around in the small crowd we were in and saw our two German friends from the showgrounds campground. We caught up and danced with them. A little later, the Kiwi girls met up with us and all of us walked down the hill to the big stage.
We listened to the band a bit and hung out. Michealla and I walked around some more and then went up on the hill with the huge crowd of people and were able to look down on the masses of people watching the performer. The artist was Savage and sang a few songs I knew. He finished and so there was a break before Zhu was to come out so we kept walking, always keeping an eye out for Cassela. Our headaches kept pounding so we bought some waters and then went back to watch Zhu. He didn't seem to play his normal songs with lyrics and kind of just played slower remixes so that was a tad disappointing. It was hard to see also because there was a super tall guy standing directly in front of me. We were over it so we left to get a couple beers and found that the lines were outrageously long. In line we talked to a guy from New York who now lives in Auckland and finally made it to the beer stand. We ordered two each but it was pretty terrible and was super hard to chug down so we ended up giving half of the second beer away.
Michealla and I walked back to the concert for a bit and then up on the side of the hill so we could rest. It was only 11 but we were over it, over being sober, over all the annoying people, and over being parted from Cassela. We got a refund for our wristbands and headed for the exit. We got on the shuttle bus that was to drop us off at the I-site center near our holiday park. It took forever to depart and there was a group of obnoxious people holding it up. We finally left around 11:40 and knew we were going to be on the damn bus for midnight. We weren't even to town when 12 rolled around, everyone celebrated a bit but it surely wasn't anything exciting. The bus dropped us off near our park and we walked to our camp. We had our fingers crossed that Cassela was safe and sound and sleeping in the tent when we got there but she wasn't. Through the tent's screen, I saw fireworks going off from the beach. We both went to sleep worried and figured we'd deal with it in the morning.
