The Face of Oerol

What is Oerol? Well it's hard to explain, at least it's hard to explain in a way that would make sense to New Zealanders. The island of 4,500 inhabitants swells to over 50,000 bicycle riding theatre-goers. The theatre is in the forests, on the beach, in tents, in the town square. A giant field is transformed into a festival hub has bands playing, restuarants, bars and a ticket booth with almost no tickets left for anything. Meanwhile the 'passport' events are a one-ticket-fits-all bunch of events that take the idea of theatr in the environment to a new level altogether.

Honestly, if I told my friends in New Zealand about this, they would assume I was hallucenating and that no such island exists in the world.

So - this is Oreol and below is the new face of Oerol, the local kids met me in the town centre with gifts of dutch biscuits and more questions than you could fire a pellet gun at.


Lots of people were returning to Oerol from previous years, in fact some people I spoke with have been coming here for the past 18 years. So it wasn't always easy to tell who was a local and who was a 'frequent flyer'. This guy works on the boats (which are the weirdest boats I've seen because they all have flat bottoms for the shallow water), the reason he has so much energy is because he just went for a swim in the 13˚C water. I should add though that the temperature at my house was 32˚C for most of the day (on the inside that is), tomorrow I'm looking for shade.


And this is Joe from the local hotel bar, he's seen a few festivals come and go I reckon.




Sometimes it's best to look at things from an alternative angle.


And the prize for the best dressed sun glasses goes to...

Ok - so I can't leave out mention of this place, it's the festival hub and the fountain you see is actually a bar, the water collects in the middle part and runs down the centre of the bar. Beautiful.