Finally, the weekend that we had all been looking for arrived: Castellers de Sydney have spent a full weekend together, having lots of fun in Port Stephens. It was the first time that we did summer camp all together… and it was a full success!

We had booked the whole youth hostel for ourselves, which gave us the freedom to do whatever we wanted without bothering anyone. We all arrived on Friday night and, while eating pizza, the organisers explained the timetable for the weekend, as well as the two games that would last all days (the peck and the kiss killer). Apparently, it was going to be a pretty intense weekend, but we were all very enthusiastic about it… so all good. After we finished eating, we had to find the little elf, who was hiding in the bush and then he taught us a lot of team bonding games, which all ended in huge laughs (just check the pictures).

We woke up with the nice smell of bacon and eggs: the breakfast team did an excellent job and we all ate as much as we wanted to get lots of energy for the first activity of the day. The Junta had prepared a “crazy rehearsal”, just for fun, including things that we wouldn’t usually do, like making a “folre”, “falcons”, and a pom de dalt and enxaneta races. Because it was getting really hot (yes, the weather forecast was wrong… and we were so happy that it happened AGAIN), we went to the swimming pool to cool ourselves off… and we continued doing human towers in the water. Of course.

Then, another big moment arrived: an amazing fideuà (thanks Txoko for the paella!) was ready to be eaten. It was delicious (and so was the allioli), hats off to the cooks! After a short break (and with the cemetery getting more and more gravestones with the names of the people being kissed-killed), we started the evening activity, which consisted of a gymkhana de tota la vida (apple-water-suggus-flour, races, passing the apple to other people, etc). But in this case, the prizes were handmade mini castellers (super cute, thanks Adriana!), which we used to build the most original towers at the end of the gymkhana.

In the evening, just before dinner, we had an assembly organised by the Junta, to show us some videos of human towers (some with nice tips, others were just hilarious), as well as to present possible padrins for our colla. After a very yummy dinner (chicken with tomato and onions, and French fries and salad… and ice-cream), we started the night game: a Minute to Win it team competition. But the night was going to be much longer for some of the members of the colla… and memorable. Right, cap de colla?

On Sunday we woke up again with a feast for breakfast… and the canalla with some nice drawings on their face and arms. What happened while they were sleeping? Nobody knows… After packing up, we  left the hostel to do the Tomaree Head Summit walk, which had amazing views of Port Stephens and its coastline. Definitely worth the effort!

We then moved to another beach, where we relaxed and we had a nice goodbye BBQ all together. We finished the summer camp by dancing the txutxuà song and, of course, the tricky-tracka song (which probably everyone agrees that it is now our official anthem). While some people still stayed around and visited the famous sand dunes, others decided to head back to Sydney, for a well-deserved rest.

Thank you very much to the organisers of the summer camp (Jasmina, Pau, Adriana, Ignasi and Montgarri) and to all the other 29 castellers who made such a fantastic weekend possible. Thanks colla, you are the best!

PS1: The video of Juanjo’s shrimp would be an excellent contribution to the post (and to the webpage), but probably I wouldn’t be allowed to climb anymore, so we’ll just say that what happened in Port Stephens, stays in Port Stephens. You’ll have to join us next time if you want to understand exactly what was going on.

PS2: And it goes tricky! … 😉

With two human towers teams in the same country, Australia has become one of the most important countries besides Catalonia in terms of human towers.  Australia has Koalas of Melbourne and a team in Sydney (Castellers of Sydney or Sydney Human Towers).

As a little bit of a background, Koalas of Melbourne was founded in 2014, and 2 years later, in June 2016 Sydney Human Towers was created. So Sydney Human Towers have always been very inspired by the Melbourne team, since they were brave enough to initiate and promote the first Australian human towers group.

Having said that, it was time to meet each other, so a few members of Sydney Human Towers decided to get on a plane and fly the almost 1000 kilometers  that separate the two biggest cities of Australia and to have their very first rehearsal together on November 2017.

The day started really early for us, having a flight at 6am to make the most of our weekend out in Melbourne (although it’s also true that we couldn’t wait to finally meet them!).

Once we arrived, we had some breakfast at the airport and went to the park where people from Melbourne were already gathering.
After playing an icebreaker game to get to know everybody’s name we started the rehearsal.
We were surprised about the amount of people that showed up (we were more than 30!), and besides so many more people stopped to take pictures and meet the team!
We did the usual warmup and climbed on top of each other next to a light pole. It was so good to see how some of the participants reached up there until the third level for their very first occasion, so we were pushing our limits from the very beginning (congrats guys!!).

After that it was time to build some actual towers! Firstly we did the upper part (also known as “pom de dalt”), practicing the crown at the beginning and then we practiced how to do two levels on the ground. Once both tests were successfully completed, we decided to accept the challenge of placing a crown on top of those two levels.
We organised everybody at the base and we were ready to go! Everything was very smooth and we completed a 4of5 without “aixecador”, which is quite difficult and a very big step towards 6 levels!

But that was not enough for us! We wanted to go even higher, so we assembled the base again, this time for the first 3-3-3 tower, which is a 3of6 without the crown. When the base was strong and the guys at the bottom confident, the second level started to climb! Everybody was enthusiastic and focused, so it felt really good.
After that, the third level initiated their way up without hesitation and, before we realised, they were already at the top, having built a really complex tower but surprisingly stable.

The performance ended up with two pillars of 3, where everybody was involved since we had to build two bases.

After a big and successful rehearsal where plenty of new members joined, Koales had a BBQ ready for us, so we can say that our hosts really took care of us and made us feel truly welcome.
The BBQ and beers went on for hours and later on it was time to go back to our hostel and get ready for dinner.

Of course the Melbourne team didn’t abandon us a single minute, so right after dinner they were waiting in a pub where we had a few beers before going to sleep (it had really been a long day!).

On the next day we put on our tourists hats and went for a tour in Melbourne, accompanied by Koales of Melbourne. We spent the whole day visiting this and that and went early to bed since next morning we had another flight at 6am to arrive in time for work.

We left Melbourne very happy with our human towers experience and really wanting to be back again. Thank you very much Koalas of Melbourne, you were amazing hosts!