We had to pile the car up with lots of water, food and of course alcohol for the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Dessert in Northern Nevada. Unlike normal festivals you cannot buy anything, you have to bring everything for survival in a hot dry dust swept wilderness. Going by the other festival goers in RVs, and huge cars packed to the hilt they weren't taking any chances.
We were directed off road onto a white dried up lake bed surrounded by contrasting mountains, in the distance you could just see the festival.
Burning Man has a happy slappy friendliness and some strange ways of doing things. The first strange thing was queing in the car waiting to be greeted. As first timers we had to hug, ring a bell and optionally lie down in the dirt (when in Rome).
At this festival you camp with your vehicle, I chose to park next to camps that had normal sized cars and tents. Well next door only had a simple tarp and a Budda carving, the other camp had skeleton flamingoes and a makeshift sun shade with tent.
The first job was to greet the neighbours and check I was not impinging on their space. The Budda people were not at camp so I had a chat with Jeronimo (who had a nice camp) and the two ladies with the flamingoes (Allie and Jo).
Once the tent was fully pegged in we sat round the tent to absorb the surroundings and study the map and itinery. The festival has a perfect semi circle shape, running from 3 to 9 o'clock. We happened to be at 5:30 but on an outer ring (Jerusalem). Going down the ring alphabet brought you closer to the Burning man at the very center of the festival. Beyond the burning man was art pieces scattered miles into the dessert.
The itinery was interesting, amongst things like naked pub crawls were some alternative music events that I wanted to check out later that evening.
For now I was happy chating with the locals whilst watching the steady stream of people going past on bicycles through to powered vehicles with sound systems. Burning Man is all about finding something original to wear and get around on. Camera was at the ready as people went past on 60ft boats, powered eskies, themed golf buggies and everything in between. What people wore or not wore was even more interesting.
As evening approached we headed off to find the events we were interested in. It was not long before we found ourselves in one of many free bars gradually loosing interest in what we came out for. We did accidently bump into what we came out for but it was not to my taste.
We jumped onto one of the vehicles going past, getting friendly with the occuppants. This turned into a mini gathering at their camp. It was a sureal evening, especially when Liz pointed out that the person I was talking to was a man and not a girl as I thought. Another girl wanted to have 'play' fights, after the second hard punch I past her onto Liz.
Getting back to the tent was an adventure, Liz had to support me and we both were lost.