2025 March 1: Deviations, Burning Man

Idea was to take it easy, pick up some bread at our favorite bakery/cafe - Baguetteria at the Lazure Marina in Meljine.

First deviation: stayed for second breakfast:

Second deviation: we had previously looked into chartering a boat, found this Wauquiez Centurian 40*. Didn’t end up chartering, but went down on the dock to see if we could find it. Lo and behold found not only it, but Lev, the owner, was on board. He invited us on, we spent 1/2 hour. He’s Russian, retired, spends 1/2 of his time living on the boat (and the other 1/2 skiing in Russia). Exchanged contacts for future ref:

Third deviation: decided to take a longer route back. Route we chose put us onto a goat path straight up the mountain (there are no ‘hills’ here), and it started pouring. Like we were hiking up a torrential stream. Came out on top:

Nice place on the way down:

and this:

Btw we had coffee with our hosts yesterday, they took us up to some overlooks:

…and told us about something happening in town tonight. Seems the town gets together annually & burns a politician in effigy for sins committed in the year. This rant went on for 15 min or so, we understood two words: ‘USA’ and ‘Pakistan’. Huh:

The man up close:

The burn:

…then celebrates with an open-air concert. All part of the Mimoze Festival (wrote about it a week ago).

The warmup act:

The main act was a regionally well known guy called Gibonni:

That is all.