Catholic Burning Man

As advertised, the Festival of the Virgin of Guadeloupe in El Tuito was nuts. Jill had some vague recollection of having seen something perhaps on the Discovery Channel about it. Fireworks figure prominently, both the type that electrify the starry sky and the more alarming ground-level variety. At it's climax, fire was everywhere. They had a huge flammable structure several stories tall erected in front of the church which spun flame in all directions while the band wailed. We witnessed this from our bed over Truckasaurus' cab, since we thought it was all going to go down at midnight, when in fact it was more like 11:30. Which is why I have no footage of the event. However I can assure you it was spectacular, and just so you don't go away empty handed, I walked around afterwards and got some shots I think will give you the a taste of what it was like. The streets were tightly packed with parked cars, and drunken cowboys (and girls) were weaving large vehicles through the intersection near which we were parked. We watched in bemused horror as a woman in a minivan casually sideswiped a pickup and then drove steadily into a pole. How ironic is it, then, to see the mexican kids driving their bumper-cars in a way that seems relatively orderly and free of incident.