The one man caravan rolls dusty into town.
Trip Start
Sep 20, 2006
1
19
30
Trip End
Nov 10, 2007
Nelson, British Columbia, Canada
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
It started with a long slow bus ride; 12 hours in fact, heading east from Vancouver to a town called Nelson. The bus drove through the night while I ate strawberries and barely slept. We rolled into town just before 6am, and I walked the quiet streets with my over oversized pack full. When I found the hostel, I waited outside until 7am, where I was informed that I would be unable to check into the hostel until 4pm. This made me feel very nothingness, so I left my pack and walked and ate and slept in some dusty grass in a park somewhere next to a road. That was the story of the journey to Nelson.
So, what was my purpose in Nelson? To head to a little ranch outside of town to a huge music festival called Shambhala. What a crazy place Shambhala turned out to be.
After walking a highway outta town and finally hitching to the festival, I arrived and stepped out into a huge field full of cars, tents, people and good times, which would be my home for the next week. I would be volunteering in the cleanup crew of the festival and would have to hang around for an extra few days.
For those of you that don't know, Shambhala is a ginourmous music festival. Some 8,500 people like to come and frolic in the fields for 4 days amidst the sounds of 6 stages of DJ's and bands. The stages were pretty amazing and each had its own theme, including a beach stage, a forest, and the ewok village, with platforms running between the trees.
Shambhala was an experience. I wasn't exactly my kind of scene but it didn't cost me anything and I did manage to catch some pretty awesome acts, as well as participating some cool workshops, but by the end of the festival I was glad to see the last cars rolling out of the field so I could help pack up the stages and get the bejingoes out of there. This strangely enough was my favourite time of the festival, and I have fond memories of sitting in a huge field alone (the rest of the volunteers were camped in different fields) watching a huge sky of shooting stars. The nights were freezing cold and I wore almost every bit of clothing I had along with several blankets and an old childrens sized sleeping bag that had seen better days, only to wake up in a panic; tearing layers off to escape the heat that seemed to come from nowhere in the mornings.
I don't have much to say about the cleanup except the organisation was very bad. They ran out of food on the second day, and I had nothing to eat. With no food, dirty clothes, and my old faithful heavy pack, I sat by the road and hitched out of there. And onto Salmon Arm....
Salmon Arm was a blues and roots festival, some 6 hours from Shambhala. This was my favourite festival. I worked in the childrens activity centre, which involved mostly helping kids making juggling balls out of balloons, and juggling. There was lots great bands and lots of food for the volunteers and I even managed to sneak into the VIP area to eat their food.
After 3 days of blues and roots, I headed back to Vancouver, packed all my stuff, and caught the bus down to Seattle. Seattle is a very busy city, and not a great place to be walking around downtown with a snowboard, especially in summer.
Seattle -----> LAX.
LAX ------> Mexico City.
I arrived in Mexico City around 6am.......
