19th August
Had a morning of packing and uploading music and films to the laptop and saying goodbye to Matty and Ryan and Neil as they went of to school (Neil to work!). We had our last breakfast with Sarah and after a sad goodbye we set off on the road towards the Black Sea coast. The first couple of hours were okay, one lane roads with the usual crazy drivers and Pete got stung by a wasp whilst driving which was not good - thankfully there was a lay by right where we needed one. The last hour or so was great - there was our first motorway since Croatia and it was new and pretty much empty! We cruised in and out of Varna and headed south, trusting a couple of campsite signs on our Bulgaria map. We had forgotton to stop at a supermarket in Varna so got food for tonight from a small shop. We were very happy to see the campsite signs weren't lying and found a small place with wierd loos and a nice owner who told us that there were some other English people here! She obviously was surprised to have two loads of us. The site was about five minutes from the beach, called Romantika beach, and we walked down as soon as we arrived. Gorgeous beach! Wide stretch of white sand running all the way to the horizon one way, a red cliff the other and lined with trees at the back. The sea was blue and wavy and warm. There were tourists (all Bulgarian or Polish) but not too many to make it horrible. After a nice afternoon dip we got some beers from the tourist stalls and chilled out on the campsite for the evening.
We got up and got ready for a day of beach. We packed books, food, water and our big umbrella and headed down to the sea. We read, ate, drank, swam and had a lovely day relaxing. Completely different coast to Croatia - having the waves to play with and the sand to jump around on is fun! We got some food to cook for dinner from the tourist shops, as there wasn't a proper shop nearby, and had another evening in the campsite.
21st August
We left the campsite today, mainly because we had no food and couldn't afford to keep buying food from small over priced shops, and headed south. There were a couple of campsite signs on the map and also a town that our Swiss friends back in Romania had told us they'd stayed in. When we found that the maps sites were huge, ugly four star complexes we headed to Aheloy to the recommendation. It was definitely worth it! We got a lovely spot amoungst the trees facing out to a dried up sunflower field on a campsite with direct access to the beach. Perfect. We set up, hammock and all, and after lunch went down to the beach. The sand here was black, as it's volcanic, and a bit grubbier than the last beach. It stretched south to a town much further down the coast and curved around to the north with some ugly new buildings on the edge. We have seen several huge complexes along the coast - alot of which seem to have been abandoned half way through building - but generally it has been surprisingly un-touristy. We were told it was really built up and August was the worst time to go! Another wierd thing about the two campsites we've been on is that they have little cabins, like in Romania, but here they are all really run down and eerie looking - we think they are ex-communist holiday places (but look more like army camps). Anyway the beach was also very windy which made huge waves that Pete very much enjoyed body surfing in and we played in the sea for a while. Back at camp we read our books and had dinner and ended another lovely day.
22nd August
Got up early for a little beach session and then came back to the site for lunch - less sand in the sandwiches there! We'd seen several people walking up the beach covered in black goo and we wondered what it was so after lunch we set off along the sand to the direction they'd all come from. The further we got the more black gooey people we saw and eventually we found, set back behind the beach, a big pit of black sulphur mud. It was set out in squares - like fields - so is obviously farmed (probably for face masks and stuff!) but there were quite a few people climbing in and rolling around in it just like a load of hippos. It was very funny. We got in and lay down. After you got over the initial gross-ness of it and it feeling like you'd get stuck in it forever we found it was actually really comfy and you felt weightless and floated around like you were on a big comfy mattress! A proper healthy mud bath like in a spa - but for free! Covered in mud we went back to the beach and dry off a bit. Pete got impatient and went straight into the sea but I rolled around in sand a bit, for exfoliation(!) and waited until it was all dry. It took a while to wash it off, especially out of my hair, but I had very silky soft skin afterwards. Great day. Another relaxing evening in the campsite.
23rd August
Pete had woken up in the night with really bad head and face pain and was feeling very poorly today. We did absolutely nothing - not even go to the beach. He stayed in bed and I stayed in the hammock and read my book and looked afetr him. Pete watched some of the DVDs we got from Sarah and Neil and had a sleep and we had an early night.
24th August
Pete was still feeling crap so he rang his doctor mum to get advice. She thought he needed antibiotics so off we drove in search of a chemist. Aheloy, the town we were in, didn't have a big enough chemist so we headed to Nessebar about ten kilometers north. Pete parked and I ran in and actually managed to get what he needed with no problem at all! I was surprised! Back at camp we had another day letting Pete recover.
25th August
We decided we'd move on today as Pete had felt a bit better yesterday afternoon what with all the pain killers he'd taken. We headed south towards Sozopol which supposedly had campsites in the bays on either side. The drive was pretty easy and after Bourgas we came off the main road on to a back road to find a campsite. We found it was a small dirt track with thousands of cars parked on it and a bay that might have been nice if we could see it through all the umbrellas. Three of the campsites were set directly on the sand, which sounds great when I write it but there was no shade and hoards of tourists everywhere. This is what people had been talking about. We went as quickly as we could along the road and through Sozopol and out the other side. This was no where near as bad and Pete was feeling crap again so we stopped at the first campsite we saw. Thankfully it was actually really nice, with trees hedges to give you our own area and, again, direct access to the beach. There were a few umbrellas here too - it's definitely the most touristy beach we've stayed on so far - but nowhere near as bad as the other side. Late afternoon we went for a dip in the lovely warm sea and we had another day and evening doing nothing.
Same again! Pete was feeling a bit better and we went to the beach after lunch for the afternoon. We made a great sand castle and Pete buried me and we got an ice-cream - all the things you should do at the beach. Great day.
Spent the morning and early afternoon at the beach again. In the afternoon we decided to visit Sozopol; a nearby town which is the oldest settlement in Bulgaria - colonised by the Greeks in the seventh century BC. We went to get the bus from outside the campsite and a little train thing came (like the ones you get around theme parks) and rode us over the hill to the town. We arrived in the new town and followed the coast around, pass all the restaurants and resorts, until we got to the beach - at least we think there was sand under all the umbrellas. Behind all this was the old town with some Greek ruins and very pretty wooden houses (which were old, but not BC old!) Strolled around here for a while looking at the souvenir shops and an art gallery and then got an ice-cream and sat people watching. Not ready to head home we got a drink from a shop and sat on a bench over looking the beach and used the free wifi. (We have got helpxes coming up in Austria and Poland which is exciting!) Quite a touristy town but we had a very nice afternoon there and when we'd got the 'train' back to the campsite it was time for dinner and bed.
One more day before we headed inland so we spent it on the beach. We packed up ready to go before we went to bed so we could leave first thing.
29th August
We had heard from a few people that there are no campsites in central Bulgaria and we believed them. Luckily there is a new motorway that crosses from Burgas right across to Sofia. We got up early and set off straight away on our long journey. The first half of the motorway was brand new, and even the second half wasn't that old so it was pretty easy going. The worst thing about it, as usual, were the Bulgarian drivers. We got undertaken in the hard shoulder TWICE because the cars over taking us apparently werent going fast enough. They were definitely going fast enough - they're just all bloody mad. Anyway we survived and we even got a KFC for lunch in one of the petrol stations! We came off the motorway just north of the Rila Mountains National Park and headed to the town of Sapareva Banya where we found a nice campsite. All up a 400 kilometre, seven and a half hour drive. After dinner we got a cold beer from the bar and sat up drinking wine to celebrate the end of Petes antibiotics!
30th August
Today we were heading to the Rila seven lakes. We got on our walking shoes and lots of layers and set off on the 10 kilometre drive to the village in the mountains where the ski lift starts. (It's a ski resort in season.) We stopped at the shop and got a picnic together and then drove the long windy drive through the pine forests to find the car park. The ski lift was a bit more Lev than we expected so we got a one way ticket up the mountain. I was a bit nervous as it was very high and built by Bulgarians and as we set off I had a bit of a freak out and cried and wanted to get off. (I'm scared of heights.) Obviously I couldn't, so I tried to relax whilst Pete was having a great time enjoying the beautiful view from the tops of the trees. It wasn't so bad in the end - the view was really very nice - but I was secretly glad we couldn't afford the way back! We managed to get off the cable car at the top and found a beautiful grassy plateau that opened up above the forest. We couldn't see any lakes and we didn't understand the map but we could see people standing at the top of a mountain so we headed that way. It was a steep walk up the edge but worth it for the views at the top where we spotted the first two lakes. We thought we were high then but we could see the path carrying on over a grassy tor and we carried on up further and found the third lake where we stopped and had a sausage snack. We watched the clouds rolling up over the peaks and they started closing in. It gave an eerie feeling and I was glad there were quite a few other walkers out or it would have been a bit worrying. Through the clouds though the view was absolutely stunning; we've never seen anything like it before. We thought we were as high as you could walk now as we had an amazing view all around and we had come a very long way up. But we looked up and saw people standing on a much higher mountain. Then we looked up further and saw more people on an even higher mountain and we thought 'that's where we've got to go'! We walked up and up. It was very steep and rocky and we were thinking we were doing really well until we saw little kids and old ladies in dresses come strolling down like they were coming back from the shops! It was well worth the trek though. The clouds had cleared and you could see all seven of the turquoize lakes below. You could also see the mountains that we'd first driven up, which had been so high and now looked like tiny hills! It really was nature at it's most spectacular. We sat and had the most scenic picnic of the trip so far. We scrambled back down and were thankful to get out the wind as it was freezing up the top and we decided to go a different way back which passed the lakes we'd looked down on on the way up. It was an amazing walk and we even foraged a pudding of bilberries (small, tastier blueberries) and wild raspberries - yum. We got to the top of the cable car and had a rest and watched jealously all the people going down and we set off walking down the mountain side, through the forest to the car park. The walk down was good and by the end we were knackered - nearly six hours walking - and we drove home and had dinner a fell asleep early. What an amazing adventure today.
Foraging lunch. ^
31st August
Had tea and packed up slowly in the morning. Set off about ten towards Rila Monastery - the biggest and most visited in Bulgaria. On the map it didn't look very far but the mountain road was much windier than I expected and it took a while to get there. We drove right up to it and found a pay and display car park and then drove back down the road a bit and joined all the Bulgarians in the free on street parking. We had lunch sitting inside the van and then we walked up to the monastery and had a look around. It was quite impressive being set amoungst the hills and very beautifully decorated. We watched people praying and giving money to a coffin at the front and looked at the colourful paintings inside. We decided that we would try and free camp tonight and we made our way slowly back down the mountain road following a river. We tried a few laybys and found a few dead end tracks and then we found a small over grown track that opened out into a grassy patch with a little path to the river. It was perfect. We parked up and Pete had a dunk in the freezing, but very pretty, river and we hung out in the sunshine. Pete collected some wood together and in the evening we took all our cooking stuff down to the river side and sat on rocks around a fire. We cooked pasta over the fire and even had pudding - wild blackberry sweet bread drizzled with honey. We washed up in the river and had an early night, ready to head to Greece in the morning!
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