Bike to Asia

Neat Bulgarian landscape

Day 14 continued: We took the ferry through the Danube and entered Bulgaria at Nikopol. We asked the guard there (who seemed bored) to take a photo of us – he thought we asked for permission to take a photo. So I took a self-exposure photo at the Bulgaria sign. After taking another one, the guard suddenly urged us that it was enough for today and please go. Probably they wanted to go home because the last (=second on that day) ferry arrived.
For our surprise, we had to pay a so called Terminal Tax – 50 Euro Cents per person. Even if you arrive on a bike or on foot!
They were surprised that we wanted to exchange Leva on the border – they said that the next town where we can change is Pleven and is 50 km away…
But we were impressed by the good quality of the road: 10 points (out of 10). No traffic, no headwind. And that continued for a long time. (Levski – Pavlikeni was not so good but otherwise OK. Not so shaky as in Romania.)
The sky was blue and the landscape was lovely (more ordered), there were spaces between villages! In a village we somehow could make them understand that we want to change money and a man on a motorbike led us to a bar owner woman who changed us 10 euros to 19 levas. (Even if this is not the best rate – it was 1.95). The communication was behindered by the fact that they nod like no for yes and like yes for no. I was totally confused even if I understood da and ne!
Everybody asks us from where we came and after they learn that we are Hungarians, they say a few words in Hungarian. The most commons are: csókolom, nem tudom, szeretlek, jó napot, köszönöm. All the people in the villages are very kind to us.
In the evening Zsofi told me that we must go at least 75 km today (so that it will remain 75 for the next day as well) but we slept 7 km before that limit, in Tranchovitsa next to a football court. We noticed the bad smell only after we started to pitch the tent and hoped that it will go away but it didn’t. So we spent the night in shit smell.
Day 15: After riding through nice landscape, we arrived at Samovodene to the main road again – it was terrible, but fortunately not too long – 10 km before Veliko Tarnovo.

Monastery before VT on the left

The town is on built on a hillside around a turning river in a steep gorge and has a nice view. It the town we called the CS guy and then met at the central Post office. It turned out that it was not his apartment where we should sleep but another student’s. And the next surprise was that in that apartment there was no shower! We spent 4 nights in a row in tent with limited abilities to wash ourselves but rode the bike for 60-80 km a day, having the shower was one of the most important thing for us. We thought that this is so trivial that we didn’t ask it. So we called the other guy in town, who was so kind to host us. He had a bathroom. And internet as well.
Day 16 started late because we spent some time hanging on internet. We started at around 3pm. We forgot to buy Nutella in the supermarkets, and in the small villages they don’t know what it is, there is only a fake Nutella which is called Finetty and is worse and a bit salty… In Kilifarevo, we started to eat on a bench, a man in the nearby pub noticed that and brought us a plastic table to eat on! Then a steep climb begun, we ascended up to 480 m, where we finally got out of the forest and found a grassy area where we immediately pitched the tent.
Day 17: As soon as we started to roll, we had a glimpse of a nice lake on the left.

Lake before Elena

It was so beautiful that we couldn’t resist the temptation to spend the day here and call this a rest day. So we cycled 3.5 km today, wow! But it was worth. We took a small muddy road which had a dead-end down at the lake, with a small grassy area.

Picnic at the lake

Nobody came here today, we were on our own! Today was a Mac Guyver day: we used the walkie-talkie while descending to the lake (I went down first to discover what’s there), then we charged everything with the solar panel, and even used the soldering iron to fix a battery charger case. And we also tested the Katadyn Mini water filter, we drank from the lake. So we had enough water and electricity, the only thing we missed was a shop to buy bacon (szalonna) to fry it at the campfire. We could only cook rice. We enjoyed the rest day very much! Zsofi was sunbathing a lot, whereas I preferred the laying in the shade. The lake was too cold to swin in (or we were not brave enough).

More photos at http://picasaweb.google.hu/felix.kovacs/BikeToAsiaBulgaria#

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 at 2:19 PM and is filed under Bulgaria. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.