1 post tagged “bulgaria”

Day 1

I arrived at Vratz, via a brief stop at Mezdra at around 5am. There I met Dobrian, who would be my chain smoking mountain bike guide and interpreter for the next 4 days. The overnight train from Bucharest had been a bit of an endurance mission - it had come from Moscow, and was several hours late by the time it picked me up. Additionally, all of the Russians needed to have their visas checked when entering Bulgaria which held proceedings up another few hours. Finally, the Russians had also taken all of the sleeper berths - so I was left in a second class upright seat with a couple of Romanians. Luckily only 3 of 6 seats were taken in our compartment, so it was not as bad as it could have been.

Due to the lengthy trip getting to Vratz, I had suggested that an easy day's riding would be desirable. This was assisted by two main factors:

• Dobrian's need to stop for a smoke every 5km; and
• Dobrian breaking his bike half way around the ride (broken rear mech)

However, after 4 hard days in Romania, I was quite happy with this.

 

Once Dobrian's bike had broken, it was really more about how on earth we were going to get back into town. We managed to find a local's drinking spot, so stopped for a couple of beers. The old farmers started having me on suggesting that I probably thought Belgrade was in Bulgaria.  I got Dobrian to respond "if you're so smart, what is the capital of NZ?" - this certainly stumped them.

 

As we finished a little early, I went out again with Valu - a local teenager and ace downhiller, who put me through my paces on some pretty fast and loose sectons near my guest house.

Day 2

The second day started with picking up a new rear mech for Dobrian's bike and then getting a transfer to the top of the nearest hill. After some repairs, we then set off up and over a series of ridges before reaching a dry waterfall with an excellent view over the valley in which I was staying. What followed was an extremely technical downhill single track section (thanks Valu) which fully tested my pretty unresponsive brakes (from the Romanian repairs).

 

We then headed into Vratz for a late lunch and sat out the hottest part of the day (around 3-4 it became far too uncomfortable to ride).

Day 3

Following a short transfer, we set out again - initially over tarmac, before an extremely long 4WD track downhill. At the bottom we then had a 12 km climb up out of a valley in the increasingly inferno like riding conditons. Luckily we were riding along next to a creek, so we stopped several times to cool down by taking a dip into the icy water.

Along the way across each day in Bulgaria, we saw numerous springs and creeks, which Dobrian tried very hard to convince me to drink out of. Frequent bouts of food poisioning on previous trips had convinced me that this was not a good idea, so I stuck to mineral water. However, this did create something of a logistical problem as I could only carry 3L at a time - and on the hottest days I was drinking up to 5L. Running out of water on a long climb in conditions like this is a sure way to overheat within about 30 mins.

 

In any case, we soon were at the head of the valley, where we stopped at a monestry for lunch. In addition to the ubiqituous meat balls / meat on a stick we also had a pretty good bean soup. In the afternoon that followed, the beans provided a good, if quite smelly energy source. It also astounds me how people in many hot countries cannot think of anything better than a good hot soup to refresh them on a 35 degree day.

We then climbed up to 1500M - which, in the heat was quite tough (cue more pushing from those on downhill bikes!). It was a great view from the top, overlooking a number of mountains down to the village we would finish at.

What followed was an extremely fast 1000M vertical descent - made even faster for me by my erratically working brakes!

 

We then finished up with a beer, a great reward for what had been probably the best day in Bulgaria.

 

On the train back to Vratz, an elderly Bulgarian guy came up to me and surprisingly spoke English. He got out a rather old atlas and started talking about the various parts of New Zealand. At the back of the atlas was a list of the countries and the religions that were most dominant. He found it hard to accept when I suggested his atlas was wrong - that New Zealand wasn't really a mixture of Catholic and Protestants - that it was a highly secular country, and if anything, Anglicism was probably most frequent (or none at all!).

Day 4

My final day riding started with an early train half way to Sofia, where Dobrian took me on one of his favourite rides.

But first I tried a Bulgaria breakfast drink called Boza. Made of wheat, this drink had a flavour that I can only describe as grey-brown-sludge, and I could only drink a few mouthfuls without wanting to hurl. I decided it would be wise to decline drinking any more.

We then arrived, and once we had dropped the packs off to be looked after for the day we spent the morning climbing back up to 1500M - again, pretty intense in the heat. I was then looking forward to a long downhill back to the train station when I started having puncture problems on my rear tyre. Looking more closely, I realised that the 10 quid special I had on the back was starting to disintegrate under the pressure of 8 days on the trail.

I then limped into our lunch break. More meat balls and repeated attempts to fix my tyre later, and we set off - pausing briefly at a large communist monument to look at the view (and for me to have a somewhat unexpected comfort stop in the bush nearby).

It was then a relatively technical single track descent back to the train station. It was probably right on my limit at that point, with there being several sets of steep steps that I wasn't feeling up to on that particular day - especially as my rear brake was still acting somewhat erratically. However I made it down without falling off the side of the mountain (always a good sign!) and we headed back to the train station.

 

From there, it was another hour to Sofia, where Dobrian helped me pack my bike up and get onto a train to Istanbul. Over 8 days, I hadn't climbed 9 vertical km and ridden something like 350km. For me, this was a great result.

The train to Istanbul, although late, was actually really good. Retro, with berths assigned somewhat randomly (and not corresponding to your train ticket), it felt very orient express. There were only 3 berths in my compartment, but in the end, it was only me and an American guy who was living in Istanbul.

It was then that I had heard Russia had invaded Georgia - the next country on to Turkey - so it was with some trepidation that I arrived again into Istanbul. It was one of those strange moments when you realise just how out of touch you are with what is happening in the world - something which does not happen very much in my always-connected lifestyle!