Bulgaria
Upon entry into Bulgaria, you get of the Ferry and go straight to border control. They check your passport and car reg papers and stamp you in for 5 days. This is as a result of our Schengen Visa. Free of charge until you get to the road tax and medical insurance. It’s all nice and organised actually. You don’t have to go in search of road tax at any gas stations, you simply get it as you enter the country for 5 Euros for once week for a car, it’s also known as a vignette. and looks similar to the Austrian vignette which you put on your windscreen. The medical insurance is only 3 Euros per person. We weren’t sure if this was the same as the Campbell Irvine insurance we had, but weren’t going to take the chance.
As the border crossing was such a pleasure we decided to camp up early and found a lovely spot for wild camping. We set the awning up and made our first chicken pot in the potjie pot. An hour and a half later we were sipping on beer and enjoying a delicious chicken pot. Tummy full and not much else to do we listened to the audio book until we fell asleep. The next morning we drove towards Sofya. This wasn’t the best city visit we’ve had. It was raining, traffic was heavy and there was no parking to be found. We quickly decided to skip Sofya and head for the hills. By now the rain and muddiness of everything was getting a bit much and we decided to hole up in a quaint Hungarian hotel. We got to do all our washing properly and had a good shower. We were missing our tent though and decided we wouldn’t be hotelling again soon. The next morning we made contact with the family, had breakfast, packed our bags and headed for Rila Mountain Nature Reserve. This little stop wasn’t a bad one. We got Wi-Fi, double room, breakfast, TV and our washing done for only 36 Euros.
The Rila Mountain reserve was a real diamond in the rough. There was absolutely no one else around and glad we could see this spectacular place. We even got to see one of the most iconic European birds, the Nutcracker, and boy he wasn’t shy either. We got some amazing photos of it for those of you who are interested in the nature bit of the trip.
We also managed another lifer, Alpine Accentor, although they were a bit shy and we didn’t manage any photos of them. After a wonderful day in the reserve we headed off in search of a wild camp near Plovdiv. Well we ended up driving quite late into the night along a mountain road with a sheer cliff to one side and a 100m drop into a dam on the other. This continued for all of 36kms, so we were pretty wired by the time we found a decent place to pull off. I slept really well, but I think Neil had a hard time winding down after that drive.
The next morning we set off early into Plovdiv. Nothing particularly interesting about the place except it is Bulgaria’s second largest economic city and a whole lot quieter than Sofya. We managed to get in a stroll around the city, looking at the old churches and sampled some of the local quisine at what seems to be a restaurant by day and a rather stylist gentlemens club by night. Lets just say that all inhibitions were lost on these waitresses, much to Neil’s pleasure, but I soon let them know that they wouldn’t get away with disturbing this hornets nest. Interesting to say the least and the food was good.
That afternoon we headed for the Bulgarian/Turkish border. So we didn’t really spend a lot of time in Bulgaria, but felt that we didn’t really miss much either. We were looking forward to the more Eastern influences in Turkey and the Middle East region. And we weren’t disappointed by the action that was to be Turkey’s border region.
