You got this one life and you’re spending it sitting in rush hour or working under fluorescent lights in a climate-controlled room, hunched over a computer, sucking back caffeine. And for what?

…

…

What for? Really?

p.s. Quote from “Flirting with forty” movie!

w00t!

~HERE~

Elbrus moments

Me, Vescho and Marto in fron of the Bachkovo monastery

The second part of our group was a little bit late (overslept ), so we waited for them to come and look around the monastery. While we were there we enjoyed the local views, the sound of the nearby river, etc.

Next object – the impressive Wonderful Bridges. Two rock phenomenas in Bulgaria that attract lots of visitors each year.

Wonderful bridges

We couldn’t miss the opportunity to buy some local cheese and eat a local pastry called ‘prepitenichka’ – kind of a dough pancake with cheese or jam in it.

Third for the day was Rojen observatory. We reached it just as it was about to start raining again. Waited about 15 minutes and got in for a guided tour.

Rojen observatory

Some interesting facts, a walk around, some wonderful views from the top of the tower and an hour later we took off from Rojen. And then it started raining – it was raining cats and dogs, as it’s said. The fourth object of our trip (Pamporovo) we missed because of the rain. Instead we headed on the line Shiroka Lyka – Trigrad to settle for the evening. In Shiroka Lyka we stopped for a meal. We waited for too long but finally we tried the rodopian specialty – Patatnik. Delicious!!! What was in front of us was a ride across the Trigrad gorge – beautiful river canyon. Tiny roads, but instead – what a beauty it was. A couple of hours wandering because we didn’t book anything for the evening – and we settled in Teshel: a small village, just standing between our targets for the third day.

Day 3 – May 4th

I’m getting kinda lazy to describe in details Instead I’ll just move on to the goals for the day:

Devils throat – there was the highest cave waterfall in Bulgaria: 60 m they say. We couldn’t exactly see it, but we heard it. Definitely!

Devils throat

In front of the we heard a Rodopi bagpipe. Native!

Yagodinska cave – this one was very impressive. Its length (the guided part) is 1.1 km and the guides were very professional – they mixed interesting facts for the cave with humor/jokes. It’s a fun way to learn something and to stay focused during the whole tour of 45 minutes.

Perperikon – Perperikon was the final for our trip. We got late for it and went there just after 5.30 pm. No problem, all the visitors were gone, so we could enjoy it with only a bunch of crazy people like us . Ancient thracian city with well preserved ruins. Interesting place, has some sort of nice vibe in it.

Parts of Perperikon

After all of this it was already about 6:30 pm and we had about 450 km trip back to Rousse. Exhausting, but still – about 2:30 am in the next morning we were back. After about 1200 km road trip, many wonderful sights, three nice days of adventures.

More photos from the trip can be seen in my Picasa Web Albums.

Let’s start with a meeting from the previous day. We got to a friend to have some beers. Yeah, we got them – till 11 PM. And I had to get up at 2:30 AM. I got home, but somehow I couldn’t get any sleep. My mood was some kind of adrenaline-ous. So when the alarm clock started I only had an hour sleep. Never mind, I told to myself. Shower, final luggage preparation and at 4 AM off we go to the trip. I took my part of the group and drove the following route – Rousse-Veliko Tarnovo-Gabrovo-Shipka where we waited the other part of the group (they left the previous day, to extend their trip with a walk around Gabrovo). The Shipka pass welcomed us with a thick fog. We waited about an hours till the other part came and we were ready to leave for our first goal – Asenovgrad and the famous fortress. At about 10:30 -11 AM we were there.

After a lunch in Asenovgrad we headed to Oreshec and Mostovo villages. Mostovo welcomed us with the most beautiful Rodopian sight:

From then on we went to Krystova gora (The forest of the cross) peak and the cross on the peak. Actually I didn’t go there because the route didn’t exactly fit my knee’s mood . So me, Vesko and Milena waited for the others in the village.

After that was the final goal for the day – or so we thought. The Chotrova house near Belintash. The road to there was similar to… nothing – there was no road. Just dust and lost of small muddy lakes. And to finish the deal there was about 500-600 m downhill which made our cars overheat. A small break there to find out that there are no places available – and off we go back to the now uphill:

You can see the beast resting after the torture of the uphill.

So this is basically our first day. We went back to Asenovgrad and hired 4 rooms in a small hotel. We just needed rest already

The main goal of this trip for me – Belintash, was off the list. We couldn’t reach it because we didn’t reserve places to sleep nearby.

More pictures from the whole trip – in my PicasaWeb Albums

I made it the whole time… with slight help of painkillers on our way back.

I’m posting a link to my Picasa Gallery – ~LINK~