(written 9/4/2007)
We managed to sleep somehow on the crazy bed, and awoke to grab a coffee at the bar next door. We'd heard that a burek was the type of food we should be sampling in these parts, so I went inside to order a couple. The poor guy there had just opened, and I thought his response gesticulations meant that there was none avalable today (he did seem like the only staff there). We sat around for a while longer deciding what to do for the day, and were about to leave when the guy walked over with two piping hot pastries! We thanked and paid him before munching away on what was basically a cheesy pastry, but if that's what the specialty is we'll happily eat it.
We set off for a walk around town looking at the sand cliffs. Our rough plan was to follow some directions to the town's oldest cellar, but we didn't find it. No matter, we saw plenty of crazy hill-side architecture and a eccentric mix of ancient things and other things built with new money.
We had to trace our road back out of town, looping down the main road before eventually heading east for the day's journey. The most convenient road marked on our map was a little white one (the road density is pretty low in most of these countries - similar to outback Australia), which perhaps should have tipped us off, but once we had committed there was no turning back. Kilometer by kilometer, the road seemed to just get worse. At one point we were driving along a valley, but were diverted up and over mountain passes where they hadn't built the continuous section of road yet. Then a little while longer, way back down to join the original path of the road. In some parts it appeared experimental roads had been built, only to be abandoned when it was all too hard.
We were pretty confident that very few tourists had been along this road
ever, mostly because it wasn't really a road, but also because there was absolutely no way a tour bus could do it. In some sections there were reasonable amounts of locals getting around as if this were just all normal to them. The most memorable part was one village that seriously looked like it was bombed. Sides of the road were totally missing, mud-slides had taken sections out, and we had to think carefully and dodge the locals before making our slow progress through this tiny town.
For all this whinging about the roads, you'd think it was a horrible place. But quite the contrary. The lack of other non-locals made it feel quite special, and the scenery was spectacular. We were climbing up the mountains, with more and more snow about the place, and our roads though horrible to drive on were very scenic as they wound their way about the place.
We stopped to make tea up in the cool mountains at one stage, just taking in the isolation and the goat track that had got us here, and no doubt was our only way out.
Obviously, it took a long while to get anywhere, but eventually we made it through to Siroka laka, a little village that Lonely Planet pointed out, where we grabbed some coffees in a local café, and admired the scenery of the stream running through town.
Turning north, we drove through an alpine region where there was snow still on ground and plenty of people taking advantage of the country's cheap ski areas. If you are a European with a method of getting here, it's much cheaper than other countries.
Continuing north on bigger road which was still windy, often one (usable) lane, we noted that most crazy local drivers just ploughed through the devastation, oblivious to the damage that will cause if they ever upgrade to cars not based on Soviet tanks, overtaking on blind corners, etc.
Quite tired from the effort, we made it eventually to
Plovdiv (
wikipedia), Bulgaria's "second city". It wasn't too hard to find our chosen place to stay, Queen Mary, where we got a room in this quaint little hostel.
Eventually heading out, we looked for restaurant which is built in an old bomb bunker a few streets away. We thought we had found it but it was actually a cave that only had pizzery bread things and a variety of drinks on offer. Still, we had a couple of those and enjoyed the strange surroundings, despite the kids parties going on all around us.
As we were leaving, content to not have eaten much and just seek out a bigger breakfast the next day, we found the original bunker right place next door - it had huge thick metal doors, and was built under a cliff face. There was a band set up inside, although nobody ever started playing, and we decided to have a couple of courses of dinner there now that we had found the place. The local food was great, but after a while we set out into the heavy rain to find our way back to the hostel.