Bulgaria - A Week in the Rhodopian Mountains

We had read that the roads can be terrible in Bulgaria. They're famous for their potholes. Our earlier drive to Bansko had been the opposite of that with its super-smooth highways, however we were venturing into rural areas now and the roads degraded accordingly. Dodging potholes became a regular part of driving.

On the way to Devin, our next destination, we passed through some interesting villages. One had old half-timbered houses plus mud brick ones. (Apologies for photos are taken through the windscreen.)

Our guide book had mentioned that we would see storks everywhere. We travelled hundreds of kilometres before we saw any, and these were the only ones we saw.

We had discovered by now that Bulgarians must love picnics. We had seen many picnic shelters in the mountains and now they lined many roads we drove along. Some were flash setups with running mountain water and others were in various states of disrepair. But nearly all had at least one car parked at them. Many seemed to have some sort of memorial to deceased people in them so maybe families build them in memory of a loved one? We have a lot to learn.

Many villages were lovely from a distance. Quite a few were a bit rougher up close.

Much of this area had forcibly been converted to Islam by the Ottomans in past centuries and many villages had mosques. We didn't see many Muslims though.

We arrived at Devin, our destination, and found our apartment. We were really disappointed when we pulled up. A photo we had seen of the beautiful garden was taken in the only green corner the property had. The rest was a concrete slab. Someone's washing hung over our window and two smelly rubbish bins and an old broken washing machine greeted us at the front gate.

Inside was quite ok, except that it was just a suburban apartment in a suburban street. There was nothing special about it. We would be here for eight days. In the first 10 minutes I was already wondering at what point we would do a runner and forfeit our payment!

An hour or two later, really loud music started blaring from somewhere up the road. Sigh.

One good thing though is that it did have a real double bed and a double bed doona, and we slept like logs on most of our nights here. The apartment ended up being quite good in the end, thankfully. 

We went out for dinner, which was ok, but the highlight was the waitress with the worst botoxed lips we've ever seen. They were massive! We were fascinated with how they could move enough to form words. She clearly thought they were wonderful though as she highlighted them with bright red lipstick.

Strangely, Bulgaria is known as being a fashion-conscious country. In these rural areas, we didn't see a lot of evidence of this but there were plenty of botoxed lips and a few gym-junkie bodies.

They seem to have a bit of a thing about shoes here. Inside our house were three pairs of slippers, lined up for us to use, plus two pairs of scuffs set up at the bathroom door. Outside were another three pairs of scuffs. Sorry, but we don't fancy wearing someone else's shoes!

Walking back up our road on our way home from dinner, a man around our age that lives a few doors down from us said hello (in Bulgarian). What followed was a 10-minute conversation, with none of us speaking a word of the other person's language. It's amazing how it's possible to get messages across though. What came out of it was his name was Ventsie, he wanted to invite us to his house for a drink and he wanted to take us to the big hotel at the top of the hill so we could look at the view with his binoculars. We must have looked a bit concerned because he assured us that he has been driving for 45 years. He asked how long we were staying and we told him eight days. We were tired and wanted to go to bed at that point so we assumed that at some stage in the coming week we would do these things with him!

Devin looked like a great central location for walks when we booked it. We soon realised though that, even though it's close to everything distance-wise, the roads are terrible and they wind slowly through gorges and around mountains so it takes ages to get anywhere.

I spent hours finding walks in the area that afternoon but the owner of the apartment had told us (via her niece as the owner didn't speak English) that we might be able to get information at the Town Hall. We tottled down to the Town Hall the next morning, only to find that google maps had the location wrong. Once we found it, we asked about information. The woman didn't speak English so she passed us onto a guy but he only spoke German. He called someone on the phone and soon an English-speaking woman appeared. The best she could offer was to tell us about some nearby walks, most of which we already knew about. But we love how helpful people are here.

We decided to walk to the Eagle's Eye viewpoint from a village called Yagodina. The drive there was spectacular! We drove through the amazing Buynovo River Gorge. For several kilometres we wound through the base of the gorge on a single-lane road. When a vehicle came the other way, we all had to squeeze past each other or someone had to reverse. Meanwhile, everyone was trying to dodge the potholes. The rock walls plummeted to the gentle, shallow river beside us. It was stunning!

A 'good' section of road had white lines on it!

In places, the rock had been cut away to let vehicles underneath.

We drove into Yagodina, and it was gorgeous! The village was full of lovely old houses and barns and it was small and quiet. We easily found a park and started our walk. 

A woman was drying herbs in her wooden shed to make mountain tea to sell at a little roadside stall.

Stacked wood.

There are many of these timbered sheds. I'm guessing they're haysheds, or at least used to be.

The first section of our walk followed a small dirt road through a gorgeous green meadow area. There were lovely views over Yagodina.

We then turned onto a track which climbed up and up. There were stunning views to keep us company though and, although the track was steep, it was manageable.  

Far beneath is we could see sections of the road we had just driven through the gorge on.

Now they're tough trees!

Our guide book might have had more space to talk about walks if it didn't talk so much about birds and butterflies! Despite it telling us there are oodles of butterflies, we hadn't seen many so we were excited when we found this one, lol.

What we did find though were so many bugs! I've never seen so many varieties at once, and they particularly seemed to like the thistle flowers.

There were plenty of bees too, of different sorts.

Finally, we reached the top. Eagle's Eye is a suspended platform over a sheer drop. 

It was so windy that I had to hold my t-shirt down as it was blowing up around my face!

Looking over the edge, we could see the gorge road far beneath us.

What a place! It was awesome! 

The only other way to get to the viewpoint is by jeep and jeep drivers line the roads on the way in, trying to get you on their jeep. After we left the lookout point, our track took us onto the jeep road for a bit. We could see why ordinary cars can't get in there. The road was incredibly rough! Luckily, our track soon veered off into the forest and it was steep but lovely.

We found a bear scratching tree! John's doing his best ferocious bear impersonation....

We had more great views on the way down.

We finished our walk and found a restaurant attached to a hotel. The food was amazing! We had two local specialties - a salad with wonderful grilled peppers and a round loaf of bread filled with meat, mushrooms, cheese and egg. Delicious!

Then we drove back through the same gorge, only this time it was much busier and therefore more challenging.

We got back to the apartment in the late afternoon and didn't venture out again. We had a really lovely day!

One of the big attractions around here is the Devil's Throat Cave. Water rushes into the cave through the 'mouth' then pours down the 'throat' and disappears. It reappears somewhere nearby but it takes 1.5 hours to move that short distance. Nobody knows where the water goes in the meantime. Two young cavers disappeared while exploring this phenomenon. 

You can only see the cave on a tour so off we went. The ticket lady kindly gave us an info sheet in English as the tour was only in Bulgarian. The cave was a bit underwhelming, sadly. We started at the exit, so we didn't enter at the 'mouth'. I soon realised why though. The stairs up to the 'mouth' were so steep that it would have been difficult to climb down them without falling. You really had to climb up them. As it was, the long climb up was tough, even for us. Some stairs were so steep that they were undercut so you could fit your feet on them. On other sections. the riser was longer than the step width. And they went on and on. I seriously don't know how many of the people on the tour got out!

The most interesting thing about the cave was the huge 'thunder chamber', named after the thundering of the river pouring into the cave. It was disappointingly non-thunderous while we were there but it was huge. As they told us, you can fit a cathedral in it. Those specks in the distance are the other people in our group on the other side of the chamber.

We came out past the mouth, or maybe it's the throat. Who knows?

Next stop was a walk nearby. I had researched and learned that it used to be one of the most adventurous eco-trails in the area. There were wooden bridges over rapids, wooden ladders up the face of rocks and boardwalks along the sides of cliffs. There was one problem though - some of the wooden structures had disintegrated and hadn't been fixed. For the life of me, I couldn't find out exactly where the trail started and finished or how far we could get. I could see one track that seemed to lead to the start of the trail so we gave that a go. 

We started up a rickety series of steps with a few pieces missing - not a good start. 

50 steep metres later, we came to a fork. I wasn't expecting that. Which way should we go? We turned right and climbed and climbed and climbed. The track had a soft leafy base and led through lovely forest but the climb was relentless. For 50 minutes or so we went straight up - until we finally came to a set of wooden steps going up a rock which was completely broken. What a waste of energy! We turned around and went back down.

Tired and hungry, we returned to the lovely restaurant in the nearby town of Yagodina. This time we tried a traditional dish which was basically meat and vegetables inside a dough. It was scrummy!

For the fourth time in two days, we drove back along the tricky gorge roads. They have mirrors on the worst bends so we can see if a car is coming. I took an arty-farty photo of our own car in a crooked mirror.

We were held up by roadworks a number of times on these drives. To our amazement, the cut-ins beside the road were being worked on by men abseiling! They seemed to be cutting down small trees. This confused us at first because surely the trees are what are keeping the rocks in place. We decided though that maybe they're in the process of putting up that rock mesh that holds rockfalls off the roads.

That night we had dinner at an Italian/Bulgarian restaurant with a great English-speaking waiter. We sat outside on what we soon realised was the main boulevard in town. Families, grandparents with prams and boys on bicycles all cruised up and down the pedestrianised road, taking advantage of the perfect temperature between the hot day and the cool night. Being school holidays, there were little electric cars for kids to drive, corn on the cob being roasted at a small stand and plenty of ice creams being eaten. It was lovely to see the townspeople out and about.

We were justifiably concerned about the next day's walk which was another eco-trail near Devin. Near the car park was a map showing the walk. A lady was setting up a souvenir stand nearby and she explained to us - with no English whatsoever - that parts of the trail weren't accessible. Noooo! We started anyway and soon found that the whole trail was completely fine! The woman was very clear in her instructions as to where we couldn't pass so we don't know what she was on about.

The walk was lovely. Our first encounter was with a cat! We seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. The cat joined us for a little walk!

As is common around the world, there were various signs explaining about the wildlife in the area around the walk, however we've never seen signs about suggested exercises on the walk before!

First we went up a hill - of course - but nothing like yesterday's hill. At the top were the ruins of an old fortress but there was very little left so see. 

We descended to the river and followed along a lovely path and a number of boardwalks. It was popular, and justifiably so.

On our way out to dinner we met Ventsie again and he started talking excitedly about taking us out again. But how could we make a time or even work out where he wanted to take us? A young bright blue-eyed boy walked past and got roped into the conversation. From him we got the words "Red Rock" and suddenly I knew where Ventsie wanted to take us. It was a viewing point nearby. Soon the boy's mum joined us, then Kurt, a teen who lived a bit further up the road. All ended up joining in the conversation, each with a bit more English than the previous person. We finally arranged for Ventsie to take us to Red Rock at 4pm on Friday. This'll be interesting!

We spent the afternoon making further bookings for our upcoming trip to the 'stans. We were already having trouble with ANZ insisting on us needing to update something when we couldn't do it from overseas. Then John booked a car using the card and ANZ decided that the transaction was fraudulent and blocked our card. We received an email to call a number if we're overseas. We did that, but it didn't connect to anything, no matter how many times we tried. Arrgghh! We've had trouble with ANZ before when we've been overseas. It ended up taking us two days and about 30 phone calls before we finally got through to someone. And then the call took about 3/4 of an hour, most of which was spent waiting on hold. We got it sorted but it was a real pain.

We planned a big walk for the next day. John had had enough of driving up and down the gorge roads in the south, so we headed east. We parked the car on the side of the road and climbed up a loooong hill again. It wasn't ridiculously steep though and the soft pine leaves made for comfortable footing.

We found a water tap at the top of the hill, great for wetting hats and faces. Note the wooden water trough.

We walked through a small village with gorgeous old wooden sheds. Even here, it's hard to find a wall without death notices on it.

We walked along the top of the hill and views opened up. Mountains dotted with villages and forests panned out around us. 

We met a lovely toothless shepherd who introduced himself to us then pointed the direction to go then said goodbye!

Much to our amazement, lined up along a freshly baled paddock were a cluster of Portaloos. What the?

Further along we saw large tents being set up and people working. This looked very like like some sort of festival preparation to us so I had to ask. I found someone who spoke English and yes, there was a three-day cultural festival starting the next day! There would be traditional dancing, traditional food and traditional bagpipe playing. That last one threw us! We were told that Saturday is the best day so we're coming back then. What a find!

We saw a farmer and some some others picking up hay bales nearby. They'd better get a move on. The festival starts tomorrow and this is the parking paddock!

We stumbled on a lovely church....

Nearby were the ruins of a 1,600 year old basilica!

We found this shelter. Inside was a bench seat and a fireplace. We have no idea what it's for, but it has taken the death notice plastering to extremes.

At a water stop, we met a man washing his motorbike. He spoke reasonable English. He had been an engineer on cargo ships for 45 years and had been to Australia. He wished us a lovely day, good health and good lives, then ended with "Viva Australia!"

Our walk was long but not difficult after the first climb and we made it back to the car tired and hungry. We drove to the nearby village of Shiroka Laka for lunch and were blown away by the buildings. This was a small town that hadn't been ravaged by fires or invaders and had kept its original architecture. There seem to be enough tourists coming through to justify renovating older buildings and it was truly gorgeous. 

The satellite dishes detract from the old-world feel somewhat!

A river ran through the middle of the village and a lovely old stone bridge arched over it.

We found this statue. The man is playing the traditional bagpipes! I guess we'll know a lot more about this in a couple of days.

OK, this shed wins the "Largest number of death notices stuck to one building" award!

We realised that the walk we had planned for Friday was to Red Rock, the place that Ventsie would be taking us. We decided to still go anyway. Who knew what would happen with Ventsie when we can't communicate properly?

The walk was good. We started from our apartment and hadn't gone far at all when we saw this old pack saddle dumped outside a house. We occasionally see a horse and cart going around town too.

There were great views over Devin from the top. 

The walk back down through the forest was lovely.

We've seen a few old Russian-style cars and vans around the place. They must be collector's items!

It was Friday, the day we would meet up with Ventsie. We showered, changed clothes and wandered down to Ventsie's place. He wasn't waiting outside, and we didn't know exactly which house or which floor was his so we waited outside.  A minute or so later, Kurt, the bright young teen who speaks English, drove past in the back seat of a car with his parents. He said he would call Ventsie and tell him we were waiting. With that, his father drove off, so we never heard the result of the conversation. We waited. And we waited. At 4.20 we gave up and went home. And that was it!

Instead, we spent the afternoon, and many afternoons after that, planning the 'stans. It was a lot of work!

The next day was Saturday, festival day. We planned a walk so that we could park the car at the festival car park then walk from there. To our amazement, we followed six other cars along the road to the car park. People were keen to be there early!

Our walk was lovely again. These Rhodope Mountain views are so beautiful.

There were so many wildflowers of many varieties.

A new logging track cut across our path sadly. We followed it but it ran out and we had to find our way through the forest, avoiding patches of head-high thistles on the way. There were heaps of drunken-looking ants underfoot. They made huge anthills from the discarded husks of seeds. The hill was swarming with ants!

Again I was fascinated by the range of insects, including this iridescent blue-black fly. Apparently the reason there are so many insects here is because they use very few herbicides and pesticides. Says a lot about our farming methods....

By the time we returned, the car park was getting busier. The farmer must have worked hard to get all his hay in in time!

We were starving so we found the food stalls before we did anything else. The food choices were amazing. There were pigs on spits, all sorts of meats, vegies, corn on cob and a huge array of accompaniments as well as pancakes and ice cream. We just pointed and ended up with more than we thought we ordered. We got rissoles, home-made bread, ayvar (red pepper paste), something that was exactly the same as Greek spicy cheese dip and grilled corn on the cob. Yum!

We learned that Saturday was the traditional Bulgarian bagpipe competition day. Hmm, ok! They started with the kids' competition. The kids were quite skilled really!

Then they moved on to the adults.

In between sessions, they played recorded traditional music. Many people got up to dance. This family was all dressed up in traditional costumes, as were many people.

The circles grew bigger as people joined in. It was very much like Greek dancing.

There was quite a variety of costume styles.

I loved the pointy shoes!

There was only so much bagpipe music we could listen to so I wandered around trying to find someone that spoke English to find out what else would be happening. In the end, it was the family above that helped us out. The man spoke great English and was very enthusiastic about the festival. It turned out that there would be bagpipe playing until about 6pm when there would be a bit of singing plus all the bagpipe players would come together and play. It was only 2pm so we decided not to hang around.

His costume was great. The pants were all wool and I thought they looked uncomfortable but he loved them because they breathed so well. He wore a dagger at his waist. Her costume was wool and cotton.

Their kids were dressed up to but this was my favourite. This girl had just finished kindergarten and her kindergarten teacher had lent her this outfit to wear to the festival It was made for the teacher by her grandmother when the teacher was a little girl!

The nearby church was beautifully painted inside.

Many people camped for the entire festival. Generally, Bulgarians are very tidy people. They always put rubbish in bins. Bulgaria is much cleaner than Greece.

It was such a fun experience! It was so great to see so many people embracing their traditions.

We drove back along the same road that we'd driven up so many times and at last I got a photo of this street sign that had us puzzled for a while. We worked out it meant that a mechanic was just ahead!

We were now enjoying the company of the waiter at the Italian/Bulgarian restaurant so much that we ate there most nights. He was a great guy. His name was Vegdie. We got on really well with him. When he found out we were Australian, he disappeared and came back with a girl from Iowa. Her name was Sydney! Her father was Bulgarian and her mother was American and she was here for the summer staying with her grandparents. She was working in the restaurant to try to improve her Bulgarian. It was so good to chat to people in English! We left with the offer to stay with Vegdie next time we visit.

Our last big walk was to to Wolf Rock. We started above the village of Gyovren, which happened to be Vegdie's village. He told us to drop in for coffee but we were a bit early and he wasn't up. The road up the back of the village was really rough and in hindsight we probably shouldn't have attempted it in the new rental car, but we made it to the plateau ok. We parked the car there and started to climb up the hill. We soon passed a shepherd. He had a large dog with him that seemed quite friendly. It was obviously hot because it jumped in the water trough to cool itself down! The water trough was carved from a very long tree trunk!

We walked up and up. After an hour and a half, we made it to Wolf Rock. Two lookouts were built there. The high one was quite solid, but it was only when I was at the top that I noticed one of the handrails was a bit wobbly. I saw that the nails had pulled out and the handrail was held together with cable ties and a piece of wire!

The 360 degree views were superb. We could see all the way back to the Pirin Moutains where we were last week.

Hello!!!

The other viewpoint was supported by a huge old pine tree!

We took a different path back down and it was beautiful. Again, we were surrounded by wildflowers.

Looking down over the village of Gyovren.

Vegdie had recommended that we eat at a particular restaurant near his village. It was beautifully set beside the river. A small waterfall cascaded down beside the tables and a suspension bridge spanned the river. An old fulling tub had been converted to hold live trout (brought in from a local fishery). We had delicious food here and John's trout was the best he'd ever had!

The lovely waiter spoke English and he asked where we had been. He asked if we had done the Devil's Path, the track I really wanted to do but it was not possible due to broken bridges etc. He then told us that the main bridge had been fixed two weeks earlier. Arrghh!

We had a last dinner with Vegdie and Sydney then, as we entered our place at the end of the night, John badly cut his finger on the gate. John soon realised that he wouldn't be able to walk the next morning as swinging his arm was painful. So our last walk here got cancelled. Never mind - at least I was able to get this blog finished!

Til next time.

Heather and John