Day Nine: Romania to Bulgaria and the Black Sea
We had a lazy but early breakfast, and then packed the car and headed southeast to the border at Giugiu. The first 100 Km or so were on the single bit of autostrada in Romania. We managed to get slightly lost on the ring-road system at Bucharest and ended up seeing more of the city than we had originally planned. However, after a coffee stop we arrived at the border not long after noon.
It took an hour and a half to get through.... and we were relieved of quite a lot of our dwindling supply of euros to pay various "taxes"... including 6 euros just to cross the bridge across the Danube. In total we had 3 Romanian taxes and about 6 Bulgarian ones to negotiate. These guys have a long way to go before they can join the EU!!
One of the scams was a request for a 152 euro road tax fine. We had to argue our way out of this and threaten letters of complaint etc, and ended up only paying 20 euros. All in all, an interesting "game" at the border... but mere chicken play for those of us who have been on the Plymouth-Dakar Challenge!
After getting through the border we headed south east across the Bulgarian hinterland to the coast. The route, along some minor roads, took across some nice ranges of hills and through some lovely villages.
However, as we got closer to the Black Sea coast we had to take more major roads amd witnessed suicidal overtaking behaviour by Bulgarian drivers on congested roads. There were many slightlty crashed cars along the roadside. The local police were around in numbers but seemed ineffective at traffic control.
We arrived at Sozopol, which is at the southern end of the Black Sea coast, near the Turkish border. We found a nice campsite right on the beach (again, recommended by the LPG. It's called "Kavatsi Camping". After pitching the tent, and having a quick paddle, we went to a beachside bar and had cold beer and "shopska" salad (a really nice salad with a tasty cheese).
It took an hour and a half to get through.... and we were relieved of quite a lot of our dwindling supply of euros to pay various "taxes"... including 6 euros just to cross the bridge across the Danube. In total we had 3 Romanian taxes and about 6 Bulgarian ones to negotiate. These guys have a long way to go before they can join the EU!!
One of the scams was a request for a 152 euro road tax fine. We had to argue our way out of this and threaten letters of complaint etc, and ended up only paying 20 euros. All in all, an interesting "game" at the border... but mere chicken play for those of us who have been on the Plymouth-Dakar Challenge!
After getting through the border we headed south east across the Bulgarian hinterland to the coast. The route, along some minor roads, took across some nice ranges of hills and through some lovely villages.
However, as we got closer to the Black Sea coast we had to take more major roads amd witnessed suicidal overtaking behaviour by Bulgarian drivers on congested roads. There were many slightlty crashed cars along the roadside. The local police were around in numbers but seemed ineffective at traffic control.
We arrived at Sozopol, which is at the southern end of the Black Sea coast, near the Turkish border. We found a nice campsite right on the beach (again, recommended by the LPG. It's called "Kavatsi Camping". After pitching the tent, and having a quick paddle, we went to a beachside bar and had cold beer and "shopska" salad (a really nice salad with a tasty cheese).
posted by Sally & Nick at
12:29 PM
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