For yesterday, i was thinking about spending a final day in Sofia, walking around the city. But instead, I spent the day hiking about an hour outside Sofia.
The day before, a sign up sheet was at the front desk for the "Lakes of Rila"-which are 7 lakes in the mountains not from from the monastery I visited, which I just arrived back to the hostel from. Only 2 people we're signed up(a minimum of 3 we're needed) When I asked the guy at the front desk about the "Lakes of Rila", he got excited and showed me a picture on his computer, of sparkling lakes in the mountains on a bright sunny day-It was beautiful and I became enthusiastic, and being that this tour only ran occasionally, I decided to go on it.
The day before, to the monastery, there we're 9 of us in a van, filling up the van, so with 4 of us going to the lakes, I was sure we would have room to spread out-wrong. The driver had a small station wagon, so 3 of us we're in the back seat.
After an hour and half of driving, we neared the mountains. As the car went winding up the mountain road, the thermometer in the car showed the temperature decreasing to 10 degrees (c), 9, degrees, 8 degrees, etc. Finally we reached the spot we're we caught the ski left to go up the mountain.
The ride on the open ski lift was cold, and it was sort of eerie riding alone-just the four of us in 2 separate lifts. (being that it was another cold rainy day-nobody else was there-except for a few we met hiking later).
We finally arrived at the top of the ski lift. And we started hiking up the trail. It was a rocky, muddy trail, all the way up. Of the four of us, two we're American girls and one girl from New Zealand. The one from New Zealand sprinted up like a gazelle, while the three of us had to take breaks periodically.
The four of us we're starting to question the wisdom of hiking on a cold, rainy day, especially considering since with the fog we couldn't see anything. But eventually, we came to the first lake, and even in the fog it was quite a beautiful view. I reached for my camera-and found I left the memory card back in my laptop which was at the hostel. So I couldn't take any photos (my cell phone doesn't work well for photos, and wouldn't do it justice anyway.
We continued on, and looked at 4 others lakes. (the trail was 7 lakes-but the hike to 2 lakes we very steep , and we decided not worth trying in them mud). We kept walking, looking for the trail, and we got confused. Two trails we're going different ways. We started to panic a little, as we didn't know the right way, and we had to catch the ski lift fairly soon. But someone we met gave told us to hike right, and after hiking over more rocks, and through the mud we found our way.
The ski lift down was a freezing cold half-an-hour ride-i had no socks on and no gloves, and I was regretting both decisions. I was counting the numbers on the ski lift towers -descending from 24-23-22 all the way down to one.
All-in-all, I had a good time. The hike was 4 hours long, and in addition to beautiful views, it was fun talking to the others during the hike. The one from New Zealand was traveling for 6 months I believe. One from the US was from Washington DC, the other from Minneapolis, and they we're vacationing for two weeks. They met teaching English in Spain a year earlier or so. Of course, they we're all 20-25 years old I believe.
Later on, I went back to the hostel and took a nap. Then I went out to eat at a restaurant recommended by the hostel, serving authentic Bulgarian food. I had stuffed peppers which we're very good. I then went back to the hostel to read my book.
The plan was to go to bed about midnight-but the American girls from the hiking trip came to common area, and after talking for a while, us and a guy from Holland decided to go out for drinks. No bars we're open-so we went to a 24 hour store, bought some whisky and orange juice, and took it back to the common area-where we learned no alcohol is allowed after 10-we we're told to drink it in the street. So we went to the sidewalk and drank the whisky and orange juice. I got to bed around 3:00 am.
