July 14, Varna to Aheloi, 107 km

A Day Full of Excitement!

This was a hot and hilly day for all of us, with 4000 feet of climbing as we rode up and down Black Sea coastal mountains. There were lots of memories today.

Leaving Varna, we were greeted by a beautiful hooker standing on the side of the road. On down the road I even came across some wild pigs rooting around a fruit tree.

About an hour out of town, I pulled ahead of the group I was riding with, only to find that they had become a part of a spectacular car accident. A car pulled off the road and without checking proceeded to do a U-turn in he highway, only to be T-boned by an approaching car. It was in-between a gap of bikers. There was a huge crash with smoke and flying glass. Both cars one car went in the ditch and the driver of one was unconscious with a propane bottle leaking. The guys were heroic in stopping traffic and extracting the hurt driver. Instead of being local news, they hit the road as soon as an ambulance arrived, with traffic was backed up over a kilometre in both directions.

I found the Romanian drivers to be on the wild side. Many of the Black Sea towns we rode through were booming with high-rise development and lots of new luxury cars on the road. These drivers had a burning desire to pass in all kinds of conditions. It was quite unnerving to be biking on the edge of the road and have someone in oncoming traffic pull out in front of me to pass, and take up my lane too. Several times I had to bail off the road and into the dirt.

We stayed in a small coastal village, that is being rapidly converted into a seaside resort, where we stayed in three small family run hotels of about a dozen rooms each. It was quite a treat, in that there was a swimming pool, and restaurant with cheap food and drink. That evening, two talented musicians came and played Romanian and old American songs until late.