Thursday 11 September 2008

Wednesday 10th September. Day 6

7.00pm, just checked into a motel for the night having started out at 8.00am this morning.


Due to some slight navigational difficulties and some very testing roads we are still about 2 hours from the Bulgarian border. An early start tomorrow should get us back on track as we need to be at the border about 8.00am to queue for the short river ferry crossing into Bulgaria. There is then about a 4 hour drive and we should be in Sofia by tomorrow evening ready to visit the orphanages and hospitals on Friday.

Romania is definitely a country I flux. There is evidence everywhere of EU funding particularly on the roads which vary from good finished ones to very dodgy finished ones. Actually it is the ones that are in between that are the worse as we found out today.


The roads that are being upgraded invariably have long sections that are just down to one lane while they work n the other. This means long delays as traffic heading one way is held up to let traffic coming the other way through. Temporary traffic lights or flag men everywhere and if you get a red light it can mean a long wait. When you do go through you are driving on the unsurfaced bit so you get the bad road plus the delay!

Thankfully everyone kept their sense of humour despite the conditions and the lunatic drivers who overtake on blind bends and with seemingly no concern at all about oncoming traffic.


Some of the scenery we passed through today was very beautiful, other parts were dry and dusty.


We are now going down to the bar café for a bite to eat and hopefully they will have the England v Croatia game on TV for us to watch.

Weather again very hot and sunny which made it a bit uncomfortable in the cabs. Now covered about 2200 kms in total.

Highlight of the day were the sausages for lunch – from Alex’s local butcher they were delicious.


Finally, as you will see from the last photo someone else had a sense of humour when they decorated the bathroom in this place !

Over and out.

P

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