The Last Hike

About 18 hours ago, I arrived home after 4 thrilling days, the first two of which are known as the "Ex-senior freak out in a village house," and the next two - as the "Official end-of-the-year overnight hike (also our last hike with the Hiking Club) :'( These days were totally terrific, completely crazy, and memorably magnificent (or magnificently mad, depending on your preference of the alliteration).

Day 1, June 22:
Five girls... Five "Billa" bags... One car... One house... This could only mean one thing: a trip to the heavenly village called Rayovo. *A note on the "heavenly" part. Don't be confused by thinking that the village is a heaven; it's far from it. There are chickens, cows, old women, a river, decrepit houses, and the pleasant smell of, well, a genuine village. I call it "heavenly" only because "ray" means "heaven" in Bulgarian; however, "raya" means "servant" (during the Turkish yoke), so it's not very clear where exactly the name of the village came from.*

This was our first trip together where I got to drive all alone outside of Sofia. It took about 2 months of persuading my Mom, and about 4 drives to that village with my parents for them to let me go there alone. It turned out to be a wonderful experience.

Katya, Mihaela, Iliana, and Mariana were the other girls in the car. Originally, we were all supposed to go to the Overnight Hike, but Mihaela and Iliana had to leave early and couldn't come. When we arrived at the village, we unpacked all the food which immediately filled up the tiny house. Sure, we tried to unpack all our bags, but severe hunger possesed us, so we simply had to eat while watching soccer games. After 90 minutes of chewing and kicking balls (for some, at least), we got back in the car to go buy water from Samokov. Naturally, there had to be something wrong that day: we had no water (tap or mineral) at the village. Once we arrived at Samokov and bought a 10-liter bottle of water, we felt like going for a drive to a random place. We headed to Borovets, then took one winding road to an unknown destination. The road was beautiful, going through fields and hills; there wasn't a single soul (or car) except for us. After some time, we reached a village, which turned out to be Beli Iskar, a pretty place surrounded by mountains where you can go horse riding. We didn't do the riding part, yet we still had fun. Every single villager looked at the girls-only car with such amazement that it always made us laugh. After that drive, we went back to our village where we had a small dinner and watched 2 more soccer games (the TV, by the way, only has 3 channels).

Inside the house. "Food" and "fridge" were the two most frequently used words.

Day 2: It may be hard to believe it, but we had actually planned this day the previous evening. We didn't put a time frame in our plans, so we weren't completely off-schedule when we woke up at 11:20 a.m. We left the house at 12:30 and headed to Malyovitsa, a peak in Rila. The weather was cloudy and rainy all along, yet on our way to Malyovitsa, we entered a hale storm which we swiftly escaped from, and then headed in an opposite direction (i.e. the Rila monastery). On our way to the monastery, we drove through pouring rain and lightning storms (no hale, thankfully). We were very relieved to get to the monastery where it was only drizzling. We took about 100 pictures of the famous monastery, then hid from the rain in a restaurant nearby. We had a late lunch, and at 5 p.m. we drove back to our village. It was really enjoyable, especially if we ignored the bad weather. Oh, and we had home made lasagna for dinner :)Day 3: Early in the morning (9 a.m.) we slowly started crawling out of bed. That day, the rest of the hikers came to Borovets with a bus, and we met them there so that we could all hike together. They were waiting for us near the gondola lift where I parked the car (slightly hitting the sidewalk while rearing, which seemed to be the favorite teasing subject of all the boys on the hike :) Katya, Mariana, and I joined the hikers, bringing the total number of people up to the impressive 23. That's the largest group we've had on an overnight hike. The more the hikers, the more the fun! :) The idea was to hike from Borovets to the Moussala hut. The path we had to take was steep and long, and it took us 3 hours of hauling up the mountain to reach our final destination. The first part of the hike was annoying because of the mud and the swarms of flies that hovered around us. As we climbed higher, though, the mud was replaced by bouncy grass, and rocks, and gorgeous views (while the flies lended their air rights to a pack of pesky mosquitos). Then, amongst the panting and sweating, there it was, by George, our hut!! Oh, but alas, 'twas beyond another slope that was totally exhausting. At least we took our arrival at the hut for a tremendous achievement and were quite happy to finally be able to sit at a bench.

Our first job when we reached the hut was to check out our room(s). It turned out that all 23 people had to sleep in one room, a situation which yelled "There'll be no sleep tonight." Facing the prospect of not sleeping at all, we decided to at least enjoy our evening. We all went to the mehana at the hut where there was almost no food because there was no electricity. Charming as usual :) Several people decided to hit the slopes for an afternoon walk (which turned into the afternoon hike to Moussala for two overly energetic boys), while the rest stayed near the hut and the mehana waiting for the electricity. The hut was old, therefore the solution to the lack of electricity was an old generator which is about as reliable as a 40 year-old broken down car. To start the generator, you have to kick a special handle like crazy; the handle then pumps up gasoline to the engine of the generator (or whatever it is that starts the generator); it's particularly difficult to pump up the gasoline when the pump itself is not working too well; bottomline: lotsa' kickin' and prayin', and the generator may start (I'm speaking from experience here. I got to help out with starting the generator). Once we got the generator working, we had the luxury of ordering all 20 meatballs that were available at the hut, several soups, and 4 portions of French fries. We also had 1 cheesecake and several hundred random snacks from students' bags. Favorite pastime that evening: playing cards and waiting for the food. At 10:30 p.m., the generator decided to die, so we ended up in complete darkness (naturally, the darkness brought about hysterical screaming and clapping). Everyone lit up whatever electrical appliance he/she had (no hair driers or mixers; only cell phones and cameras), and we all headed to our room. 6 people decided to stay and watch the stars; 3 boys were very stubborn and ended up not sleeping in the room, but in the mehana instead. After 1 1/2 hours of giggles and jokes, the room swept into silence and we fell asleep, listening to the rain and thunder storm that were going on outside.

Day 4: 5:40 a.m. Why, oh why, was I so curious as to check out who was creeping up the stairs?? It was Rado, a boy in 10th grade. I looked around the room and saw that 3 boys were missing (at that point, no one knew where they were). In a state of half-asleep panic (not that there was anything to worry about, but for the sake of the principle I had to be worried about oru 3 hikers), I went looking for the boys with Rado. We found them sleeping on a bench at the mehana. It was sooo early... Too early... Rado and I watched the sunrise (of which I have no proof since I didn't have my camera with me). Pretty soon everyone else woke up, and at 7:50 we were all sitting in the mehana gobbling down stacks of hot French toast (and "raw bread"). One hour later, we started heading up to Moussala. The "highest peak on the Balkans" may sound like a scary peak to climb, but for us hard core hikers, so used to conquering the steepest slopes, getting up to 2925 meters of altitude was like a child's play... only the children were very tired and sleepy, and not too eager to climb all that much, but oh well... The path to Moussala was rocky, and there was even a metal wire which you could grab in case you started slipping down the rocks. With the wonderful prospect of falling down from 2900 meters, everyone was being very cautious not to take a step in the wrong direction. Once we reached the peak, we were all amazed by the gorgeous view we saw from there. Thankfully there were no clouds, so we gazed upon miles of mountains, lakes, and valleys (maybe a bit exagerrated; beautiful nonetheless). We took a group photo at the top and then headed back to our dear hut. Going down was amusing because it was fun trying to lean on the metal wire while jumping down from bowlder to bowlder. We spent about 30 mins back at our hut, then went straight to the gondola lift. Nooo, it wasn't like we were tired or anything; we just weren't quite in the mood for more downhill adventures. The smooth gondola ride had an incredibly relaxing effect. Of course, as we were getting closer to civilization and electricity (OMG!), we felt the natural urge to eat something that didn't take forever to prepare. Some of the boring people left back to Sofia with a bus, missing out on our official lunch, which turned to be an ex-teacher ex-senior late lunch in Borovets. Once our tummies were filled, we started back to Sofia; the seniors-by car, the teachers-by bus. We all got back weary from our adventures, but very, very happy.

THE END (you could probably notice how the description of every other day was becoming shorter and shorter... Oh, funny fact: the writing of this blog entry took exactly four days. Why that long? Well, limited access to a computer was probably the biggest reason. The next entry will be of pictures only - again, from the hike).

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