CESKY KRUMLOV – Czech Republic (Thurs 23 July)

We had a quiet day today, starting with domestic duties, however we did get quite excited about the turn around time on our washing. We used the washing machine here at the hostel. A Bosch machine that did a complete wash cycle (dry to spin and out) in fifteen minutes. Imagine how many loads you could do on a Saturday morning with that baby.

Then it was on to more important things. We went for a drive which took us to the National Park which runs between the Czech and Austria. We wanted to go for a bush walk but first we had to find some bush. We passed a large reservoir lake on the way that is known as the Czech Rivera, but we came to the conclusion that this is probably because it is the largest piece of water that they have. We did find a place to stop in an area that is well know for its cycling so we thought that biopeds might be accommodated. The bike paths we found were roads, where we entertained ourselves by trying identify the road kill (We correctly identified a mole, but we had to Google to confirm).

When we did find somewhere to venture off the road, we were swarmed by mozzies, ants, flies, bees, butterflies, etc. It was like they hadn’t been fed for a month and were warned that we were coming. Just incase I haven’t mentioned this before, the insects here are huge. In between the trees we saw quite a few ant mounds that stood about one meter high and just as round, formed by the piling up of pine needles. We know these unusual structures were ant mounds, because Justine destroyed one to see what it was. We were faced with a teeming mass of very angry and very large ants, swarming in all directions. We didn’t fancy them up our trouser legs and so we legged it out of there. During the course of our scenic route we kept seeing these signs illustrating bears. We didn’t know if the track was called a bear track, or whether bears habituated the area, either way we made sure we made lots of noise and didn’t go too far before heading home again.

We finished the day by sitting down with a couple of a similar age to ourselves that are also staying here, to share a beer and a few stories. They are from a small town just out of Denver that has a population of about 400, 200 of which live in the local rest home. They are doing a quick tour of a few of the major cities in Europe (this one was an aside). It seems strange, now we are the ones sharing the stories with people and they look at us with disbelief. It was only a few weeks ago when the reverse was true.