Latvia Day 3: Kolka
Kolka was by far the most adventurous part of the trip so far.
The thing to know about Kolka is that it's not your usual touristy destination with the hotels, restaurants, services etc. We figured that since it's mentioned in the Lonely Planet, we should be able to (for example) find a place to stay the night even though the only hostel mentioned in the book did not have any space for us. So without fear we boarded the bus from Riga, and were on our way at about 6:30am.
Kolka was about 3-3.5 hrs away. On the way there we passed the place where Victory Tsoy (Russian rocker) died in the car crash. We did not see the place ourselves, but we know we passed it because some Russian passenger was arguing with the Latvian driver whether he is taking him to the right stop, and only stopped arguing when someone said that this is where Tsoy died. Apparently the road has changed quite a bit since the last time this guy saw it, and he did not recognize it; he did however know about its proximity to his car crash. Anyway, that was our only entertainment during the ride. So naturally we were falling asleep all the time, and missed our stop.
Luckily we did not miss it by much, only about 1km. I happened to open my eyes to see the sign with the word "Kolka" crossed out, which means the end of Kolka. So we de-boarded, and hiked back to town. The weather was nice and sunny, and we were passing bunch of people drawing churches and old abandoned houses.
As we were walking, we saw the sign for that hostel that did not have any space available. So we figured we'd stop by, and give it another shot. The barefooted girl who greeted us in front of a huge lawn with the tents on it confirmed that they were booked. I guess it's not that unusual given they have a total of 8 beds or something around that number. We asked her what alternative accommodations she'd suggest, and she mentioned a "hotel" about half a mile away. That was it - no other accommodations there. She also mentioned that we can stay in a tent on that lawn. We inquired whether we could rent the tent, the pads to sleep on etc., and she said we could. We compared the expenses of going to the hotel, and staying in a tent, and figured we'll be just fine with the tent (7 vs. 25 euro.) Side note - the next day we met a German couple that also went to Kolka, and did stay at that hotel, and deemed it the worst place they stayed at in years.
After setting up the tent we set out to see the local attractions which are a very nice beach, a cape where the Baltic Sea meets the Gulf of Riga, and the village itself which is well preserved because of the high security military base that Soviets had there during their rule. The weather was great, and we enjoyed ourselves tremendously. I'd highly recommend this spot to anyone who loves the outdoors. We even sat down in one of the 2 cafes that operate in the area, and had dinner there.
When we were back to the camp we made fire, and were taking pictures of the sunset when we started hearing thunder, and felt a few drops of rain. In about 10 seconds the few drops became a downpour. We barely made it inside the tent. In about 10 minutes the inside shell of the tent started to get wet. We remembered what Uncle Igor was telling us in Sigulda - it would not rain that hard for long. We're not in the tropics he'd say. So we waited patiently, and the rain did subside. We got out, surveyed the damage, and conversed with the other campers who were huddled under the large tent covering the picnic area with the tables and benches. Then we made a strategic decision to move our not-so-waterproof tent under this big tent. As the following hour, and the night have shown - a wise decision. Basically it would not stop raining all night. The rain would subside, but then get super strong again.
We had to catch the 6:30am bus to our next destination, so we got up at 5:30, and at 6am started walking towards the bus stop. It was still pouring...
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| 2011.08.15 Kolka |
