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Week 10 – COVID-19 Tests and the Beauties of Majella National Park
Week 10: Monday 31/08 – Sun 06/09 Fonte Cerreto under the rain – Monday Yesterday it has been raining since 6pm. At around 8pm the rainstorm reached its peak and water started dripping through the lateral and back doors of the van. We realized that both the doors weren’t well closed… This fixed the night was calm and quiet. After breakfast we leave the place and head to Fonte Cerreto. Rain will be falling all day. On Mondays in Italy, especially in small villages, shops and cafes are closed. We decide to drink a coffee in the bar of a deserted hotel. We can sit outside, covered by a roof,…
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Two Via Ferrata at Gran Sasso: Brizio and Danesi. 15km between the rocks and the grasslands
The following itinerary consists in the combination of two easy Via ferrata that deepens in the rockiest part of Gran Sasso National Park (Central Italy). The Via ferrata Brizio and Via ferrata Danesi will allow you to explore one of the most inaccessible parts of the National Park in full safety and with no particular difficulty. The only material needed is a helmet, a climbing harness, a via ferrata kit, some warm clothing (even in summer), water and food according to your needs. If like us you will opt for an early start, you should know that the first part of the itinerary will be mainly in the shadow. The…
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Week 9 – Enjoying the Salty Waters Before New Mountains
Week 9: Monday 24/08 – Sun 30/08 Krapanj Island and its underwater beauties – Monday Another sleepless night and a breakfast under the bit of shadow our camping pitch offers start a long and hot day. A good side of the heat is that we are drying figs that we collected on our way to Sibenik, they look tasty. After a failed attempt to catch a bus from Zaboric to Brodarica, we wait an hour in the shade of the bus stop hoping to catch the next one. At 1pm we finally hop on the bus. After a few minutes we realize we are going too far, when we manage…
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Week 8 – Summer Strikes us on the Adriatic Coast
Week 8: Monday 17/08 – Sun 23/08 A day on the road – Monday Checking again for Covid travel limitations is attempting at our mental health. We have come to the conclusion that heading back home might be the best solution. For this reason, we have set as destination Italy, we will explore the east and west coasts. However, before that we have to cross all Hungary, reach Croatia, take a ferry and to land in Ancona, drive south then north… the whole plan has changed, but we like it “as much as” the previous one. After a long breakfast checking the latest news about the virus, we decide to…
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Week 7 – Slovakia After Two Years
Week 7: Monday 10/08 – Sun 16/08 You have to know that our first common great adventure consisted in crossing Slovakia hitch-hiking in order to enter Ukraine. It was about two weeks after we first met, we were both in Vienna. G just cycled from Monza to Vienna in 4 days to visit some friends, M was heading north after having hitch-hiked from France to Croatia. M plan was to cross Slovakia in order to reach Ukraine, G didn’t have any plan yet. The result was the two hitch-hiking from Bratislava to Košice just to realize that we needed our passports to enter Ukraine, which we didn’t have. Therefore, more…
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Week 6 – Back to Slovakia
Week 6: Monday 3/08 – Sun 9/08 Crossing Hungary – Tuesday After this quick visit of Ljubljana, we decided to head to Slovakia, and in particular towards the Tatras National Park. We changed our plan at the last minute. Indeed, our first idea was to travel through the Balkans, more precisely through Bosnia and Serbia until Montenegro where we were planning to work in the National Park. However, Bosnia closed its borders as well as Macedonia, and together with the other Balkan countries the Covid’s victims are growing quickly. For this reason, we decided to proceed north east in order to reach Ukraine, one of our dream destinations. The first…
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Day 36 & 37 – Our Last Days in Jezersko
Sunday balm Now that we are real Slovenians also to the eyes of the people of Jezersko -climbing Triglav for them has no value since it’s too easy, we had to climb also Velika Baba Nova Centralna- Matej feels like we are ready to cook the spruce resin magic balm. This is the ritual that is going to make us real Jezerskans. The process is secret and cannot be shared with non-Jezerskans, for this reason we will limit our explanation to the following passages. The spruce resin we collected in the past weeks has to be mixed with oil and boiled. The bee wax has to be added together with…
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Day 35 – Velika Baba – New Central Direction
A detailed and complete description This is the description we made of our climb of the famous multi-pitch Velika Baba New Central Direction (Velika Baba Nova Centralna), Jezersko. After a first bad experience on the route we managed to complete this beautiful climb and wanted to be sure no one will get lost on the way again. Our purpose here is not to describe the climb in a perfect way, meter by meter, but is to describe in particular those passages where we got lost and where people can likely get lost. We recommend you to start early, we started at 6am, but consider starting earlier because the weather in…
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Day 33 & 34 – Our Rural Life in Jezersko
Thursday working On Thursday we are working again in the herbs field. It’s, once again, weeding time. In summer there is always something to do in the fields, because, on the one hand, fruits ripe from one day to the other and weeds grow at a fast pace. Harvest of herbs or fruit are done every day. The morning goes by fast, and the afternoon repeats the morning work. Today it’s hot and it’s harder than usual to bend over the plants and kneel in the rows of mint and Millefeuille. When we go back to the herbs field we pass by Jezersko’s Mineral Water Spring. Matej explains us that…
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Day 31 & 32 – Two Small Excursions Around Jezersko
More berries Today it’s, once again berries time. We pick the last black currants -finally- and start with the early raspberries. The older plants, 4 years old, are producing a lot of berries, they are tasteful and easy to pick because at our height. The younger plants -from 1 to 2 years old- have very few fruits, but they are huge and delicious. Anja grows 8 different varieties of raspberries. This allow her to have different times of ripeness and to distribute the harvest over the whole month, which is perfect for solo-working. At first G was a faster picker, now M is always a bit ahead. Raspberries are definitely…
