Day 13: The second get-together night turned out to be somewhat calmer than the first one at the Lofoten islands. Some teams only arrived long after midnight, due to the aforementioned computer outage at the Russian-Estonian border crossing or because of technical issues. Others would not show at all for a variety of reasons. Tragically, we learned that one team had a severe crash on the way to Tallinn. It’s fair to say that in our team the long driving days and the sun-lit nights are starting to take their toll as well. Luckily there is 4 of us so we can (and do) rotate drivers and navigators frequently and keep things on the safe side. As we are on the southbound leg of the rally now and have left the Arctic Circle behind us in Russia, we also start to enjoy somewhat genuine nights again. It helps a great deal! Contrary to our late start at Lofoten, we were among the first teams to pull out of our campground this time. Task of the day: locate the Hill of Crosses north of the Lithuanian city of Šiauliai. The hill boasts a bizarre collection of 100k+ (2006 estimation) crosses of all sizes, shapes and colors. From there our ambition was to make it to Vilnius. At the start of our rally I had arranged for a meeting with a friend who lives there, and we were also keen on getting some of our roadbook missions completed there. Sadly the highway avoidance drills around Tallinn and Riga and the pothole-filled roads on our path forced us to abort this plan: at 6 o’clock in the evening we were still hours away from reaching the Lithuanian capital city, hence we made a right turn and rerouted west. I am determined to make it to Vilnius on a next Baltic trip someday soon though. The next day would have 2 potentially time-consuming border crossings in store for us: into and out of the Russian enclave Kaliningrad. With that fact in mind, we made a stop in Klaipeda, a nice coastal town, treated ourselves to a splurge meal and then hitched a ride on the last ferry of the day to the peninsula just across. So did many other rally teams with us. The northern part of this narrow stretch of land is designated a nature reserve, which makes wild camping a big no-no. Shortly after midnight we made base at a regular campground on the edge of Lithuanian territory and were soon vast asleep. -David
Posted on: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 10:00:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015