Black Sea Bulgaria

Travelled:329km Romania into Bulgaria

Stay: Bulgaria south of Burgas on the Black Sea, free bush camp N42.4450 E27.6057

Visited: Aladzha Monastery, Petrified Forest

Unfortunately our bit of paradise turned sour last night with music blaring all night until 4am! We could even hear it with our earplugs in. It is known that the Romanians like to party hard during their holidays...so with little sleep we made our way back to the main road to continue our journey south to Bulgaria. Even though it was only 8am the traffic was already getting hectic with people making their way to the beach and parking anywhere they could. 

After stopping at Lidl to spend the rest of our RON we arrived about 9am at the border. There was a bit of a queue and while we waited Mark ate a ham sandwich for breakfast as we had been told by some other motorhomers that the Bulgarian customs officers had wanted to confiscate all of their pork products. 

Within half an hour we had passed the Romanian border and made our way to the Bulgarian side and were surprised that it was not manned! So...we could keep our pork! 

We stopped to buy a vignette (road tax sticker), the minimum was €8/7days. (Bluey’s getting a bit of an assortment on his front windscreen). Then we were off into Bluey’s 30th European country! Amazing how they add up and he’s been to a few more than once. Just for instance this is the 12th country so far this trip and we plan on 6 more different ones. 

Anyway, due to the fact that our main objective it to get to Istanbul we only plan to travel down the east coast of Bulgaria. Unfortunately for us in August this means very busy beach resorts which isn’t our thing. But we did attempt a couple of stops. The first one was Aladzha Monastery which was built into the side of a cliff. The hermit monks were inhabitant of the caves during the 13th-14th C until the Ottomans invaded. After paying 5BGN ea (€2.50) we walked through the remains and then we had a look in the museum.

 Our next destination took us past the Golden Sands beach resort area and then inland from Varna (what we drove through seemed quite nice for a large city).

 The petrified forest which was a cluster of tree like stone columns in all different sizes, spread over a barren landscape. Some believe that they are fossilised remnants of an ancient forest, while others think they were formed by compressed chalk? 

Then it was back to the E87 driving past the popular Sunny Beach resort, 

Nesebur which is set on a rocky peninsula 

Lots of aqua parks 

Unfinished developments 

Plenty of watermelons and pumpkins for sale

And fields of sad looking sunflowers 

and into the big port city of Burgas. Along the way we called into a campsite to empty the toilet and then got fuel and water from the service station. From here we veered off the main drag and along R#99 for about 11km to a recently added park4night spot on the beach. We had to take a small bumpy track with overgrown trees that scraped along Bluey’s side and chose one a many other tracks that lead to plenty of spots along the shore. There were many campers and a few motorhomes including the German who had put the p4n entry in. We made sure to say thanks and had a chat. Then had a stroll along the black sandy beach. The only draw back was that the area is not very clean. In both Romania and Bulgaria (generally cleaner) they drop their rubbish everywhere! Someone just let off some fireworks... let’s hope we get a quieter nights sleep.

Forgot to mention Bluey’s other milestone today which was reaching 80,000km on the odometer!