Bulgaria: Musala (8/28)

We’ve been using Google to avoid toll roads and most of the time this works very well. However, as we neared the Greece Bulgarian border, Google started telling us to do some odd manoeuvres. We pulled off a dual carriageway and then had to do a U turn before coming back to the junction and crossing the 4 lanes of traffic. We then followed a service road for a couple of kilometres to bypass the toll booth. I wasn’t particularly keen on having to repeat the same manoeuvre but to this time also push into stationary traffic.

The highways agency have obviously cottoned onto this little bypass, when we got to the turning there were bollards and a large pile of soil. We watched someone attempt to mount this and subsequently bottom out their car; so thinking better of it, we turned around and paid the extortionate €2 toll.

It may have been worth doing this stressful manoeuvre however in order to get further up the border queue. It took us a whole hour to get the kilometre between Greece and Bulgaria.

After this craziness we quickly bought a vignette online and headed for Rila Monastery. It was quite late by the time we arrived so we decided to pick a nearby lay-by and head back in the morning. The monastery sits in the hills and so we had a pleasant cool nights sleep and I even managed a discrete bucket shower.

In the morning we were some of the first people in the monastery and it was great to have a look around before all the crowds arrived. The monastery is a UNESCO world heritage site. It was founded in the 10th century and is regarded as one of Bulgaria’s most important cultural, historical and architectural monuments and still houses around 60 monks.

We then has some decisions to make. There is a cable car part way up Musala, the highest peak in Bulgaria, however it is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. We thought we’d like to walk up, but also get the cable car down to save our knees.

This issue with this was the largest hut was also closed on Monday and Tuesdays, we had read about a more basic hut, nicknamed “Icy Lake” (as the lake it is situated by is partly frozen all year round). They didn’t have a digital booking form only a couple of phone numbers on a Bulgarian hiking website.

We gave them a call but it quickly became apparent their English was as good as our Bulgarian. No worries we thought, there is a tourist information in the larger town nearest the peak. We headed there and said to the guy we wanted to hike Musala, it quickly became obvious that he didn’t speak much English either but told us the cable car was open and the hike to the summit was only 10km from the valley so obviously not a problem.

This made us a little unsure as we are definitely capable of hiking 1600m up and down in a single day we are trying to limit the decent time for Olly’s knee. The other option would be to carry camping equipment just in case the hut wasn’t open.

We decided to drive to Borovets which is the little ski town in the bottom of the valley below Musala. Ski towns are always feel like ghost towns in summer, and this one had a distinctly Soviet feel. We managed to find another tourist information and this time the lady spoke excellent English. When we explained what we wanted to do she seemed alarmed as the hut we wanted to stay in did not even have electricity. She very kindly rang the hut and confirmed that they would be open the following evening.

Although still a little sceptical we headed off to find somewhere to stay for the evening before getting an early night. We found some nice pine forest half an hour away which was next to a pretty river. It was all very lovely until some horses came past and then following them a hoard of biting insects. We were still at 1000m altitude which meant a nice cool nights sleep.

In the morning with many sandwiches packed (in case we were unable to buy breakfast or dinner at the hut) we headed back to Borovets. The hike started with a steady incline in the pleasant shade of the pine trees. We then passed through a surprisingly boggy section which reminded us of Scotland, we assume all the water must be coming from snow melt. We didn’t see many other people and two hours later we got to the first (closed for summer) hut. There is a small lake here and a new shiny ski lodge is being built. After some snacks we carried on up the more rugged path past some more lakes until we eventually reached the icy lake hut. We even spotted a chamois and baby chamois on the way. There didn’t appear to be anyone in but the door was open. We assume the owners must have been having a siesta. We ate some sandwiches and tackled the remaining two hundred meters of ascent to the summit.

On the summit is another small hut, (closed to the public) and two weather stations. The newer looking weather station is sponsored by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Institue for Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy. I looked this up later and it seems the weather station was involved in the research of cosmic rays.

We had our summit photo and admired the view for a while before heading back down to the hut. When we arrived the owner was there and we managed to mime that we wanted to sleep the night and have some dinner. She showed us inside, the building is an interesting triangular design with no natural light downstairs. I assume this is because the snow can be very deep here in the winter. The bunks were situated upstairs, which had many windows, we actually ended up with a private twin room.

The lady then explained to us that the toilet was “the panorama” to the left outside of the hut and the drinking water was the stream to the right of the hut. We hoped we guessed this mime right as this would be a bad thing to get mixed up. I now understood what someone who had written a review about the hut on google meant when they said the toilet was “outside”.

Olly discovered that the left hand side of the hut was the toilet as when going for a pee he discovered a lot of other peoples “panoramas”. We then sat in the pleasant afternoon sunshine for a few hours. When it got dark the hut owner started up a generator to light the dining room. At this point we were keen to have dinner but weren’t sure whether she was going to provide it in her own time or whether we were meant to ask. Eventually one other person we saw in the hut asked for something in Bulgarian and was presented with some lentil soup. We followed his example, ate some tasty soup and headed for bed.

In the morning we headed back down the hill a slightly different route towards the gondola station. We were pleased to realise the gradient was relatively gentle and flat from the lower hut. As we approached, we met streams of hikers who had caught the first lifts of the day. This confirmed we had made the right decision by walking up when the lift was closed as we had successfully avoided the crowds.

I found the gondola a little nerve racking as part way the gondola cabs unclamp from the single wire and clamp onto the lower one. Olly assured me that obviously the cab wouldn’t move unless it was clamped to the wire so it was fail safe. We then realised that the way the cabs get pushed onto the new wire is by being bumped along by the ones behind it...

I also wasn’t reassured that the control panel for the gondola looked worryingly similar to the control panel of Chernobyl reactor 4 in the recent TV series.

Twenty five worrying minutes later we were safely at the bottom station. We had decided to stay a night in the beautifully soviet-looking ski lodge which was very cheap on booking.com. We thought we would just walk in and see if we could get it cheaper but unfortunately when Olly went into enquire he was told they had no rooms for the night. Perhaps it was the t-shirt he had worn for three days hiking.

Instead we stayed somewhere cheaper further towards the Romanian border. This hotel was also conveniently located near to the Prohodna cave known as “The Eye’s of God”. Thirza and Paul had been climbing here before so in the morning we set off to have an explore. The cave was much larger than I expected and impressive in itself, it was even more beautiful because of the two eye shaped holes in the ceiling which beams of sunlight penetrate through.

We spent a while taking photos and tackled one climbing route near the right eye. Whilst on the route a family walked through with someone playing some kind of bagpipes made from a goat skin. They actually sounded pretty good considering it looked like a goat had been inflated and had its legs replaced with pipes. The climb was interesting and had a large more tricky section with no bolts, it was also covered in spider webs so after one route we decided to call it a day and head in the direction of the Romanian border.