Latvia: Cesis National Park

Friday 14th July

Time to move on again. This time to Cesis which is the main town of the Cesis National Park. It's only a 2hr bus ride from Riga so there was no need to leave too early. We c limbed on the bus at 11am only to find it titally full with only standing space. So... we stood for 2 hours in the hot vehicle. ! We had 2 Dutch girls to chat to who had also been in our dorm in Riga and we all decided to stick together and find accommodation in Cesis as a group. On arrival we discovered that we'd pickedc the wrong time to come here as it was fully booked out due to the town's huge celebrations of being in existence for 800 years! Latvia's oldest town!! We enquired about camping and made the decision to go for that. Great for the girls as they have a tent but we had to go and buy one!! Found a cheap one to serve the purpose and started the search fro a bus to the campsite which is a good 5 or 6km out of town. In the heat we stood for another 2hours waiting for the right bus to come along and were finally dropped off in the camping village. OK, so where is the campsite? There were no signs to it nor was there much of a vilalge! Just ramshackle buildings and no shop [we didn't have supplies]. Hopefully the camping site will have a shop, they normally do. Somehow we found out the way to the campsite, a 1km walk through the forest down to a river! There were spots free, thank goodness, but no shop!!! The campsite owner offered to drive 2 of us back to the town to buy things whilst the other 2 setup camp. Me and the one Dutch girl found a good place under the trees and sussed out the plac.e A really nice location way out in the sticks, next to the river and surrounded by forests. By the time the other 2 had returned with food etc... the weather was beginning to change!! A great relief to have some coolness but not at all good for camping as the rain was threatening. So typical, just because we'd bought a tent! the time we DON'T want rain it happens. Anyway, we ended up having a fantastic braai as we now had heaps of chicken which we made into skewered kebabs. Together with salads, chips and beer it was very reminiscent of home!!! Only problem now, the rain had started!! Oh no!! Was this cheap tent going to be waterproof??? We waterproofed the packs just in case and dubiously climbed into the tent. So far so good!! Just dont' touch the sides of the tent, a bit difficult when it's so small. Our luck held our, the rain wasn't too heavy and thankfully stopped in the night, but instead the wind picked up!! How I wish we'd had this weather during the past 2 weeks. It was now actually getting pretty chilly....

800 Years Medieval Festival

Saturday 15th July

No more rain yet. but very windy. Not a good sleep as tent was very cramped. All of us chilled out in the morning hoping the weather would improve as we wanted to walk around the "Town of Celebration". What a celebration it was. There were literally thousands and thousands of people milling around in this ancient old town which had been transformed into a real working medieval village. At each and every corner it felt as if we were in a time warp. Every single local was dressed up in medieval dress wandering in amongst everyone. It was like walking around a live theatre set. Ironmongers worked on one corner, the church gardens were filled with beggars, priests and monks all in authentic dress. The ruins of the castle had armourplated horses and knights with jousing sticks, around the fountains sat the rich gentry folk in their afternoon suits, bowler hats and gorgeous gowns, sipping tea!!! Suddenly along comes a whole host of beautiful children in colourful peasant outfits and garlands in their hair. Believe me, all the stops were pulled out here today. Every square had music and dance of some sort and the cannon ball was fired on the hour to mark the passing of time. What a festive day.

Sunday 16th July

Hitched into the town, to find bus/train info for a way out of here. Once again, a bit of a mission as we are in a small village again. The town was back to normal today, with no trace of any festivities ever having happened here in the past few days. Considering the last event ended at 4am, it's incredible how fast everything had been dismantled and all the litter removed. Pretty impressive. In the evening we had a last braai before packing up, in preparation for the next stage of our trip - Estonia.