Estonia: Saaremaa Island

Thursday 20th July

Up super early today for the bus trip from Tartu in the east of Estonia right across to the western side of the country to the island of Saaremaa. For a change, we travelled on a fairly decent, spacious and air conditioned bus! At the western port of Virtsu, the bus drove directly onto a huge ferry. Everyone climbed out and enjoyed the 45 minute sea crossing to the small island of Muhu, boarded the bus again, drove across Muhu and continued along the causeway, taking us to Estonia's largest off shore island of Saaremaa. As per normal our first port of call was the info office to enquire about camping possibilities. We'd bought this tent in Cesis, so decided we should get as much use out of it as possible. We opted for a camping place close to the town and found it to be the home of a local Estonian who'd basically turned his garden into a campsite. Motorhomes at the front and tents in the back. A really cool place ina  very literally, homely atmosphere with a great personal touch. This, together with a chicken braai, great company and the never ending daylight, concluded another awesome day.

Camping in a Garden

Friday 21st July

Woke up to drizzle, just because we had decided to camp. Luckily it cleared up pretty quickly and the tent did not fair too badly. We walked into the town to see the charming old castle where they had workshops with displays of glass blowing, ceramics and wrought irongmongery. You could also try your hand at archery in the medieval courtyards of the castle. In the afternoon we did something that we had planned on doing only in Russia, to visit the Moscow Circus. Well!! they were in town so why not do that now whilst the tickets are cheaper! At first glance it appeared as if we would be disappointed as the circus was so small and there were hardly any caravans, people or animals around. Was this for real or what. Inside, the tent and arena was tiny. Anyway, it turned out to be rather good with all the usual circus acts but not as spectacular as my pre conceived idea of the Moscow Circus led me to believe. the drawcard were the performing bears. I personally do not like the idea of wild animials living this kind of traind and "tamed" life but I must admit that what these bears had been taught to do was pretty incredible. The best of their acts was that they could move a cube through a maze so that it found its exit point. This was not a preset maze that the bear could "learn" as the trainer kept on rearranging the direction of the maze. There had to be some element of "understanding". The bears gave us a farewell by pulling a chariot around the ring and bowing to everybody.

We returned to our campsite to find it totally filled up with numerous groups of touring cyclists. Mostly Germans and Scandanavians. It felt like camping in the midst of the Tour DAfrique!! At 22h45 another group arrived, it is still light at this hour as the sun has only just set, so now we were totally surrounded by paniers and bicycles. We were both tired from our day but somehow it is not possible to sleep when you know the sun has hardly set and will be rising again in a very short time!! It really messes up the body clock!

Saturday 22nd July

We could not leave this island before exploring the other side of it, so we took a bus to the North Western corner. We did not know what to expect there apart from some beaches. What we found was a remote harbour town with not much going for it except for the fishermen and its local inhabitants. It was rather barren and uninspiring except for the short stretch of pebble beach!