23/07/08 - Taking on the dusty roads.

First job for today was to find out what was so great about our
parking spot that caused it to have a place of interest sign pointing
off the main road. After a pleasant walk up a hill (yes believe it or
not, Estonia DOES have hills) and through some forest we didn't find
anything until we were almost 'home' when Marea spotted what she
thought was some sort of fish digging into the sand in a beautifully
clearlittle pond. Watching it for a bit we decided it was a spring
coming up out of bottom, causing the sand to dance about - similar to
the Pupu springs near Nelson in New Zealand.

Time then to head for our next country on the list - Latvia. Looking
at the map it seemed pretty obvious what road to take, but Tomtom had
other ideas, wanting to take us on a big dog-leg. So we ignored him
and went our way, soon realising that Tomtom is not that dumb after
all and he was trying to avoid the dusty gravel road that we had
found.

Any how, we made it to Latvia alright, only to find that we had
brought half of Estonia with us in the form of dust in the back of the
van!! So at our first stop in Valmiera, Marea went nuts on a big
cleaning mission. We figured the dust was coming in via the back air
vents, so we blocked them off with tin foil, and after a quick walk
round Valmiera we were off to the Gauja National Park confident we
were now dust proof!!

11km of dusty road later, Pat again was covered in dust!! Oh well -
at least its sunny aye ;-)

We stopped at Sietiniezis, where you can walk around the white
sandstone cliffs that drop down to the Gauja river. Our walk also
came across lots and lots of blueberries scattered about the forest.
This made Marea happy, and we set about picking our desert/breakfast
treat!!

More dusty road later, we made it to Césis - a very charming medieval
village with an old town square, and large castle looking down onto a
medieval pond complete with old fountain, walking paths and an
amphitheatre with the castle as its back drop.

Our camping spot was just out of Césis on the banks of the Gauja river
- perfect for a swim and BBQ!!