Summary

At the end of our last post we said we'd sort of fixed our speedo-cable. Well it didn't last long and the thing fully snapped shortly after we entered Lativa. With no chance of getting a new one without a 3 week wait it looks as if we're doing the entirety of Scandinavia without one. We do have a GPS on the iPad which gives a speed so that will have to do. The only bonus is without the speedo-cable, the trip-meter doesn't work either so we're keeping the k's low ;)

Our first stop in Lithuania was the weird but intriguing Grutos Parkas. The park consists of a whole heap of Soviet Statues of dictators, generals and probably not very nice people scattered around the forest plus a perfect example of 'Old McDonald's Farm' on steroids. There were camels, ostriches, emus, llamas, chickens and a whole heap of other assorted animals. Worth the visit just for the weird factor. We then headed across to Vilnius, the capital, and we managed to fluke our visit with the 'International Street Music Festival' so the streets were lined with buskers and musicians with music a plenty. It was great to wander the streets absorbing the atmosphere plus a few beers at one of the bars of course. Our last stop in Lithuania was the extremely weird and wonderful Hill of Crosses that has to be seen to be believed. It really is just a hill with a heap of crosses on it but the atmosphere of the place is like no where we've visited. We did then head towards the coast in search of the black sea but the weather was s*** and the sea wasn't black so we opted to head north into Latvia.

Latvia was awesome. Really nice beaches and really nice national parks. We started in Liepaja on the coast and then headed to Kuldiga to see Europe's widest waterfall. It's really more a really wide weir but if you want to get technical… The wood carvings that were to the part next to it were probably more interesting. We then headed towards Sigulda, a stepping stone for the Gauja National Park. We spent the next on a walk around the river that was in a state of disrepair but was nice enough. That afternoon Brenden bungee jumped from a cable car above the river. He'll never forgert the sudden rush of the blood to his head. From Sigulda we headed towards our last stop in Lithuania, Skalupes to do a tour of a Soviet bunker - really cool!! It was never used but is pretty much the same as it was 30 years ago. Brenden even bought a gas mask.

Estonia's north coast was pretty awesome too. Before we got there we headed to the far east side of Estonia and briefly visited the city of Tartu and a couple of lakes. Tartu was a nice lively university city but not too much to see. Lake Vortsjaru was also not really worth the stop but the next lake, Lake Peipus, was huge with the border of Russia running right through the middle of it. We found a cute little fishing village called Mustvee where we camped the night next to the boat ramp. We had some gorgeous lighting here during sunset which made for some nice photos. Once we reached the north coast there was more to see with national parks and beaches to explore. We experienced our first bog that was pretty cool and we also found a campsite in Lahemaa National Park that we could light a fire and have a bbq. This is what we'd been missing our entire trip, apart from a few in Morocco. Our last night in Estonia we ended up in a bar in Tallin, we weren't planning on staying for long but both the beer and the cider was too good that we ended up sleeping in a carpark as neither of us could drive. The next day we were both very hungover as we boarded the ferry across to Finland.

Speedometer: 154, 869 km's