Latvia, May 2010

Latvia was a great experience. We spent five nights in Riga, the stag party capital of Europe. Ryanair flies direct to Riga from London, ferrying fat middle-aged men to the party capital of the Baltics to drink themselves silly before one of them gets married. Young Dutch boys made up the rest of the clientele at our hostel, Friendly Fun Franks, complete with guided pub tours and 24-hour bar. Here we met the first Australian since Mongolia; Phill was stoked to talk about the footy. The pub tour took us to four authentically un-Latvian bars, including the Kiwi Bar (owned by the elusive Friendly Fun Frank), a Belgian beer bar, and, obviously, an Irish bar. The night ended with Phill hiding in bed begging not to go on the club tour - that night anyway.
In Riga we partook in a popular walking tour with Zane, a student. She showed us interesting sights and told us when to look up for the things we would otherwise have missed. The streets of Riga old town are cobbled and thin. Turn any corner and you will find a church, and don't forget to look up for maximum effect. The intricate art nouveau facades gave us sore necks and exhausted the 'cool buildings' quota on our camera (and, no doubt, Facebook as well). Our tour ended with amazing Latvian food at Lido - a chain of restaurants with traditional Latvian food for locals and tourists alike. Boy can those Latvians do potatoes.
After five nights and lots of beers at the hostel, we jumped on the bus for four hours to Kolka, the most North-western part of Latvia, where the Gulf of Riga meets the Baltic Sea. The bus took us through the seaside resorts where Latvians chill out, and small fishing villages with their fair share of old people, Kolka included. Having not booked accommodation, we wandered the street (non-plural) looking for Usi farm, the only address we could find on the Internet (the address - Usi, Kolka, Latvia). A huge campground, an old farmhouse and one room for rent - luckily it was available.
Kolka is part of Slitere national park and has a whole network of hiking, cycling and bird-watching routes. We chose the cycling, on bikes with no gears and back pedal breaks. So much for extreme mountain biking. We rode for about 7kms along the beach, sand flat-packed with the rain and constant drizzle. We saw no-one on the beach, just a few old tractors waiting for boats to come in. When we came to a small creek flowing into the Baltic we headed inland, got lost, got a little bit scared, but eventually found a track to follow. The ground was spongy with moss and intermittent ponds and lakes from all the melted snow. The track took us through centuries old fishing villages and past old soviet army barracks and through ridiculous amounts of deserted forest. Eventually we came back to the beach, had a picnic, Phill got naked, and rode the 20kms back to Kolka along the road, stopping every 3kms for a Snickers.
Back to Riga for one night, then off again to Sigulda, about one hour west of Riga and in the Gauja river valley and national park. We couch surfed for the second time, with a French girl, German girl, and Spanish guy, all European volunteers in the park and at schools. Like in Kolka, there were great walking tracks and maps for the national park. The first day, we followed the river south through the forest. There was a luge park and a bungy jump thing and a Tarzan adventure park...but we stuck to the walking. Had a lovely picnic on a sandy bank and basked in the warm weather. Walked back through fields and meadows of tulips...awwww...
That night we went for drinks with our couch surfing hosts. The boys made a triumphant return at 5am, when the sun is already high in the sky. The next day we trecked along the river to the Turaida castle, 800 years old, and managed to sneak into the massive castle manor complex by taking the hard road uphill. Nothing like a free manor. We splurged on the cable car to cross the river and admired the old woman with the massive nose whose job it was to open the door, take some money, close the door, and enjoy the ride over the valley.
Back to Riga for another Saturday night, another group of stag parties at Frank's and another pub crawl. Latvia made a good impression.