Yet another near disasterous amateur hike

So we avoided by about 2 hours being stuck in a blizzard in the Pirin range in the South of Bulgaria with very little equipment or clothing. We had stayed over night in a nizhni (or something like that) - a state run mountain hut in this case about 2000 m up and a four hour hike from the nearest town. The next morning dawned not so nice so instead of spending the day doing the "most exhilirating and beautiful" hike in the country, head back to civilization. It started to snow before we hit the tree-line. Luckily it stopped long enough for us to make it down to Bonsco but about 10 minutes after we made the city limits we were in the midst of a major thunder storm. As a reassurance: I know how to build a snow shelter.

The trip to Bonsco from Melnik (the smallest town in Bulgaria... beautifully set in this cool semi-arid canyony place) didn't quite go as planned either. Brent, feeling the urge, decided to sit on (or more likely, hover over) the can for the duration of our bus's arrival and departure from the station. Karin and I, thinking he would be back at any second, loaded all of our bags into the under-bus compartment thing. Recognizing that he wasn't coming any time soon and that the bus driver had lost all patience I basically threw Karin onto the bus (which was packed and in which she had to stand for the entire 2 hour journey)... not one of my most gentlemanly acts but I thought that she had payed already and I figured that it would be better for her to get there and be able to relax rather than deal with all the uncertainty of staying behind on the hope that Brent at some point would finish his bowel movement. It was a snap decision. Anyway... Brent did in fact finish his bombing run and emerged completely oblivious, wondering where our bags and Karin had gone. I would have yelled at him if I hadn't been laughing so hard.

We caught a bus an hour or so later and eventually made it to the Bansco bus station where we found a rather peeved and harassed Karin. Bulgarian men are very friendly. Nothing really happened, she was right in the bus station, but she had a bit more of a rapore with them than she probably wanted by the time we arrived. The fact that I was sending her alone was also something that I didn't consider when analyzing the situation under duress.

We're in the city of Plovdiv which I like considerably more than Sofia. We'll probably head North tomorrow night and then to Turkey a couple of days later.

Pax!