Distance: 77.15 km
Ridetime: 4:01:57 (+ 6 hours at the border)
Average: 19.0 km/h
Total distance: 1631 km
Another sunny day in Ukraine. And even warmer than yesterday. It seems like a will indeed survive this first part of the trip through Eastern Europe that had the potential to be a very cold ride.
Arriving at the border at 11 I soon learned that bicycles were again not allowed to cross. Well, wise from experience I quickly started to ask around, and sure enough a Romanian guy in a mini bus offered a ride. He didn’t even want money which I thought was a nice thing. And then we started to wait. And wait a little longer. Basically the border guards on the Ukrainian side disappeared and returned 3 hours later. They have long lunch breaks here!
Meanwhile my Romanian friend was preparing his car for the crossing which meant hiding a rather large amount of cigarette packs all around the car. I hoped we were only smuggling cigarettes and asked what would happen if they searched the car. The response was to show a nice 50 hryvnia (5 euro) note my driver had put in his passport. And sure enough, while the two cars in front of us was selected for further checks we drove right through.
Entering Romania would take another 3 hours for reasons I’m still not sure. We even drove to the front of the queue as my driver screamed “Tourist Tourist” and pointed at me. The other cars seemed to be fine with that.
At 5 o’clock or six hours after arriving at the border I unloaded my bike and rode away into the sunset.
Gotta love it!
Seems it’s a common theme. Thanks for sharing this, otherwise I wouldn’t have known until I get there. 🙂