A foggy morning. By 7:45 we were on our way to the Ukraine border
at Sighetu Marmateiei, 200km and we hoped only a 4 hour drive. Our
map shows, pretty much, a continuous line of towns. The limit in the
towns is signposted at 50 but nobody slows down to this. We mostly do
but just get overtaken at the first opportunity legal or not. When we
did get some straight roads they were in poor repair so could
not increase speed much.
We did get a break from built up areas, and poor roads before going up and over the Prislop pass, so made up some time. However at the pass we noticed a touring coach so stopped and had a chat. A south Korean couple with 2 children doing a one year world tour. In 3 months had done Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Ukraine and Romania and heading south. A whirlwind tour. I therefore lost the gained time.
Some towns had really cool bus shelters
At midday we arrived
at the border crossing to be told by a friendly official that there
was a wee problem. The bridge was only rated to 3.5tonne and we’d have to
go to a crossing Just 100km to the West.
Off we trundled, found a spot to eat and arrived at the border around 3pm.
The fun started. John got out at the passport control and couldn't see anyone so drove ahead to other check point.
They spent some time with our passport and visa’s but were having issues. First we needed to go over to the truck line as we were over 3.5tonne. They showed us back to passport control who looked at our papers and walked with us back to the other office, where two of them sat under a tree smoking and trying to scan the QR code on our visa. For a while I think All the offices were involved in our paperwork and nothing was happening to inbound or outbound traffic.
Finally the lady
involved in outbound traffic took her phone over to the two guys
under the tree and managed to scan the codes. Back to passport
control for stamps.
Now to customs. We were taken to a lady who spoke English but was on a smoke break, so would deal with us when finished her smoke. However she came to us with her smoke and asked some questions of where we were going etc. We spoke about national parks and where she was from. She told us all trucks had to pay a 2euro fee. It was above board at the Bank. (There are signs up on all counters informing that bribery was an offense.) She showed us pictures on her phone of the national parks , John got the witch and she was surprised that we had the NP starred on the map as well as a few other NP’s. We had a relationship so all good. Half an hour before the Cashier closed we paid our 2 euros and were finally set to go. Our customs official was again outside on a smoke break!
We waited behind a
truck for 5 mins and then were through. John navigated us to a river
down a very rough pot holey road and through a few small towns all
looks well cared for but didn’t have too many responses to our
waves.
While at the customs
a Serbian truck driver came and spoke to me asking where we were
headed. He told me that the roads are shocking in Ukraine and that
last year it took trucks 5hours to do the first 60km north. The road
has been redone but the roads to Odesa are very rough. Maybe we’ll
rethink our travel plans….
318km Camp
site