Smoke on the Water

A photo similar to yesterday's, showing the misty areas around which we're trekking. If you don't like the tanty's tilt, then too bad!

The Zdiar valley is awesome! Not only is the village located in an epic valley, but it's also incredibly chill and pleasant. The lodge (Penzion Ciriak) is great and fits in well with all the other slovakian-styled huts. The Tatras mountains are a pretty incredible place. Today we undertook a famous hike from Stary Smokovec really early in the morning and got to appreciate the variety of ecosystems while walking up the mountain, also grabbing a chair lift to go even higher up. The more you climbed, the more the place started to resemble Mordor. The mountain tops were draped in clouds, while the valley stayed sunny. The weather changes so fast here, we got caught in a massive 10-minute rainstorm on the way back to Zdiar. But most of the day was sunny otherwise. Oh yeah, during the hike we also got lost at one point and ended up on a ski slope... Weird to be in a skiing domain when its all dry!

We went back to the village festival and got to witness all the villages from the valley coming together, each with their own traditional clothing and folk performances! That was pretty exciting, we just stumbled on a very local and genuine celebration of traditional values! After that, we decided to make the most of the rest of the day, so we drove further into the valley for another walk through more wooded valleys and a canyon. We also drove over the Polish border just for kicks. It's not very different there...

So yeah, it ended up being a great day of experiencing the region! The weather was incredibly temperamental but we had fun and I got some great photos out of it.

peace