Spent last night parked in a free camper place, right on a lake and next to an hotel in Otepaa This is actually where the world championships for cross country skiing are held every year. We woke this morning to find that it had stopped raining! Not sunny but dry. We had been trying to sort out which border crossing to take using the internet last night and stumbled across a series of posts on the new (since 1st August 2011) border crossing system. As the Estonians are so into technology they decided that it would be a good idea for every person wishing to cross into Russia to book a crossing date and time on line. This is in order to cut down on the big queues. We have heard of people taking 10 or even 15 hrs to make the crossing, although 3 to 4 hours was more common. The only problem for us is that it meant that the earliest we could book was 06.00 on 16th August rather than our planned date of 15th. We will see how well it works!
Once we had made the decision we decided to try to find a nice campsite in a quiet place, by a lake with shelter in case the rain starts, with good wifi. Hmmm not fussy ….. should be easy! As we drove down towards Veriora to find the elusive perfect site we noted that the houses were different in style to the Latvian houses.
We stopped in the small town by the church to look for bread, and even in this tiny place there was a wifi sign on the post by the church and little gardening shop.
We carried on to Polva and dropped into a tourist information centre and told them what sort of campsite we were looking for. The lady knew just the place!
About an hour later after following smaller and smaller unmade roads we came to a lovely lake and house. It turned out to be just about perfect!
Again we were the only ones there!
The place had its own sauna on a floating pontoon on the lake.
The shelter was really nicely made, had power, wood cooker, smoker, open fireplace and wifi …. as we said perfect!
The roof was covered in grass/plants and the gutters were machined from logs and held up with tiny uprooted pines. The four corner supports were made from uprooted trees with the roots trimmed to shape to hold the roof. We have not been to Scandinavia but I suppose they must have things made in a similar style.
Even the legs of the tables were made from the roots and bottom of the stump!
Maybe its a bit odd taking a picture of it, but as you can see we like wooden things …. even loos!
We’ve decided its too nice here to move on and so we think we will stay another day …. as long as its not pouring with rain….
troopytracks 