Motourama Part 25: From a River of Stones to Macedonia

Hello family, friends and followers! The Travel Story of the day is going to be full of ups and downs – literally and figuratively.

Let’s tell it in a photo story:

A happy Esben! Holding his passport WITH the Mongolian visa in his hand. After all the trouble we have had with it up until arriving in Sofia (LINK), this was a definite up of the day.

Parking to see an old church…

…which was small with even smaller doors. Esben the giant is back!

After the church, we wanted to check out Mount Vitosha on the way. There were some rivers filled with stones, and we were slightly impressed.

Esben posing slightly impressed.

When we started off from Sofia, we knew we had to get fuel soon-ish. Both of our bikes were on the reserve tank. We looked for somewhere along the road to the mountain to fill the tanks, but had no luck. We calculated, that we would be able to drive up and back down again with the amount of fuel we had left in the tanks, so we didn’t worry. We did take a small detour up a road, that ended abruptly without a view. The bikes were still going strong, so we turned around and went up the other road. It wasn’t until we were almost at the top, that Phoenix gave up. The engine sputtered, then died. Damn! We had used more fuel than we had hoped for. There was no way Phoenix would reach the top without a long, tough push. We decided that Esben should continue up to take photos of the view, and then come back down again. He carefully made his way up to the end of the road, where all he found was a house, from where the road further up the mountain was closed off. Another dead end. There was no panoramic view anywhere to be found, so he prepared to turn around, when Falkor started sputtering, and eventually died. Thankfully, the wonderful world of physics meant that gravity would take care of that problem, when going down hill. The only problem was, that down hill was quite a bit back the road. The last part had been flat for a while. There was nothing for it, but to push. Esben felt a bit lazy though, and instead of getting off, he kept his bum in the saddle, and waddled the bike past the flat terrain. As soon as the road started going down, the chore was made much easier, and it wasn’t long until the bike rolled ahead with great speed. After stopping to pick up Denise, we both waddled our bikes into motion with great enthusiasm, racing each other on silent bikes down the road. Great fun!

The end of the road. No amazing view and no fuel. That was definitely a down on the top of the hill!

Let the silent race begin! Denise felt like back in kindergarten on those jumping, plastic air-balloon horses, just in bigger, making her squeal with joy all the way down. That counts as an up.

More weight = more speed in this race. Damn, Esben is overtaking!

We found a river of stones half way down the hill. This time we are really impressed and decided pause the race and hold a picnic. This turned out to be quite a big up!

With local smoked cheese…

…salami and tomato. Mhhh.

We also found time to fly the drone!

But the absolute best footage turned out blurry. Definitely another down.

But the rest of the footage turned out okay.

The stone river runs far up the mountain.

Let’s play “Spot Denise”.

After the magnificent picnic and in the mind blowing surroundings, we got back to the race down the hill. An exhilarating 10 minutes later, we were at the bottom. We still had 3 km to the nearest fuel station, so we tentatively pressed the starter button to see if they the bikes would give us one last roar. Much to our delight, they started right up again, so we crossed our fingers, and headed for the “watering hole”. Luck was with us once again, and we reched it without any further problems. As we fuelled the bikes up, we saw that here had still been a litre left in the tank. Our fuel filters had just not let it through. Without enough pressure from the fuel in the tank, the filter stopped the flow. The break we had taken at the river of stones, along with just rolling down the hill, had allowed for some fuel to trickle past the filter, which was enough to reach the fuel station. Very valuable information for when we might be low on fuel again.

With full tanks, we could enjoy some fun, steep shortcuts on our way out of town.

Back on the road again, the skyline of Radomir, Bulgaria, where the high rises seemed to have sprouted out of nowhere.

The lonely tree.

Is that a storm we were going to drive into?

Yes, a thunder storm to be exact.

With heavy raindrops.

Luckily we found shelter at an abandoned fuel station, only getting marginally wet.

“After the rain comes suuun, after the sun comes rain again!” Smoke City – Underwater Love

Luckily for us, the clouds parted, making for some stunning cloudscapes.

Which lasted for the rest of the day.

The goal for the day was to get to Skopje, Macedonia. Here we are approaching the border.

Welcome to one of the most astonishing places in the world – Macedonia! What an up.

Which seems to have a rubbish disposal problem. A bit of a down.

Despite the tainted land of seemingly random rubbish dumps, Macedonia looked promising. Not for the first time, we rode into the capital of a country in the sunset. After settling into the room, we went out to experience Skopje by night, and had dinner.