Weather: ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️ 🥵🥵
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪 (3 out 5, bread from the supermarket in the hotel room)
Track: 🇸🇰🇸🇰🇸🇰 (3 out of 5, up and over the hill trail through the forest and flower meadows filled with butterflies)
Track intensity: 😯😯😯 (3 out of 5. Sweaty but not bad at all)
Hotel: 🛌🛌🛌 (3 out of 5, basic hotel room with nice beds and a shower with a wall mount!)
Name of followed trail: SNP trail
Special mention: The couple that came back to give us a lift. Thank you, we were about to give up on hitching. You helped us a lot!
We slept in a bit and had a relaxed breakfast. We packed our bags, but left the food and some other items in the room. A little bit of ‘slackpacking’ 😁
No one from the hotel could bring us to Zliechov, so we try to get a lift instead. That takes longer than expected, so After 45 minutes in the heat we’re about to give up when a car that best passed us comes back to pick us up. We go instant from tired and disappointed to really happy. Hitching is a funny thing 😅
In Zliechov we get a drink and after that it’s time to go. To continue our walk to Istanbul. We walk up the hill on the steep track. It’s tough, and I’m happy with my lighter pack. We get to the top faster than I expected. From there a steep but doable track down the hill. We walk through the forest, but there are also a lot of meadows with flowers and butterflies. Still they don’t want their picture taken today. Exept for when we’re almost there. We see 2 butterflies connected to each other. Not sure if they’re making new butterflies or if it’s something else, but they even fly like this…
We walk into Čičmany, 3 hours after we started our hike. We made better time than I expected. Mark goes back to the hotel and I get us a cold drink, some lunch and a well deserved ice cream. I’m happy that we found a way to continue for now, despite the fact that it’s not going as smoothly as planned.
We have the rest of the day to relax and look around in the village.
It’s a beautiful place with wooden houses, all painted with geometric shapes. They look like gingerbread houses. Apparently this started as a way to shield the wood from the sun with mud or chalk, and later became ornamental.
We have a good meal (Mark is truly in love with the sauerkraut soup) and go for a good night of sleep.