Today we are leaving Ukraine. Our hotel does not offer breakfast so during our evening walk yesterday, we bought cookies and yoghurt drink to get the day started. Around 9AM we’re on the road. We stick to the main roads which means also more chance of running into some police, especially close to the border. The last big town we pass is Sambir, then it’s on to the Polish border.
we reach the border around 11.30AM and the procedure this time is a bit faster. While we wait we are ‘entertained’ by one of the border guards who keeps asking us for gifts and cigarettes. We don’t give in, but neither does he. In the end, he realizes that he will not get anything out of us, so he turns to Jo and asks him if we speak French. When we confirm that we do speak the language, he asks how to say “I love you”, so we tell him it’s “Je t’aime”. He turns around to pretty blonde girl sitting at the customs window and shouts “Je t’aime!” to her. She seems hardly impressed but he looks happy with his victory. We just have a laugh!
After about an hour, we pass the border and are clear to enter Poland. First stop is Ustrzyki Dolne for some lunch and cash. The moment we stop, we are approached by a bunch of women who try to sell sweets and alcohol. We politely decline but they keep asking. In fact, the more we decline and answer them, the more pursuasive they become. After a few minutes we see that also the locals are being hassled in the same way and they just ignore them. So we do the same and we hide into the first restaurant we come across. Turns out to be a pizza place. Good enough for us!
After lunch, we ride further into the southern Polish countryside. After one week of hotels in Ukraine we really hunker for a night in our tent again. So the plan is to do a loop through the mountains and look for a campsite along the way and then return there after the loop. The Polish countryside hits us by surprise. We never imagined it to be this beautiful and green! Around 3.30PM we stop for some coffee at a local biker bar in Czarna Gorna where we meet Krzysztof and Gosia for the first time. They are happy to give us some tips about the area and we are happy to take them on, so after a delicious coffee we set out in search of bison!
Thanks to the detailed description, we ride straight to the bison reserve. And we must admit, it looks impressive.
The animals are truly spectacular, although they look quite tame. Or they are just lazy…
Next we follow Krzysztof’s advise on some nice twisty roads.
We didn’t spot anything that looked more welcoming than the biker place so we retrace our steps back to Czarna Gorna. A quick stop at the local shop for some dinner and breakfast tomorrow, and we are ready to put up our tent.
