Guest Traveller: Christopher Olney from Lismore, New South Wales, Australia.Favourite Travel Destination: Kemeri Raised Bog, Latvia.
..."So you're in a strange country and you feel like the 'commies' are looking over your shoulder. No one speaks English and all of the food menus are just weird gibberish... so what do you do??? Go for a walk in the National Forrest alone of course...
I caught the train from Riga, the capital city of Latvia and headed out west to where a brochure said a tourist information centre was. After walking an hour or so down a dirt track, I came across a building that was midway through construction. From what I could understand there would be no info. centre for at least a few months. One of the men working on the building pointed me in another direction where I came across a group of people who seemed to be studying the sticks on the ground. Slowly through a combination of broken English and German I found out that the national park was about 2 hours walk back the way I'd just come!
I set out anew with my crudely drawn map and directions in hand, wondering if I would ever see the forest. I didn't mind though, as the dilapidated buildings dotted throughout the countryside were just as interesting. I finally got to the forest only to find that it was actually a Bog. It was fascinating...
Tiny dwarfed trees stretched across the landscape to the horizon, and the sky seemed larger than life. It had a primordial feel, like something that forgot to evolve along with the rest of the planet.
The weather couldn't make up its mind and was stuck in this strange combination of a beautiful sun and rain tango. But the thing that made it, were the reflections on the water.
When the wind stilled, huge billowing clouds were reflected in the Bog ponds perfectly and the ground seemed like some distorted dimension between worlds. You gotta love the unexpected..."..
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