Our guesthouse doesn’t really offer breakfast. I say ‘not really’, because it ostensibly does, but the proprietor didn’t seem keen on the idea yesterday, so we deduced it would be better to venture out and find our own this morning.
Around these parts, that’s somewhat easier said than done. Most eateries don’t open until 11:00, because they service the lunch and dinner crowd, not people looking to break their fast on cereal and eggs.
Fortunately, we did eventually find a place in Võsu, which, apart from decent omelettes and sausages, also stocked that ubiquitous E-stonian commodity, WiFi.
With a full belly and caught up on e-mail, we were a mere 200 m from the beach, so it seemed like a good idea to go and play in the sand for a while. Grey clouds were gathering
overhead, so we thought this might no longer be an option within an hour or two. While we were frolicking, however, the grey clouds cleared and the day was to remain sunny from that point forward.
After the beach, we drove a few kilometres up the road to Oandu. The fact that the place even has a name suggests that it’s a village or at least a hamlet of some kind, but, as far as we could discern, there’s not even a house there.
What there is, however, in plentiful supply, is good hiking territory. We therefore went on a short
hike on a trail around some beaver dams. We saw plenty of dams, but, sadly, none of the shy little creatures that had built them.
It was then time for lunch, so we drove back up the road a kilometre or so to Altja, another of the tiny hamlets dotted around the area. We ate a lovely salmon lunch at Altja Kõrts, which I followed with the traditional Estonian dessert, kama, which is a ground mixture of barley, rye, oat and pea flour, mixed with yoghurt and some fruit juice. It’s surprisingly tasty.
We followed our late lunch with another hike, this time the Old Growth Forest Nature Trail, whose starting point lay back up the road in Oandu.
This trail turned out to be the best of the trip so far (not that we’ve done that many), if not the best hike we’ve ever done. The principle reason for this was the joy in Eloïse that it provoked. She makes a real sport out of spotting each of the numbered markers along the route and then listens attentively as we read aloud the information on the accompanying signs. A simple hike thus becomes a game and adventure!
The forest really is wild around here. Brown bears, moose and lynx all roam these parts freely and I was amused to observe that the only warning given concerned the danger of falling trees. Luckily, we know how to behave if we do come across these animals (I’ve actually encountered bears and a moose on previous hikes), but the chances of actually doing so are slim.
Eloïse joyfully recorded the encounter of every toadstool along the way, as she firmly believes that gnomes use these for resting their hind quarters.
Other notable encounters along the 4.7 km trail were some tiny frogs and, to our great amazement and joy, a wild dear, which leapt from invisibility in the undergrowth and gave me the fright of my life, because, in the split second that I heard the animal thrash in the tall grasses before I actually saw it emerge, there was ample time to imagine it might be something less friendly than a dear.
Eloïse mentioned the deer at bedtime as the highlight of her day. It had clearly made a big impression on her.
It’s fascinating to watch her grow and develop. The older she gets, the more she gains from every experience that befalls her. And. the more I bear witness to this process, the more pleasure I derive as her father. This can only mean our trips in the years to come (and, indeed, our time spent at home) will just keep getting better and better.
Tomorrow, we leave Lahemaa National Park and continue east to Narva, located right on the border with Russia.