Latvia has Snakes!

Day 87

After getting ripped off the previous night, we ended up having an earlier night than planned so awoke fresh and ready to hit the road.

Our plan for the day was to start working our way along the Gulf of Riga towards the northwestern end at Cape Kolka. The cape had been described as extremely remote and jaw droppingly beautiful so we were looking forward to the drive out.

As we worked our way along the coast, we stopped just outside of Riga at a town called Jurmala. During soviet times, Jurmala was a favorite holiday spot for high ranking government officials and this can be seen in the grand houses and architecture along the waterfront and a couple of blocks back towards town.

With the beach being 33km in length, we just did a short walk down and then headed back through the town. With it being a Sunday morning, the town was pretty quiet at 10am and there were only a few places just opening up for breakfast so we decided to continue heading along the coast.

Jurmala beach front.

Not a bad sandy beach for Latvia.

One of the amazing wooden houses in Jurmala.
With a bit of TLC this could come up a treat I think.

How about a turret for a house?
A lot of the houses had some big security cameras throughout the yards, so
I'm not sure what they are trying to protect or whether it's just a lot of paranoid Russians.

It was about 160km drive out to Cape Kolka along the typically bumpy Latvian roads. Much of the destination was right along the coastline through pine forest, however, we passed a number of small towns on the way where houses were perched right on the waters edge.

During soviet times the cape was closed off to the public as it was being used as a military reserve. The town of Kolka was not really spectacular so we headed straight to the cape itself. We parked up and then took a walk through the woods down to the beach.

The cape is the separation point between the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Riga so you can actually stand on a small sandy point and see the two seas collide. Actually, collide is probably a bit overly dramatic, as they really just wash into each other. 

Where the seas meet at Cape Kolka. 

This area of beach hasn't seen a lot of people as it was closed to civilians only up until a short time ago.

We then moved back up through the woods to take a look at the small military unit that is still perched on the coast and some tiny little cottages that you can rent out and stay in right on the sand dunes.

One of the cute little cottages/beer barrels you could rent on the beach.

Old Soviet building on the beach front.

As we were walking back through the forest, we were keeping and eye out for berries and mushrooms as we had passed hundreds of people on the drive out who were picking these in the forests. 

We didn’t see any mushrooms, but spotted a couple of blueberry bushes. As I was leaning over to pick some of the berries, I noticed something strange about a metre from my hand. Pulling my hand away I then realised it was a snake! Yep, I didn’t know it beforehand but apparently they have snakes in Latvia. 

The Latvian Snake!

With that little encounter, we decided to leave the berries and the forest and head back to the van via the beach where we weren’t likely to encounter any more snakes.

With very little else to do on the cape, apart from look at the meeting seas, we decided to continue our journey along the coast only this time heading south towards the town of Ventspils. 

Ventspils is a large town on the western coast of Latvia and has undergone a fair bit of development in recent years with the large amount of cash being injected from the shipping and oil industries it supports. We had read that it was quite and industrial town, but also that it had a number of beautiful beaches and cute old town area.

Arriving a little later in the afternoon we pulled the bikes out and then took a ride through the local park towards the beach. It was a very windy afternoon as we came down on to the sand; we were greeted with about a dozen kite-surfers tearing up the water. 

They certainly didn’t look like beginners with many of the getting some huge air off the tops of waves and narrowly avoiding getting tangled up with each other. 

Ventspils Kitesurfers.

We continued our tour around town and it was amazing to see just how much public money had been spent on the town compared to other Latvia municipalities we had been to. The pavements were all new and rather than concrete, they had used bricks. Many of the roads had also been bricked over to (rather than bitumen), to give greater aesthetics. There were a large number of high quality sporting facilities and many of the parks had gym equipment for public use.

It's quite common to watch television with a cow in this country.

As we made our through the old town, we eventually came out to the port which Ventspils has been built on and you could see how it had generated such wealth for the town, as it was gigantic. In fact as it does not ice over in winter, it has become the biggest port in all the Baltic States.

Ventspils town square. They obviously have a lot of money
to spend on making overly sized objects.

Ventspils Town Hall.

Claire and I continued our ride to identify a suitable wild campsite and headed out towards a couple of car parks we identified on the map. Moving on to the last one we found it to be ideal, with toilets and a harbor view. As I turned to see what Claire thought, I noticed that she was not around so headed back towards the van to find her.

I eventually got back to the van to find a glum looking Claire, who explained that on the ride out she got pulled over by the police for riding on the road. Although they just took her name, date of birth and address, it seemed a bit unfair considering the section of road that she was pulled up on was separated with different coloured bricks (i.e. grey and red), so it actually looked like a bike path.

Despite our little interaction with the police we moved down to the car park we spotted earlier and camped up for the night, enjoying a beautiful sunset on the beach and ride on the rotating see-saw.

The rotating see-saw right on the Ventspils beach.

Another overly sized object. This one was just outside
our camper door, so we couldn't resist a seat on it.

Sunset walk on the Ventspils beach.

I took this photo after I fell off the see-saw and got some sand in the camera. Actually it was a fair bit of sand - so much so that the whole shutter wouldn't open and made this effect. Not bad hey!