Where Salmon Fly

Day 88 

After a quick morning run down the beach in Ventspils, we went a little further inland to visit a town called Kuldiga, which sported the widest waterfall in Europe and is also a popular spot for Latvian period films due to the original architecture of the town.

The old houses of Kuldiga - many have been used in period films.

Restaurant and bar upstairs and shop downstairs.

Original Kuldiga buildings from the 1800's

We headed down to the Ventas Rumba (waterfall) and although it is 240m wide were quite surprised that it is classed as the widest in Europe as it didn’t look all that wide.

According to the locals though, in spring when salmon head up river they get to the ledge and spring out of the water to clear it. Local people would then camp on the ledge and catch the fish in mid air as they tried to get over it.

Europe's widest waterfall and the ledge where the salmon fly.

The bridge leading over the waterfall.

Other than the very wide waterfall, Kuldiga didn’t have a whole lot more to offer so we again hit the road and made our way towards Lithuania and the town of Palanga.

Maxi crossing into Lithuania.

One of the first times we've actually stopped at a border crossing for a photo.

Palaga was another seaside resort town and it was obviously the height of the summer season as it was cranking with people. Our original intention was to find a wild camp spot on the beach again, however, after about an hour of driving around in circles we finally determined that it wasn’t possible to get down to the beach with a motorized vehicle.

This is one of the strange things we have noticed about several seaside towns, in that they don’t really develop on the beachside itself. Houses, restaurants and car parks are built a fair distance back from the beach and you walk down to the coastline. I guess this is a good method to keeping the coastline in its natural form; however, it is a pain in the arse if you want a scenic camp spot.

Not having much luck in Palanga town we moved further south and about 15 minutes out of town headed down a dirt track that seemed to get fairly close to the coast (about 200m away). We came across a large carpark (with a W.C.) on the edge of the forest and parked up for the night, as it was very quiet.