Another birthday, another country...

Happy 55th to my beautiful wife Ruth today as we once again celebrate her birthday in a new country. Last year we were in Colombia. We don't expect this trend to end anytime soon, so I wonder where we'll be for next year's birthday?!

We learned a couple of years ago that birthdays are not going to be travel days. Birthdays are relax days. Plus, it's raining today and we've pretty much exhausted the immediate area of things to see and do.

We are, however, going out for dinner!

And then, we've got a big travel day on Monday, but we'll tell you all about it in tomorrow's blog post.

Yesterday was kind of uneventful. It was, however, a beautiful day. Looks like the last one for a while, so we wanted to be outside. We were looking for a decent hiking trail but couldn't find anything in the area.

We drove to a nearby lake, figuring maybe there would be a trail around the lake or something.

Lake Cincis.

The lake was created by a dam built between 1962 and 1964 to supply water to the nearby steel mills. The village of Cincis, that had existed since 1360 was relocated to a nearby hill, and the remains were swallowed by the water.

This old abandoned church is sometimes partly underwater when the lake is high.

We saw a trail marked on the maps.me program, and found a parking spot nearby. We walked the trail, but it seemed to go forever through this valley, with nothing much to see. It might be a logging road of some kind, and vehicles had been on it recently, but we didn't see any. No other people around either.

Plus, it was muddy. We went for a couple of kilometers and then turned around.

This picture makes it look worse than it really was.

Not one of our better hikes!

We went back to the car and took another paved mountain road up to a small village. We parked where the pavement stopped, and went for a walk.

Glad we didn't drive any further!

We stopped and had lunch at the top of the hill, but still couldn't get a worthwhile view. Walked back down to the car for plan C.

We had seen the ruins of another church in the bush on the opposite side of the lake, and figured there must be a path leading to it. Well there sort of was, but it was very overgrown and lots of trash strewn about.

We made it though.

Not easy getting through the bush.

Well, between the three walks we probably got 10 kms (6 miles) in. Not great, but at least we got some exercise.

Still raining as I write this, but we're due for a day of rest. Looks like a good day for an afternoon nap!

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