Camino Pilgrim

I twisted my ankle real bad within the first hundred meters today. I was running away from horseflies. I was not sure at first if they are hornets, wasps or horseflies. They did have yellow and black stripes on their bodies. As I kept walking, there was more and more of them so I wanted to do some evasive maneuvers and stepped real hard into my ankle.

I immediately felt that this is no small sprain and wanted to hitchhike towards a bigger town to get home and rest. First two hours there were only locals passing me that drove small distances.

Apparently for female horseflies mid-June to mid-July is the main egg laying season and they needed my blood real bad. I had up to 30 of them buzzing around me. Switching into long sleeves and long pants did help a lot as they need to bite through your skin to access blood. Calm sunny days apparently are their favorites for laying eggs and they inhabit small puddles of water with muddy soil.

Unfortunately all of Soomaa is currently a small puddle of water. Water is all across the forests and meadows. I did find sanctuary in RMK Läti tower as the horseflies were probably afraid of the birds circling around the top of the tower.

After a good rest I decided to continue at least to the local nature science school, but my foot felt now even worse than before. I was barely able to move at all. Both the Tipu nature science school and the RMK Soomaa center offer free accommodation to pilgrims and other hikers, so it was a safe bet of a good destination.

Right next to the nature science school I was finally able to hitchhike onto a car and continue another day. I feel sad that I did not manage to cross Soomaa in one go as I hoped for, but we learn and we adapt.

I hope to continue right where I left off as I am quite close to civilization once again.