Is this better than Banff? My first trip to Bulgaria!

Is this better than Banff? My first trip to Bulgaria!

welcome to [Music] Bulgaria so Bulgaria this was a country that I had not known very much about we landed in the capital city of Sofia our flight landed around 10:00 a.m. where we got a rental car we had a pretty packed itinerary so we jumped in the car it took about a 2 and 1 half hour drive where we ended up at deit Shaka caves from here it’s kind of unapparent where the entrance is you can’t really see much but slowly as you wind through the foliage across the river you get to the entrance of the cave and this entrance is at least 50 to 75 ft tall so you go through this entrance way and it opens up into a ginormous Cavern pretty hard to beat this as our first stop here in Bulgaria this is absolutely insane this Cavern is probably 500 M long and it’s a shock when you walk in there it’s absolutely huge and there’s about four or five different openings letting light pour in from above and the time of day we got there it was just golden light rays basically that were pouring in through the ceiling this is the part I love most about travel for sure is just getting these types of surprises this one is absolutely mind-blowing just the size like I said is insane and as you go further and further in you can see the view of all three of the caves here as we look up one two three and then this crazy one back here it’s kind of got like a perfect Oasis feeling to it the sun’s pouring in there but we explored this and we took lots of images which I’ll put a series of them here but this cave was absolutely stunning and as a photographer it was something that I had never seen before it honestly felt like it was out of a sci-fi movie because of the scale and just how beautiful the light was coming in there and then the next cave that we arrived to was another really famous one here in Bulgaria as I soon found out called prna caves also known as the God’s Ice Caves as you can see entering another big entrance like this and it starts to open open up again behind us look at that we kind of wound our way through until we found the God’s eyes and it’s these two slits that look kind of exactly like a set of eyes uh that you would see maybe God looking down on the cave and the light pours into those as well so we got some really cool images of me standing up in front and walking towards those which you’ll be able to see in the video and I also pop some photos up here equally as impressive you can continue on past the God’s eyes and wind your way out and it actually has an opening on the other end and this is on the other side of the highway absolutely incredible way to start the trip in Bulgaria and as a nature lover this was something that I hadn’t seen much in photographs and I was very excited to be able to capture with photo and video because I think Bulgaria is a very underrated place to travel especially for landscape and Adventure style type of Travelers it was dark so we headed our way back to Sophia I got a good sleep that night and the next morning we headed out fairly early so this is a day I was really excited to take on because we drove about 2 hours South and headed into Reland National Park this is also one of the most famous parts of Bulgaria because of it goes right into the mountains where a lot of Wildlife and a lot of the basically hiking and Adventure stuff happens there’s a lot of ski resorts around this area and Rel is quite a large National Park but there’s a specific place that we were headed to we got to take and save a lot of elevation gain on this hike as we’re heading up a ski chairlift and we got to the ski lodge this gave us access to the reala S Lakes hike so we hiked up from here and it’s about 2 3 km to get to the first Lake and then you can hike up to a Viewpoint to see basically the Seven Lakes all in one area there it’s absolutely stunning it’s kind of these rolling grass Meadows and then nice dark Peak but we got to kind of explore around here and the Fage is so different from where I’m in Canada so it was very very cool to see and kind of explore some different type of mountains so it’s a really nice way to spend the day because it’s not too far from the capital city just was reading the tourist visitor sign in there on the trail and uh there something a little bit different so a public service announcement if you’re planning to bring your goats to Bulgaria to go hiking with you you just can’t graze them in Rel National Park so don’t bring your goats here well the next morning was another exciting one we headed back towards kind of where reala National Park was but today we’re going to the stab pyramids this is another thing that I would call hudo in North America but it’s a very famous natural Monument here in Bulgaria heght kind of follows up this ridg line and eventually you get to uh one of the higher areas on the ridg line where it opens up into the St pyramids if you don’t know what hoodo are they’re basically eroded areas of sand and dirt with a rock on top and The Rock protects the bottom from rain and other elements from eroding it away So eventually these big pyramid type structures in different formats kind of start developing and the textures and different shapes of it is really beautiful and especially in this spot it was such a huge area everywhere you could look around um Across The Valleys had different versions of them so that was really beautiful to see and it was really cool to fly the drone over and photograph these spots we’ve had our own little tour guide the way up we met this little dog in the parking lot and she’s been walking along with us all the way up and now we’re just about the top and she’s still here I think this is a really great spot to stop because it’s super accessible the hike is not overly difficult and uh it’s just a great place to stop on the way to our next location so this is probably one of the most famous spots in Bulgaria where we’re headed next called the rela monastery and I believe it’s the largest Monastery in the Balkan so it’s absolutely massive and it’s at the basically end of a Mountain Road and I have to mention that this road was absolutely beautiful because we started getting some more elevation so all of the trees in this area had turn colors then we arrived at the monastery so to give a bit of a sense of scale of the monastery that we’re heading to there’s about 300 rooms so it has kind of a five-sided shape of the building and it’s 300 rooms that are built all around the exteria and with the monastery the main um religious Center in the middle and I believe this is where the monks would stay historically but I believe that you can um roll up and if there’s rooms you can actually stay there yourself so this would be quite a cool experience if you have the time and it’s set in a very magical kind of setting up there so it would be quite a cool accommodation if you have the option to do that so we spent about an hour or two just walking around exploring the monastery and then we went through and they’re right outside the the gates on the backside there’s a little restaurant where we had some pizza and got to have a drink and enjoyed the beautiful afternoon that we had in bugaria once we got back to Sophia it was rush hour time and a lot of the streets in the historic Center are oneway so it was quite the adventure trying to get to our hotel next had to put our car on a lift to put it down into underground parking under the hotel if you’re planning to stay downtown or in the Historical Center of sopia just give yourself some time because when traffic stops or the one ways are blocked uh everybody stopped as well um we ended up meeting with free Sophia tours our guide showed us all around the city showing us all the ins and out and the different historical periods it was really surprising to me to be able to see a Jewish Church a Catholic church or Christian church and also a Muslim Church all within basically one block they’re very close to each other so that was quite crazy to see as often you don’t often see that in a city and then also the Communist history for me coming from North America to just actually see remnants of this and hear stories of people’s grandfathers and grandparents um on both sides of there’s so much different levels to it because the city is so old so they actually have dug and recovered different areas and it’s just continues digging down so most of the new buildings is built on top of historical sites and the city hasn’t put a lot of presidents on preserving all of those so some of the sites are even covered up to this day which are just uh underground which was kind of crazy this was a really nice relaxing day we spent the whole afternoon basically hopping cafes getting some food and just exploring some of the sites that we didn’t get to see on the tour but overall I I really enjoyed so he has a city was super welcoming and for somebody that had not known that much about Bulgaria I had absolutely nothing but good things to say about this country from the Landscapes and the nature um at the top I really enjoyed it and there’s actually a lot of places now doing more research that I would love to go back and explore and for being a country that doesn’t really hit on the top of a lot of people’s bucket list I would absolutely put this up there on in a place that you should visit especially as a photographer or somebody that wants to see some unique land landcapes it’s a fairly large country with a lot of unique kind of rock structure and different geographical type um settings which I think would be really cool to explore if you’re in a country nearby um in Eastern Europe I think it’s definitely worth a stop over if you’re connecting it to something like Greece or northern Greece or turkey or uh Slovenia or something like that where you’re kind of nearby even Romania it would be a great spot to fly in and just rent a car overall I felt it really safe to travel we never had any issues at all I walked around by myself at night time and I felt very safe as long as you’re not looking for trouble I think you won’t have any issues and it’s actually kind of growing um I’ve heard there’s a lot of digital Nomad opportunities in some of the areas some of the ski resort towns and stuff have a lot of co-working spaces and they offer really good opportunities for digital Nomads and again I just want to reiterate that I would definitely visit Bulgaria again I had a lot of fun being able to kind of explore a country that was new to me and I didn’t know very much about my name is Dusty and thank you guys for watching this video I’m still continuing to build this Channel and I’m figuring out the format and Niche that I want to kind of fit into right now I’m making videos about stuff that I like if you have enjoyed this video or want to see more travel stuff give me a subscribe down below if you like it or if you have something to say about the video make sure to leave a comment but I appreciate you guys so much and uh follow me on Instagram if you want to see more of my content from this [Music] trip

An epic trip through the unknown country of Bulgaria. You will soon be adding this Balkan destination to your bucket list. From the mindblowing Davetashka + Prohodna caves and stunning Rila National Park to the Rila Monastery and the capital city of Sofia this was an adventure I won’t soon forget.

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00:00-00:27 INTRO
00:27-01:45 DAVETASHKA CAVE
01:45-02:51 PROHODNA CAVE
02:51-04:21 SEVEN RILA LAKES
04:21-05:30 STOB PYRAMIDS
05:30-06:36 RILA MONASTERY
06:36-10:08 SOFIA + OUTRO