London to Auckland

Today we slept in until 8am and the called the Kozlodui Police to see what was going down. Much to our amazement we were informed that the Seadoos had been found and that we should get our arses and anything attached to them across to Kozlodui by the quickest means possible. This 70km road trip and ferry ride took 4 hours and by the time we reached the Bulgarian side the local police had arranged an escort for us and were in a great hurry. The reason for the hurry became evident when we reached the police station and were ushered into a briefing room for a press conference with Bulgaria’s main TV stations. There, the area police commissioner apologized that this had happened in Bulgaria and I backed up by saying that the Bulgarian police and people that we had dealt with had been thorough, professional and very friendly and they need not be embarrassed because this could happen in any country. And I meant it. They were wonderful and we thank them sincerely!!

Now we were taken to the Seadoos and it was a sad sight. They had been rolled and pulled about 60meters through grass and scrub and were covered in dirt. There was quite a bit of superficial damage.

We had to go back to the station for another few hours of paper work while our ground crew George(Not the future porridge eater George) and some policemen got the skis back in the water. While completing the paperwork, I noticed that very time they had written Auckland they had spelt it Ducklano. Sounds good don’t you think?

With the paper work completed, we drove back to the skis, cleaned them down a bit and started them. It was a relief to find that they ran ok still so we rode them back to Romania for a beer.
Photos of this whole sorry episode will be posted when we get better internet.