Curonian Spit - Lithuania

Trip Start Oct 30, 2007
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Trip End Nov 20, 2009


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Saturday, August 30, 2008

One of the natural highlights of Lithuania is the Curonian Spit - a 100km long sand bar that forms a massive lagoon from the Lithuanian coast into Kaliningrad, Russia.  The sand bar is constantly eroded by the elements and is slowly shifting inwards (up to 10m a year) and at the same time disappearing as the wind blows the sand away.  In fact the villages used to keep having to move as the sand slowly buried them.  It is all protected national park, with forests full of wild boar, elk, and deer, and photogenic sand dunes which stretch as far as the eye can see. 

Brad became mildly obsessive about spotting elks (and was probably the only foreigner around who hadn't yet seen one on the spit, and STILL left without seeing one). We couldn't leave the spit without having tried its local specialties, which were its smoked fish which was fantastic, and another odd Lithuanian delicacy, smoked pigs ear
40 million year old insects @ Amber Museum
40 million year old insects @ Amber Museum
!  Imagine the taste of cold grissly chewy skin, fat and cartilage, with a whiff of bonfires and you're pretty much on track!  Not a winner!
 
The spit is also renowned for amber, which gets washed up on the beach after heavy storms.  There's beautiful walks (check out the photos of the traditional 'ghoul and goblin' statues in the forest), the wildlife, fishing villages, and Brad's new obsession.....hunting the beaches for amber.  Yes, Karen had to humour Brad on many occasions while we pulled in to another beautiful sandy beach as 'it looks to have potential'.  It's more the fun of it than anything else (the main finds are in autumn the day after big storms whip up the sea) but Brad was happy with his little nugget-ets (which Karen still thinks is just rock).  Just like our prowess at fishing, we unfortunately still had to buy the good stuff though!
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