Kalocsa Kupa

On Saturday we left at 7am and pootled down to Izsak on route 51,which we like in preference to the motorway or the ordinary route 5, which goes through a thousand very slow villages. This event is always good, but this year it promised a new bit of the Great Plains with a brand new map, so I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately my allergies were still at full strength, so breathing was at a premium with sneezing, coughing, runny eyes and a blocked nose. Still, I bravely fought my way round the sand dunes, the soft sand and the indistinct vegetation to come back in second place, less than 2 minutes down on my friend Klari.

On Day 2 I had the target of catching Klari, if I could manage it. The terrain was a bit less technical than on Day 1, but equally hard physically in the soft sand. While on Day 1 I made several mistakes, on Day 2 there were no mistakes and I hoped that that would be enough. And it was!! Victory was very sweet indeed, as it always is when you come from behind and conquer. I got a cute little medal and a carrier bag of such delicious goodies as paprika (the spice), two tubes of paprika paste (one sweet, one hot) and two jars of horseradish, one natural the other mixed with mayonnaise. You may think that these are rather peculiar prizes to give to the winners, but I suspect the manufacturers of these foods were amongst the event's sponsors.

On Saturday afternoon, after Day 1 we went in search of somewhere to sleep for the night as well as to do a little geocaching. We did find a lovely inn, but it was full. So we motored on and found another place which was not nearly so nice, but a lot more expensive, so we took that. Then we went out into Kecskemet to find some caches. We started with an 8 parter multicache, which took us practically the whole afternoon. Still, we got very familiar with Kecskemet in the process. Another one was found by a complete stranger after neither Roy nor I could find it at all. She asked what we were doing and after I explained she pointed to it straight away. Amazing! In the evening we went back for dinner at the inn we couldn't get a room and realised why it was full. First of all the whole place was very pretty, the food was fantastic, the environment pleasant, the service superb and to top it all - it was dirt cheap! We have their telephone number for next time. The pictures are from Kecskemet, which was a very wealthy town in the old days and thankfully some of its old buildings still stand.