We awoke to an annoying Pitbull song (the one with the whiny chorus) being blasted over a loudspeaker in the tiny village where we camped. We later noticed that every town we rode through possessed what had to be communist-era loudspeakers blaring dated Top 40 music between announcements on the hour something like: "ladies and gentlemen, the Koska bridge will be closed until 10am this morning, in the meantime, please enjoy some J.Lo from 2006."
Our late starting times have finally caught up to us. When we left it was already quite warm. After a couple hours, the bike path ran alongside a dam as the temperature soared to 38 Celsius (100F). I scanned in vain for a cafe or escape from the brutal sun as it cooked us up on the burm. We covered ourselves with more clothing and hydrated profusely with sport mixes that we had purchased. I thought Betty was seeing a mirage when she started talking about an ice cream stand, which actually turned out to be a small cafe at a ferry station. We had a nice lunch with Radlers and plopped down to nap in the grass in an attempt to wait out the heat.
At 5pm it was still scorching hot, but we opted to head towards Bratislava as I thought of the desert death march scences from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Bratislava retained the heat of the day and added an unwelcome portion of humidity as we sought out a place to stay. After looking at some overpriced hostels, we decided on a hotel room that was big enough to put our bikes into. We ate at Slovak Pub, where we had some traditional fare: Bryndzové halušky, sour cream and bacon dumplings and an excellent cabbage soup.
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