On the first days of spring, me and my boyfriend Ivan went to Pchelinovo village to visit his grandmother. We arrived on the 19th of March and rested for the day. On the 20th we went to visit a friend of ours at the nearest town.

Gurkovo

Here are some views from our walk.

Saw some cows on the way.

Here you can see Ivan taking initiative to clean some plastic on the way, along with our friend who is also called Ivan and his dog.

Here is a picture from the town part. Memorials of liberation of ottoman rule (left) and for those from Gurkovo who took part on world war one (right).

Pchelinovo

We got back to Ivan's grandmother on the same day and on the next one (21st) we went out for a walk in the forest to celebrate the coming of spring.

Each year I find it fascinating to look at the nature's awakening from the winter sleep.This picture is a good example.

Hello there babies.

We decided to find a good spot for a joint and headed to a riverbed.

We had a good friend with us called Lassy.

Gotta love the little waterfalls the river creates.

And then this happened. My brain always gives an error when I see plastic in nature, because I can not understand the "people" who do this.

My personal hero Ivan took thing in his hands.

And so he did. We found a big sack on the way which got in handy, as the jerrican got full of plastic bottles easily. Ivan went into a lot of trouble to get the place cleaned. He went into the gully several times to get the plastic bottles out of there.

The amount of bottles was saddening. Most of them were the same type of bottle and they smelled like rakia (a traditional alcohol beverage). This meant that the same people were getting drunk in the forest and left their bottles there as trophies. Some of them were hanged on branches, which grew with years afterwards and it was hard to get them out.

The bottles on the path were not there. They were gathered by Ivan from the gully.

I am sure that even if it was not for the #trashtag challenge he would have done the same, but because of it he was repeating "challenge" with a smile on his face all the time.

I can not take credit for the cleaning up as 95% was his work. At the end; however, I did take part in taking the garbage back to the village to throw it away. This picture is a solid proof.

It was a great experience to welcome spring in these beautiful places, with these lovely people and animals.

Because these last photos were full of plastic, I would like to end this story with a reminder of how much beauty nature gives us and why she deserves to be respected and not polluted.