Day 14 (July 22nd)

Hot day. Hiked though a gorgeous meadow thick with butterflies on a peak called Gašton, and then through lovely pines. Saw cattle being herded by a Slovak cowboy and German shepherd. Unfortunately they are heading to the spring we´re planning to use! No problem, the map shows plenty more springs on our route.
Met our very first through-hiker, Manik from Bratislava, very nice guy, hiking the SNP trail (and Stefanikova Magistrala) from its terminus in Dukla all the way back home. We exchanged information and he gave us two bits of sad news -- the Kralova Studna hotel where we´ll be in a few days is still under renovation (though they did allow him to stay there anyway) and the next few springs are all dry. He got us so worried that we pumped water from the next semi-stagnant trickle we came to. The next official spring we came to was a little better, but still required pumping. It occurred to us -- maybe Manik doesn´t have a filter pump. (Many of the springs have pipes which are designed to fill bottles directly, so you don´t need a pump.) But then the next two springs had pipes and were flowing just fine. Odd, but quite a relief.