Nature of Transilvania

After long day on the road and spending another night under the stars, we finally made it to Salasu de Sus, where we were expected by our host Mihai. His place was quite excepional. Mihai loves to host people so he offers free shelter to everyone passing by. Thumbs up for Mihai!

Homemade truely organic herbal tea

Salasu de Sus lies in a valley that creates unique microclimate. Cold water flowing closely to the surface chills down the soil. That's why with a bit of luck you can find daffodils here.

Thanks to the opportunity to leave our not nessesarily light luggage, we decided to discover sorrounding towns.

Petrosani

Shortly after going trough Defileul Jiuliu National Park we met very helpful man, who offered us help finding place to stay overnight. He drove us to small monastyr where we recieved much more hospitality than we could imagine.

Monastyr Guest House

Milestone on transilvanian Route 66

Next day gave unexpected results as well. We wanted to go to the town named Vulcan lying in the centre of valley in Muntii Vulcan. But our driver was really interested in our way of travelling so he offered us lift to Lupeni for a drink. We went to his boss restaurant and quickly met big, wealthy, but nice guy and few of his employes. As soon as he found out we don't have a place to sleep, he gave us directions to his 'Cabana de Mario' guesthouse in Parang skiing resort. So this way me spent another day in comfortable conditions without planning or even expecting it. That resort is now being renewed. They're building new chairlift, lying pipes for snow cannons and making new skiing tracks to attract more tourists. Winters are long in mountains here and as they say, they have really good conditions for winter sports.

On our long way down we got picked up by a driver of CASE 330B tipper.

I think it was the biggest vehicle I ever hitched.

Later that day we came back to Salasu de Sus in order to rest before hiking in mountains the next day. We spent the evening talking with our host and in the morning we managed to hitch a ride to the beginning of the trail. Retezat Mountains are really beautiful so we enjoyed our hike. We went to our host's very basic and old mountain hut. Because I don't especially love high mountains we went back after spending night there. On our way back we had opportunity to meet old English bloke and to have really interesting conversation.

In Retezat

As soon as we got to the road we got picked up by really nice driver who not only wave us a ride to our host, but also waited about 15 minutes to give us time to pack our things. This way we went to Orastie and saved maybe two hours. Later that day we managed to get to Busteni to meet our new really friendly, but overworked host Radu. We really quickly found common lanuage and topics. Big thanks Radu!

Busteni

One of Joanna's goals in Romania was to visit Castle in Bran. You can search for stories about that place, about vampires, Draculas and other weird stuff. I will only show you some pictures of it. It's worth to go there only if you are into tourist attractions.

Ohh. And one more thing. Dracula was a woman!

Back to beautiful nature of Transilvania. Another 'must do' place is Transfagarasan. It's a mountain road well known internationally thanks to the Top Gear show. Many people come here to drive on its twisty surface.

After going trough the Fagaras mountains we needed some break to rest, charge biological batteries and get some food.

You won't jump over that fence!

Gypsy's camper trailer

Voineasa - morning after another night under the stars

Quite odd place to sleep

...but great place to take a bath

We also went trougth Transalpina - another very picturesque mountain road. It's much older than Transfagarasan, so it's in worse condition, but now is almost fully renewed. Soon it's surface will be almost as good as on German Autobahns. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from this road. We only did the Northern part of this road as we came from Brezoi.

 Small waterfall...

...and big lake on the way to Transalpina

After being dropped off about 10 km from Aiud wee needed to cover only about 35 km to get to our next host Cristina. After thumbing a ride for over a half an hour, we stopped an empty truck. After getting to Aiud and telling the driver our final destination, he turned back at small roundabout and went the other, bit longer way to his place. He looked like simple redneck, but was really helpful.

Our driver undoing jammed bolts in other truck

That's all folks! At least for now! We are now chilling somewhere in the shadows of Transilvanian trees.