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Romania 2014 (#1)

Part 1: June 21st – 25th

By Watracz Is Traveling

Finally, it’s time to go back to Romania, and for 11 days this time.

The plan is to ride the width and length of the country, to visit the spots we couldn’t get to last year and reach the Black Sea, at the Bulgarian border. That’s a total of about 4,200 km. Paweł has a lot of expenses this year, since his family’s growing and he’s building a house, but despite that we manage to get the necessary budget and get everything set up. A day before the trip I go to Rzeszów and help Paweł pack. His wife, Ewa, made two huge pizzas for us for the road, so we won’t go hungry at any point in the first two days.

Below you can see the map of the whole trip. You can also view it on Google Maps.

Day 1: Rzeszów, Barwinek, Košice, Debrecen, Cluj-Napoca

June 21st, 2014

View day 1 route on Google Maps

We leave on exactly the same day we did the year before (you can read the account of the previous excursion here). And exactly like last year, we can’t seem to begin without some mechanical issues. In the morning we notice that Paweł’s Kawasaki’s wheels have no air. Turns out that the used tires he bought right before the trip aren’t exactly airtight, and there’s a hole the air is leaking through. No air in the tires, we ride to a gas station, where we pump the wheels, and Paweł tries to seal the tires with a special sealing foam. The pressure’s holding, the first breakage is fixed. We leave the city and head south towards Barwinek.

It’s much colder than last year. We stop at the border crossing to get some tea and something warm to eat. We rest a while to get warmer. When we want to ride on, Paweł’s ignition refuses to work. It’s stuck and the handlebars are locked up. Just great. It takes us over twenty minutes of trying before we manage to get the better of the machinery. We enter Slovakia. There’s a police car or speed control post every now and then, so we keep a steady pace towards Hungary. Luckily, Slovakia doesn’t require vignettes on motorcycles.

We pick up some speed going through Hungary, stopping only to get gas. In the afternoon we reach Romania. We pass some familiar Gypsy villages we passed last year, and ride to Cluj-Napoca following the same route. We more or less stick to the speed limits, but local drivers keep overtaking us, paying little mind to those same limits. It’s kind of dangerous. On a roundabout, a car overtakes me illegally, passing through the center of the intersection. Paweł tells me that very same car has overtaken him earlier — on the right side of the road, driving in part on the shoulder. Drivers force priority on us several times, so we keep a close watch on everybody else on the road.

Cluj-Napoca

The city is busy, bustling and crowded, but it’s warm and sunny. We manage to find accommodation for two nights through Airbnb, $20 per night per person, in the northern part of the city. When we reach the address, we meet the host, who gives us a tour of the house and shows us to our rooms. We park the bikes in a shed in the yard, right next to our host’s enduro bike. In the evening it’s showers, suppers, and talking about the coming day over cold Polish brews.

Day 2: Turda Gorge, the Turda salt mine, Scărișoara Cave

June 22nd, 2014

View day 2 route on Google Maps

We’re up before 5 am, we just grab some breakfast and we’re on our way. The weather’s fine. We start off from Cluj-Napoca towards the Turda Gorge. We pick our route so that we skip the highway, but the GPS takes us through old and potted gravel roads. We pass some small ponds and fields, and we can see the gorge on the horizon. It takes us an hour to barely cover 40 kilometers, and in the course of that we lose our way twice, but eventually we make it to a clearing in front of the gorge, which looks like a good place to put up the tent. We’ll probably camp here on our way back.

Turda Gorge (Romanian: Cheile Turzii)

The rock walls climb up 300 m, and a small stream goes through the bottom. About half way through, Paweł decides to turn back. It’s too hot to go on in full motorcycle gear. I have my trekking clothes on, and I left the knee guards and the body armor in the case. We agree we’re going to meet back by the motorbikes in an hour.

After walking the length of the gorge, I find the spot by the stream where I took a shower last year and lost my shower gel. We camped not far from there at the time. About a kilometer beyond the gorge are some hills that give you a better view of the area, so I put up my tripod there, take some photos and head back.

Going through the gorge both ways took me two hours instead of one, so Paweł is a tad anxious and ready to go on. At 9 we set out towards the next attraction, the Turda salt mine (Romanian: Salina Turda).

The Turda salt mine

We park our bikes in front of the old mines entrance, buy our tickets and enter the one-kilometer-long tunnel. A dozen or so minutes into the trek, you can’t see either end of the tunnel. Eventually, we reach the actual mine. And it is awesome. The main chamber is so big that it can house (among other things) a miniature golf course, a bowling alley, a Ferris wheel, and an amphitheater. Elongated lamps are hung at various heights, and the remaining free space is occupied by some extraordinary wooden constructs. The deepest point of the mine is 120 m under the surface. It looks outworldly. The mine has been hailed the world’s most beautiful underground spot by Business Insider, and salt was excavated here as early as 1271.

There’s a crowd of tourists inside and in order to be able to take the elevator down you need to wait in a long line. In light of that, we take the wooden stairs down, through over a dozen stories. The lower level of the mine is egg-shaped and partly filled with water, which pooled into a lake in the center, with an island in the middle. You can take a boat on the lake. And to get there, you also need to take an elevator.

The Turda mine is one of the coolest underground places I’ve been to. It’s true it doesn’t have sculptures, paintings, or other art you can see, say at the Wieliczka mine, but the vastness of the chambers and shafts is indescribable.

After leaving the mine we take a second breakfast break, then we head on to the Scărișoara cave (Romanian: Peștera Scărișoara), located 120 km away. The road is very winding, it’s in terrible condition, but the views are nice. We ride along the Arieș river valley, beset by mountains on both sides. Paweł is in front, and I try to keep up. Suddenly I see that one of his side cases began to rattle and jump up on every pothole. We stop at the side of the road to see what’s going on. It turns out that the luggage rack has gotten loose, but Paweł says it should hold until the evening, and then he’ll tighten the right screws. Several dozen kilometers later the case begins to wiggle even more, and it looks like it’s hanging lower than the case on the other side. We stop to investigate it further, and we’re surprised to see the metal rack that the case is attached to has broken. That’s a serious fault and we’re afraid that the case is going to fall off under the weight of the luggage and with so many potholes around. We fix the rack in place with plastic zip-ties and hope it’s going to hold until the end of the day.

The Scărișoara Cave

Around 2:30 pm we get to the parking lot in front of the cave. Throngs of tourists are nowhere to be seen, and young Romanian kids are praising our bikes and encouraging us to buy local souvenirs. We wait a while until there is a group of tourists large enough to enter, then walk down the wooden steps. There’s quite a lot of ice and snow, and in the center there’s a lake you can walk around on wooden walkways.

The cave is nice enough, but we’re not really sure it was worth it, adding so much time and distance to see it. The sightseeing itself takes maybe 10 minutes.

On the way back I’m in the lead. It’s getting late, so we’re riding quite fast, overtaking most vehicles on the way. A couple dozen kilometers before Turda we begin to overtake two cars, and when we’re already in the other lane, the car in the front suddenly takes a left turn, without the driver checking in the mirror if there’s anyone in the other lane. I break quickly, trying not to hit the car, and I manage to come to a stop in the middle of the road, but Paweł isn’t as lucky and hits my bike. I hear a loud bang, but I manage to keep control of the bike and not fall over, while Paweł’s bike is on the ground, with cases and pieces of plastic scattered around it. It’s a full-blown accident. I park on the side of the road and help Paweł pick up the bike and his cases off the road. We stop the driver who began to turn right in front of our bikes, and go through the situation. We make sure that the fault wasn’t ours, and then we call the police. I’m nervous and scared. In the meantime, we take stock of the damage. In Paweł’s bike, the rack for the top case got broken off, so did the brake lever; the indicator got hit, and a mirror got scratched. It’s not as bad as I thought in my case, luckily. There are just some scratches on one of the cases, and everything is fine other than that; no cuts or bruises.

When the police come, we tell them what happened. The situation is getting more complicated, because — according to the policeman, an accident is when two vehicles collide, so even if the car began to turn without making sure that no one was trying to overtake it at the time, I managed to swerve and avoid hitting it, so there’s no problem there. Had I hit that car, we might discuss whether or not it was responsible, but since I didn’t, there’s no fault with the driver… After a while of a heated discussion Paweł says we should let it go, before we get a ticket or things get even worse. So we thank for the help and get on with putting the cases back on the bike.

We fix the case to the bike with some tape and my spare shoelaces. We take our time riding back, stopping every so often, to check if everything’s holding. Since at this point it’s up in the air whether we’ll continue the trip, we ask our hosts, as soon as we get back, if they know a mechanic who could help us. We manage to find two garages, but Paweł is still unconvinced that the damages can be repaired — especially the aluminum brake lever, which probably can’t be welded. Over a beer, I’m able to convince him that it’s worth a shot, maybe it’ll work and we won’t need to head home yet.

Day 3: Corvin Castle, Sebeș, Transalpina

June 23rd, 2014

View day 3 route on Google Maps

Paweł wakes me up in the morning and tells me that he’s going back to Poland after all. I’m flabbergasted, because just hours ago we agreed that we’ll try to get his motorcycle fixed. I try to get him to change his mind, but he’s decided that it won’t work, and there’s no point trying. He’s packed and he’s going back. Shame. Well, we say our goodbyes and I take the rest of the journey by myself. I just hope he gets home safely!

I set off south from Cluj-Napoca, going through Turda and I reach the city of Sebeș. I turn west there, and 65 kilometers later I reach the city of Hunedoara, full of characteristic, colorful Gypsy palaces. I take a photo by one of them, which immediately draws the attention of local residents, who decide to follow closely what I do next.

Corvin Castle (Romanian: Castelul Corvinilor)

The medieval castle is well visible from the center of Hunedoara, so I have no trouble finding it. I park the bike next to the ruins, leave the helmet and the protective gear there, buy my ticket and go sightseeing. The earliest parts of the castle were built in the 12th or 13th c. It sits on a hill, and you can get to it over a wooden bridge. The river Zlaști flows underneath, and tall trees surround the hill. The castle’s signal is a raven holding a golden ring in its beak.

The fortress was built in Renaissance and Gothic styles, and has two lines of defensive walls for better protection. The castle towers, round and square, are covered with orange roof tiles.

Having walked around the castle on all sides, I walk back to the bike and have my brunch (canned herrings in tomato sauce, brought all the way from Poland), then move on. I ride back through Sebeș and this time turn south, towards the Parâng mountains, the southern range of Romanian Carpathian Mountains, traversed by route DN67C — the famous Transalpina.

Transalpina

Before I enter the mountains I find a gas station where I manage to fill up on various liquids. The views are getting more and more interesting, and the road is getting really winding, dynamic, and providing a lot of satisfaction from riding.

My enjoyment of the road doesn’t last long, unfortunately, since several dozen kilometers in, the tarmac surface cuts off, and is replaced by gravel, uneven and full of holes. On top of that, I notice that the rack holding up my rear case begins to crack. Apparently, it’s not just Paweł’s bike that poorly suffers the Romanian roads. As I reach lake Oașa, at 1,255 m. a.s.l., dark storm clouds show up in the sky, and you can hear thunder rumbling every now and then. The road is undergoing repairs and trucks carrying sand and rocks pass me all the time. What’s not here is motorcycles. I’ve seen maybe three so far.

As I pass the village of Obârşia Lotrului, it starts to rain. The higher I go, the worse the rain gets. I reach a place where you can see the tall peaks the Transalpina leads through, but the rain is so bad it makes riding impossible. On top of that, lightning flashes in the sky from time to time, so I turn back. I find a clearing in the forest, put up my tent, and go to sleep to wait out the downpour.

Two hours later, around 8 pm, the rain stops. Quickly, I pick up the tent and get on the road. If I hurry, I should be able to see the sunset over the mountains. The weather must’ve chased off the tourists, because I’m all alone on the road. Not a bike or car in sight. The higher I go, the better the views, so I stop often to take photos.

At its highest point, the route reaches 2,145 m. a.s.l. There’s a clearing filled with stands and little kiosks there, for tourists to buy their souvenirs. They’re all closed now, though. The road isn’t kept very clean: there’s a lot of cans, bottles, and other trash on the side of the road.

Since I’m all alone on the road, I ride back down a ways, to take some extra photos.

Around 9 pm it’s dark, and it’s getting colder, so I look for a place to camp. I ride into a rocky side road and set up my tent in a clearing next to the motorcycle, at more than 2,000 m. a.s.l. I get a text from Paweł, saying he got to Poland in one piece. He wrote that when he’s home, he wants to go camping, and when he’s camping, he wants to be home with his family. And when he got home he checked the brakes and saw that his front brake pads were completely worn out. With working brakes, he would have had a chance of stopping in time and avoiding the accident. A moment later another thunderstorm begins. The wind is very strong. My tent’s shaking like a leaf, and I’m concerned it’s going to fall over. I put heavy things in each corner, to make it more stable. Outside, I secure the pegs with stones, to make sure they’ll stay in the ground. I even put stones around the bike’s wheels, to keep it from falling over in the wind.

The thunders and rain keep me awake. And it’s getting colder to boot. I packed my lighter sleeping bag for the trip, since most of our nights were supposed to be spent in easier conditions. Now I know that was a mistake. It’s unbelievably cold. I put on my motorcycle clothes in order to be able to sleep and it’s a bit better. The cold wakes me up at 3 am, so I put on the raincoat, too. It doesn’t help much, but I manage to get some more shuteye.

Day 4: Transalpina, Târgu Jiu, Oršova, the Decebalus sculpture

June 24th, 2014

View day 4 route on Google Maps

I wake up at 4:30 am. It’s cold, and I haven’t slept well. You can see through the tent that it’s getting light out, so I go out. The sky has a beautiful, golden-purplish shade. The view definitely makes up for the night’s discomforts.

Time for breakfast. In order to get a bit warmer, I put up my gas stove and heat up the baked beans and sausage I bought the day before. It’s very windy, and the flame from the burner is getting blown to the side. I try to set it up behind the motorcycle, put stones around it or cover it with my hands or my body, but after 20 minutes of fruitless attempts, I give up and eat my breakfast cold.

At 6 am the sun is already over the mountains and it’s getting warm. Far off in the distance, you can hear the bells of sheep going out in the pastures. Fog is slowly rising from the valleys. Today looks to be a good day.

As I ride on through the Transalpina, more dark clouds gather above. The road takes me through the center of those clouds, and moments later I enter the thick fog.

An hour later I reach the village of Rânca, where I’m beset by a pack of dogs. Those crafty hounds hide behind fences and wait until the last moment before they jump out on the road right in front of the bike. After I pass the village, I take a half-hour rest, hoping the mountain fog will disperse in the meantime and I can go there again. No such luck, though — it starts to rain instead, so I get up and ride further south.

By the end of DN67C another mountain storm catches up with me. For a couple of kilometers I ride in the pouring rain, until I reach a Lukoil gas station, near the village of Bengeşti, where I take cover from the rain. I fill up the bike, talk to some locals, who ask about the details of my trip, and what I’m even doing here; and I have my second breakfast. The news I heard a couple of days back, about rains and flooding in the area, are clearly true. The rain is easing off a little, so I put on my rain suit and head out.

The Domogled-Valea Cernei National Park

I reach the city of Târgu Jiu, then turn west towards the Domogled-Valea Cernei National Park (Romanian: Parcul Naţional Domogled-Valea Cernei). I leave the downpour zone, and it gets warmer right away. The tarmac is fine all the way until the park, then the condition of the road drops off. The potholes are huge, you can’t really go faster than 30 or 40 km/h. Several times my wheels fall into a hole, and each time the rack of my case cracks some more. I tape it up in a number of spots, but it doesn’t help much. Eventually, one piece breaks off and the rack drops onto the muffler.

Lake Prisaca

Around 1 pm I get to Lake Prisaca (Romanian: Lacul Prisaca). It’s getting hot, and I finally can ride without my jacket, just the body armor.

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Oršova

As I reach Oršova by the Danube, there’s more rainfall, but I get to cover under a shop’s roof, and I wait for the rain to pass, eating sandwiches.

The Decebalus sculpture

As I ride south-west along the bank of the Danube, Romania’s natural border with Serbia, I reach the Mraconia bay, where a sculpture of king Decebalus (the last king of the Dacians) stands over 40 meters tall hewn in a rock. The sculpture was done by mountaineers, and it took 10 years to make. I meet some Czech bikers there, and we talk a while, but their English isn’t that great, so it’s hard for us to have a conversation. All I learn is that they also went through the Transalpina, and that now they’re going towards Belgrade. I ask them if they know the way to the famous Iron Gates (Romanian: Porțile de Fier) — a narrowing of the Danube that separates the Carpathians from the Serbian Carpathians.

I then run back towards Oršova and pass the Iron Gates and the Djerdap hydroelectric power plant, going east.

I have a long route in store for the next day, and after sleeping in the mountains and taking on couple hundred liters of water, I could use a good rest and a decent supper. As I go through the town of Șimian, I notice an interesting looking hotel, Eden. It has a pool, a restaurant, beer, so I don’t think twice and decide to spend the night there. One room is about 50 USD. I can park the bike in a locked garage. I take all my things from the bike to the room for the night. There’s a lot of stuff, so I need to make a few runs. I put up my tent in the hotel room, so it can dry off a little, I do my laundry, take a shower and go have a taste of the local fare and a sip of brew by the pool. Now that’s resting. After a hard trip through the mountains, it would be nice to stay in a place like this for several days. I learn that the hotel gate is locked for the night, so I check if someone’s going to be around to open it for me in the morning, because I plan to leave at 5:30 am.

Day 5: Craiova, Bucharest, Constanța, Vama Veche

June 25th, 2014

View day 5 route on Google Maps

Wake up time is 4:30 am. Today I need to make over 600 km, and I want to get to the Black Sea before it gets dark. I’m packed within an hour, but of course there’s no one around to open the gate for me. I specifically checked yesterday if someone is going to open it for me, but the hotel is entirely empty now. I walk around it a few times, looking everywhere: the kitchen, the offices, the garage, even the basement, because all the doors are unlocked. No one’s there, so I wait, angry, on the stairs to the hotel. The employees come only at 7 am and open the gate.

Bucharest (Romanian: București)

I’m going east through Strehaia, Craiova, Alexandria, and around noon I reach the Bucharest beltway on the south side. The beltway is jammed, and everybody pretty much stands still. On top of that, locals are waking in the middle of the road, trying to sell stuff to people stuck in the traffic jam, stuff being cellphones, t-shirts, socks, even diapers. I haven’t seen anything like that before. Every couple of meters, streetwalkers are standing by the side of the road, some of them college-aged. They have umbrellas to protect them from the sun.

I try to get through the jam by riding between the cars, but there’s not enough room, and besides, the road is terrible, full of holes. I see a huge pothole a few metres in front of me. It’s more than half a meter wide, and a meter deep, and in the middle, there’s a red and white traffic cone, which you can’t see from any distance. Someone thought it would be funny to make the pothole in an interesting way. It takes me over two hours to ride a 45-kilometer stretch of the route.

What you can clearly see here is that the population is not well off. Next to the road full of trucks, children play in the sand, wearing torn pants and with no shoes; and there’s a group of hookers on the other side. Somehow, I don’t feel safe here. Every so often someone is trying to sell me socks, a phone charger, or a baseball hat.

Before I enter the highway I fill up the bike and buy some cold water. A car full of Romanians parks next to me and starts talking to me in Polish. They ask me where I’m going to, and if I’m alone. Turns out they’re coming from Poland, where they were working on fitting windows in Wroclaw for half a year.

After leaving Bucharest I continue east. About 50 kilometers before the seaside, the light bulb in one of my blinkers goes out. I stop at a gas station, to buy a new one, but they don’t have the right type, so I keep going. Same thing at the next station — no bulbs of the right sort.

Constanța

I get to the sea at 4 pm. I park near a historic casino, dated 1909. I take my camera and want to take a few photos, but I’m stopped by the police, who tell me not to leave my bike there, cause gypsies could rob it and that it’s dangerous there. I tell them my bags are secured with a steel rope, but they don’t believe that would keep thieves away. I ask if they could wait by my bike for 15 minutes until I come back. They agree, so I go to take some snaps of the sea.

As I ride through the city, my clutch starts to give me trouble. When I squeeze the clutch lever, the bike keeps going. It’s tough to put it in neutral or change gears. At the next gas station I find the bulbs I need, but their power is too low, and they don’t work. I get to Mangalia and ask about a motorcycle garage, but that’s closed already. Note to self — take non-standard light bulbs with me when packing.

Vama Veche

I reach Vama Veche at 6 pm and I manage to find a wild beach where I can put up my tent. The landscape and the sea don’t sweep you off your feet there, especially when compared to the Croatian seaside. A bunch of Romanians walk around, throwing suspicious glances at myself and my luggage. There are other bikers and some tourists around, which makes me feel safer. I put up the tent, say hi to my neighbors, and an older couple from Germany, who travel around Europe, invite me to join them for a grill and a beer.

We light up the fire, roast our meat, sip the cold beer and share our stories. I haven’t eaten that well since I left Poland. I learn that the truck the couple drive was bought from military surplus and fitted out for long trips. It has two ovens, a shower, a fridge, a 400-liter water tank, space for two motorcycles, and an electric winch. They travel with their dog, and when they get bored driving the truck, they get on the bikes and explore the area. That’s awesome! The truck needs 25 liters of diesel to drive 100 kilometers, so they need to pop in to Bulgaria before driving on, because fuel is cheaper there. And in this way they’ve traveled through most of Europe and Africa.