Fourth week.
Where the Carpathians meet the Balkans. We say goodbye to the Fagaras range where the snow won’t let the springly green to come out.
Jumping from a Moldavian truck to a van of a house painter and then to Claudiu’s car, we finally reach the slope of the Retezat National Park in Muntenia.
Claudiu is so kind to host us in his house. His family is simple and very generous. His mother, besides improvising a dinner, accommodates us in a room with beds full of pillows and a comfortable table where we can write consulting the map.
I like Rumenian people, in small villages it seems nothing can happen, only dogs smell always something interesting.
The sun wakes us up, we thank Claudiu and say goodbye, backpacks on and off to the mountains.
The massif takes its name from the highest mountain, the Retezat, in the southern Carpathians. This area is full of glacial lakes, among which the biggest lake in Romania, the Bucura Lake, at 2030meters of elevation.
There are a lot of “cabana” (huts) to settle our base camp, we choose the “Cabana Gentiana”. Once there, we meet Peter, a funny little man with a red potato nose with his faithful wolfhound dog Monti, who immediately wants cuddles from Glorija.
Peter is lighting up the fireplace, there are only the three of us and the tea is warm enough to make a toast!
Two sunny days make us want to wear shorts, but there’s still snow at 1700m and we crumble into it at 1950m.
May has been taking it easy here as well, we go further sticked to the mugo pine and making the line with difficulty.
We find some bear and fox paws: we are not alone!
Coming back to Hateg, between well organized haycocks, woody bushes, green plateaux and rolling hills, we decide to travel the road that from Caransebes reaches the Portile de Fier.
Orsova is considered the city “where the Carpathians end”, more than 1500km of mountains which we have travelled chased by the clouds and drawing an arch through Central Europe.
In Orsova we find the Danube again, after our first meeting in Vienna.
The river filled up with Sava’s, Drava’s, Tibisco’s and other tributary waters.
In the middle of the Danube, Ada Kaleh island divides the stream, while the Serbian mountains on the right shore are the first peaks of the Big Balkans range.
After the rainy night, the clear morning sky fills us up with some good mood, the mountains are around us and build the serpentine “canyon” of the Portile de Fier.
The Danube unties itself in big curves which we travel a bit by walk, then hitch-hiking, going from a village to another on the Rumenian shore.
At some point the Slavic promontories become Bulgaria.
In the flat Oltenia, under a warm sun, we cross the endless bridge that connects Romania with Bulgaria and that takes us to Vidin.
Some computer bugs at the border keep all the trucks blocked for hours. We say hello to every single driver: there are some Turkish, Polish, Bulgarian drivers and all of them ask us where are we coming from.
“Krakow” – we say – “all the way along the Carpathian Mountains”