Day 1
Andy and I woke up and wandered across Hyde Park in the dark. Didn't really consider the fact that the park was closed at the time since it was nearly dawn and the gate near my home was open. We were stopped by park police and I after a bit of song and dance released... there are advantages to being able to play the role of dumb American tourist. Anyhow, we met outside the Albert Hall to catch a bus to Heathrow, all very sleepy as it was only 4am. We had an uneventful flight to Budapest via Munich and headed into the centre of Budapest where a number of us fell asleep on the floor of the train station. We had a number of hours to wait so we eventually migrated to a park where we had some lunch and waited for our train to Romania. A fun evening on the train culminated in Alex screaming upon discovering a grasshopper in his bed.
Day 2
We were woken at 3:30am by the conductor and piled off the train in the Transylvanian town of Brasov where members of the group undertook missions to get some local currency - the lei, of which there were 50 000 to a pound. I wandered off with Linda to get communal food and fuel. Our linguistic abilities served us well. Through a mixture of german, french, spanish, and english we managed to get 4 days worth of food at a cost of 700,000 and fuel at a cost of 66,000. Shortly thereafter a further train ride took us into the Bucegi Mountains and to Sinia where we started treking. To our surprise the paths here were very easy to follow. We had lunch in a clearing where we picked up a stray dog. We attained the top of this range of mountains and camped near a mountain hut. We visited the hut for some cocoa in the evening. Very strange place. It was a patchwork monster made of corrogated metal, wood, and plaster.
Day 3
We walked down off the tops of the mountains into a valley. The stray dog still followed, in spite of our best attempts to get it to leave us. In the valley we stopped for a long lunch break to walk into a very extensive series of caves that went back for about a mile. In the 15th century a monk apparently saw St. Maria in the caves and declared the site holy. A monastry was later built in front of the caves. We tithed to the monks and went to explore there home. The caves were astonishing. Lots of undergroud falls and rivers. Later, we treked up the valley and made an attempt on Omu hut at 2500m. However, due to exhaustion we rethought this plan and decided to camp at the top of a waterfall. It was on this trail up to the waterfall where we finally lost the stray dog.
Day 4
The objective for the day was to climb Mt. Omu, the highest mountain in the range, and only 50m short of the highest mountain in Romania. There was a cabana (mountain hut) at the top of Omu which provided us with a lovely late breakfast of sausage, potatoes, and pork chunks before making our descent towards the town of Bran. The drop took ages and after many hours if dodging mean sheep dogs and medieval looking shepheards we finally found a campsite near a cascade and set up our tents. The weather became very thundery and it started to rain very heavily. While some folks were bracing for what looked like a terrible storm, Muppet, Andy, and I washed our hair (which was really icky by this point), and Tim and Sarah went skinny dipping downstream. I then went to go and pump purified water from the river and was astonished as ground fog rolled down the hill and enveloped my ankles. With the fog and lightning I was half expecting a vampire or werewolf to emerge from the dense transylvanian thicket. I scurried back to camp and Sarah and I cooked a splendid meal as the heavens opened up. Alex ate too much though and got really bad ingestion.
Day 5
We broke camp in the pouring rain and walked down from the clearing along a track to perhaps the most famous town in Romania, Bran. Bran is the location of `Draculas Castle' (well the one that provided inspiration for the book at least). We did some reprovisioning in the shops, and in the afternoon everybody became tourists for a while and looked around the castle. A bus ride took us to Zarnesti. It was late in the day by the time we reached Zarnesti so we walked up to the start of the mountains (the Piatra Craiul). We camped next to a hut and had dinner there. The food was bad and expensive and the owners were not very nice to us. During the night a pack of stray dogs started barking. One dog was standing right next to my tent. I tried to ingnore it, but after being woken up for the twentieth time I leapt up in a maniacal rage and charged the dog with my trekking poles. I probably made more noise than the dogs, but from that point forward the night was a lot quieter.
Day 6
We left the cabin area and were met by glorious weather. We set off along the valley and quickly bore away up the mountain side. Beccy memmorably described the mountains as `those hills in the way'. We reached a Cabana for lunch, where we were assured by a local guide that the route we had planned was achieveable but `tough'. We set off, and the going quickly became tough, but the views spectacular. The first clue to the difficulty of the route was a scree slope with a rock to climb over at the end. It wouldn't have been that difficult if we been carrying light gear, but with full packs on our backs the going was really tough. We had to start using rusty metal cables to climb vertically and part way through I impaled my hand on deteriorating wire that was attached to the rock. The wound was deep but it bled a lot and with a bit of cleaning and good wrap I was able to continue upwards with out too much concern of infection. We finally reached the top, and after a short break started down as storm clouds were beginning to move towards us. The descent was worse than the ascent for a lot of us. We had to descend through thicket after thicket of short pine trees and my enormous pack made it nearly impossible for me to stear. I fell several times on the muddy slope and on two occasions slid several metres. The group got separated on one occasion and then when the joy of the thickets was over we were met by an unpleasantly steep scree slope. Pete, being small, light, and nimble, scouted for us. Being clumsy and carrying an enormous amount of communal gear, I constantly sank into the scree and started a number of landslides. We were very tired by the time we reached the woods at the bottom, but we made short work of the descent to the road knowing that there was a dry roof at the end. We had to cross a river to get to the road but could not find the bridge shown on the map. Rain started bucketing down and we made the decsion to ford the river. Once on the road a stomp through pouring rain and thunder down a track took us to a cabana. Our hero this day was the waiter at the cabana restaruant who kept the kitchen open an extra hour for us after this epic (13 hour) trek.
Day 7
We woke up feeling refreshed but lazy so we had a cooked breakfast at the restaurant. It was at breakfast that I realized I had a lot of wounds that were not healing. I treated them all with salve but made a mental note to look after them in the days to come. The group did some badly need washing and then after a brief lunch set off. It started raining as we left and grew steadily worse as we walked. After an hour of torrential rain we decided to head back to civilisation as some of us were getting very cold and we hadn't planned to go that far anyway. The cabana was fully booked and we were forced to camp in the rain. At least we had shelter where we could wait for the storm to die down.
Day 8
One of the more memorable days. We set off at the crack of dawn in the pouring rain without having had any breakfast. All of my gear was soaked and in my early morning stupour I decided (foolishly) to wear only my waterproof. Not suprisingly, trekking for two hours in the driving rain after having had no food and wearing no dry gear I went hypothermic. Linda commented that I was looking completely blue. We walked to what we believed to be a cabana where we hoped we could cook breakfast. However on arrival we found out that it was not a `cabana touristica` but a woodcutters house. We tried to talk to the woodcutters and (after much gesticulating) they however took pity on us and invited us all in (soaking wet) and fed us bread, cheese, meat, pine tea, and even pine wine - truely wonderful people. They gave us directions (we had entered an area that our maps did not cover) and we left feeling a lot better than we had felt when we had arrived. Unfortunately, they either gave us faulty directions or we mis-understood because the trail deteriorated into nothingness and we were forced to scout out the route. By the time this was complete it was too late to go further, we had not found where we need to go, and our scouts had found a good camping spot so we decided to set camp and then send off more scouts to search the area while the rest of the group searched for water and prepared dinner. The trail scouts returned with good news. They had found our trail a few miles away, we would travel there the following day. We spent the late afternoon in the forest glen where we were camping and cooked as warming sun beams lanced out at us from between the clouds. It was spectacular.
Day 9
We awoke to rain, and after breakfast set off for our path. There were a number of possibilities for stopping that day, but once on top we decided that the driving rain and very strong wind would make camping on top difficult at best and whilst the shelters might have been habitable once, the fact that cows had lived in them recently made them less so now. We pushed on in hopes of reaching a proper mountain hut but after eight hours of trekking through rain and icy mist our group wore out and were forced to camp in a windswept valley that we later learned was a sheep grazing area.
Day 10
We awoke to rain (again) and very strong winds. We were very soggy and tired of the miserable weather so we headed straight for the nearest cabana (called Urlea Hut) on the map. We promptly lost our trail and had to wander for a while to find it. We crossed a very cold and windy ridge and I experienced a moment of sheer terror as my pack's rain cover filled up with gale force wind, turned into a parachute, and lifted me a few inches off the ground... not the sort of experience you want on a cliff! However the wind decreased as we descended the 900 metres to Urlea. A moment of worry ensued when it appeared that the owner was out - but he appeared walking up to the cabin with two provision-laden donkeys. We spent a pleasant afternoon with hot (white!) wine and card games. The warden kindly lit his woodburner for us and we spent a couple of hours drying out all our wet clothing. He cooked us a lovely dinner of cabanos (spicy sausages) and mash - by now our standard fare at cabanas.
Day 11
We had breakfast at Urlea and took a steep trail down to Breaza with a short lunch/sunbathing stop on the way. In Breaza we found a shop to sell us ice cream and Sarah found a local man to sell her two kilos of cherrys from his garden. We caught the bus to Fagaras and from there the train back to Brasov. The train ride was interesting as not only did the train break down but our carrige was also hit by a stone breaking one of the windows - the conductors didn't even blink an eyelid. As we traveled on the train communism's effect on the country was more than apparent. Chemical factories sat in ruins next to harvest fields and delapidated motor vehicles puttered past horse drawn carts... industrialisation has fallen and a return to rural life has begun. Once in Brasov we were caught by a lady named Maria who wanted us to stay with her. She told us she was in our guide book, and when we looked, she was infact in our book. It said "Maria and her husband personally meet young travelers at the station and sort out accomodation." We decided to trust her and headed off in a pair of taxis with bags bulging out. We had a good meal in the central square and got to bed at 1am - a lot later than our normal 9pm in the mountains.
Day 12
I woke up in a phenomenal mood with a song in my heart... much to the chagrin of my sleeps comrades. Unfortunately my mood swiftly shifted when I managed to withdraw currency with one-to-many zeros from the local cash machine and as a result I ended up providing the group with all the money they needed for the rest of the trip.
We spent a morning in Brasov and after lunch caught a train to Sighisoara, supposedly the most beautiful town in Romania adn birthplace of Count Dracula. A fairly uneventful train ride later we arrived in Sighisoara and despite offers from a number hopeful accomodation punters we walked up the hill to the campsite and pitched our tents. Having set up tents we cooked dinner. Later we went to a nearby restraunt and most of us had hot chocolate... Alex had crepes filled with toothpaste flavoured ice cream. It was gross.
Day 13
Awoke to rain and walked down into Sighisoara for breakfast, and a day of tourism. The highlights were the clocktower with distances to major cities from Sighisoara marked and the wooden staircase upto the school on the top of the hill. We had lunch at a cafe and stocked up for our evening meal as well as the train trip we were going to take the following day. There was a bit of a spending spree at the end as everyone was trying to get rid of Lei. Alex bought dozens of chocolate bars, I bought cheese and beer, Tim and Sarah bought bottles of wine... one of which Sarah dropped on the floor.
Day 14
The final day in Romania! We caught a morning train and spent most of the day on the rails back to Budapest. The journey was substantially delayed by a death on the line ahead of us and as a result we arrived late in Budapest. We checked into a 3 star hotel near the station which allowed us to pile 4 into each room meaning cheap accomodation!. We had supper at a local pizza hut which after days of trekking tasted very good indeed.
Day 15
The day of our return to England. We woke early to catch a train and then a bus and then a plane, all arriving back in England safe and sound!