For about a week or so we decided to take a trip in the south of Romania for the weekend (more exactly in the Iron Gates Natural Park) to spend some time photographing the landscapes and observing the nature.

Our itinerary had as a departing point Nucsoara village in Retezat Mountains, passed through Petrosani and Targu Jiu, than a short detour from Baia de Arama town into the village of Ponoarele, a short stop at Tismana Monastery, and continued with Baile Herculane, Orsova, Moldova Veche, Pojejeni, Bazias and back to Orsova. To return to Nucsoara we just took the road from Orsova to Caransebes and Hateg.

Before Tismana Monastery we stopped for this lovely meadow.

Tismana Monastery, the only religious stop we made in this trip, is one of the oldest monasteries in Romania, and for both our disappointment managed to leave a bit of a sour taste.

Don’t get me wrong. The church, its history, the natural surroundings are quite impressive, but what was disturbing about all of this was the living conditions of the nuns. Their houses would make even a rich American a bit jealous. Not to mention the top range of the models of their mobile phones. I am starting to think that religion and faith in Romania has become a business, a very profitable one too. I am wondering why didn’t they use the cost of a single door to help some poor children or people really in need, and instead built these fancy fancy houses for themselves. It really doesn’t look like piety to me.

I guess I should warn you that this post has some harsh truths about Romania, so don’t be surprised.
Ok, enough venting about this. You should go and make your own opinion about it.

From Tismana we continued our drive and took a left in Baia de Arama town towards Ponoarele village, where we visited the God’s Bridge and the God’s Bridge cave. We walked up the hill on top of the cave to see the Zatoane Lake and some interesting reservation of rocks, which I haven’t found a word in English for it yet, but it resembles a lot with The Burren in Ireland.

We moved further towards Baile Herculane, and admired the impressive Mehedinti Mountains with Stan’s Peak…
Before actually reaching to Baile Herculane, we hiked a very steep slope to reach to the Tasnei Gorges best known for its Black Banat Pine.

The sun started to set slowly as we drove past Orsova town and decided to camp in the Ogradena valley (my second time ever when I slept in a tent, but not the last).

Unfortunately for us our morning started in a very unpleasant way. A group of about 8-9 men decided to ignore the law and started their hunting in the Natural Park from that valley, with loud gun shots. This would be nothing if hunting in a protected area would be allowed. Of course our comments received a not very polite answer, even threatening I would say. We decided it was best to shut up and not mess with 8 people with guns. It made me really sad.

Anyway, the adventure continued, and we drove along the Danube until the point it enters Romania (Bazias). What I did notice, were a lot of people fishing…and I doubt many of them had a permit for the 20-30 fishing rods that they had spread out along the shore.

On the other side of the Danube though, the Serbian shore was quiet and imposed respect.

I wonder when Romanians will realize this is not the way to live and behave. Not any time soon I guess. Let’s face it, no matter what statistics say, Romania is a corrupt country, and this is really pulling us down a lot. It is really a pity we have such a rich country, historically and architecturally, and some just decide to ruin all those values.

Moving on…

Along this road we entered the Gaura cu Musca Cave (The Hole with the Fly Cave), which at the entrance has the ruins of a fortress from the 1800’s. From this point you could enjoy a magnificent view over the Golubac Fortress on the Serbian side.

We continued our road towards Bazias and on the way back we stopped at a bird observation point before Pojejena for lunch. Well we were not the only ones having lunch there. Some interesting weird noises drew me to some reeds where a snake was having a frog as lunch. This was something we had to see, so for about 40 minutes we waited for the snake to finish. If you are interested more in the nature side of this trip, and of course the snake, you can take a look HERE…

One last thing for the day was the Tricule Fortress, well the two towers that remained, rising above Danube.

Lucky us, we found a very nice place to camp for the night on the Mraconia Valley, and managed to get some good sleep, again in the tent. We also tried to make a camp fire, but that didn’t turn out so well, since the wood was a bit wet.

We decided not to rush, so the last day, we spent a good part of it in the same area. We took our time studying Decebal’s Monument in the Mraconia bay,

drove on a forestry road towards Eibenthal village

(a village with Czech population) hidden in the Tisovita valley at about 8-900 meters altitude, but yet above the thick fog of this autumn morning.

From here we hiked up to Ciucarul Mare Peak for a panoramic view over the Danube Gorges: Cazanele Mari and Cazanele Mici. It was a perfect day, for a perfect landscape.

Since it was quite late, we started our journey back, still admiring the wonderful landscapes on our way.

Also this was one of the best sunsets I ever saw in the past few years.

I hope you enjoyed this post and did not mind my venting, and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

P.S. I also updated the Traffic Page, so you can check the conditions of the roads we took for this trip. Check it out.

At the begining of last week, I had to drop of some clients in Budapest Hungary, and based on my experience in the short time I was there (1.5 days), I decided to write here a few of my impressions.
First thing that you have to do, is actually exit Romania. For this we chose to cross the border at Valea lui Mihai in Satu Mare county. On the Romanian side I could not really tell if we were heading towards the border or if it was just a dirt country road for a few kilometers, but a bit further up I noticed they were actually redoing the road, this explaining the poor condition of the.

We reached the border quite easilly and after a brief check of our documents in about 3 minutes we were in Hungary, heading towards Debrecen.

Understanding your way around in Hungary is not hard at all, but they do seem to have a bit of shortage pointing towards the right way. One example is in Budapest where we saw a sign leading us to the highway, only once and briefly and we missed it, and than there was no sign for km, and we had to turn back.

The highways are very nicely mantained, with parkings and gas stations every 20 or so kilometers. Driving in Hungary was quite relaxing, despite what the guide book said, with the drivers being impatient and agressive.

After about 2 hours on the highway, we reached Budapest. I was nicely surprised at the beauty of this capital, with its lovely buildings and lively streets. Except a few streets and a bridge that were under construction, everything was just amazing. The people turned out to be quite friendly and helpful as well. One thing to explore is the Central Market. This is one crazy lovely place.

We left the car parked in the shade on some street on the Pesta part of Budapest, and started walking along the Danube river, taking photos of about everything that came into my sight. Unfortunately I was quite tired so I didn’t have enough power to wait until evening to take more photos of this stunishing city, but here are some of the photos I took, just to give you an insight.

Time is always a problem when I travel, this being one of those trips when I wished I could have stayed a few more days to explore everything. If you are into photography like I am, this is close to heaven.

After a few more shots of the Chain bridge we crossed to the Buda side of Budapest, and took the funicular, built since 1870, up to the Royal Castle. Here we walked around through the old city, until we reached to the Fishermans Bastion, which unfortunately is under restoration. Though, the wonderful view over the Peste side, with the Parliament Palace, was worth it going up there.

One thing we did have some trouble with in Hungary, was finding an exchange office, and understanding the restaurants. Most places we passed through, we could not tell which was a restaurant, because we do not know any hungarian. Unfortunately for us, we had to be limited to McDonalds and Burger King, which definitely would not be our first choices when it comes to food.

The next morning we drove to Hortobagy National Park, and enjoyed a bit of this flat land area with the Tisza river and its channels. We walked for about 10 km in the search of Cranes, which started their migration.

What I did notice at this park is how well organized they are.

Our next and final stop in Hungary was Beckesaba, right before the border. Here we stopped to eat, and since again, we had trouble with the language, the famous yellow M helped us. We also looked at the parking pay point for quite a while, pressing all the buttons until it released the parking ticket.

We crossed into Romania, without anyone asking us anything this time, not even checking our ID’s.

Well I hope you enjoyed this short visit into Hungary.