Romania: Crossing the National Park by car | The Family Without Borders

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Crossing the National Park by car

Thank you car god

After spending calm time in Oradea, we obviously needed some adventures. Visiting Bear Cave was not enough, we drove to Cluj-Napoca through Apuseni Mountains, National Park. With average speed 10km/hour. For 6 hours!

To visit Bear Cave we had to stay one day longer at nearby river, because cave is not open for tourists on Mondays (and that was Monday). Putting warmer clothes (was the warmest day until now and in the cave less than 10 degrees) – we started walk with Romanian guide. The only really thing which we could get from him was which structures are stalagmites and which are stalactites (body language works). It’s a bit pity that they don’t have anything in English because the cave is really huge and impressing and I would love to know more about it. From book I learn that structures in the have from 22 to 55 000 years and each is growing 1 cm every 20 years.

Hanna liked the most temperature there, she was sleeping after few moments being inside. The exit of the cave is done in very mean way: you go out straight on stands with souvenirs. No way of not crossing them.

On the way back from the cave we checked map: to Cluj-Napoca, where we wanted to get this evening by yellow, big roads – was around 200 km. There were also some small, grey lines on the map – directly to the point, by national park. So we made it.

Beginning was a bit funny, still beautiful views, not perfect road, but drivable. After second hour when views changed into forest cemetery (incredibly big fields totally empty from trees, everywhere cut parts, awful) and road changed into one which Tom described: “maybe you would accept such a road for last 500 meters to the beach, if you would really like to swim”, was not funny anymore. I was watching concentrated face of my driver, obviously warring about what can happen with our car and playing with Hanna, which didn’t want to sleep anymore. But we knew that coming back would be just stupid.

Now we know that just stupid was choosing this way, no more grey lines on the map for longer than few kilometers! The parking place with big cross and Jesus, at the end of the park, gave this time a real feeling of relief. We still saw lovely lakes in the fog and dam, which is using those lovely lakes – and in the late evening arrived to our friends in Cluj-Napoca.

[gmap width=’607px’ height=’350px’ marker_lat=’46.5916667′ marker_lon=’22.5555556′ zoom=’6′ type=’G_NORMAL_MAP’]


Our first book is out!

We have published our first book (for now just in Polish:) about our Central America Trip.
See, read and order here »

2 Comments

  • Septimiu
    Posted May 10, 2010 at 07:42 | Permalink

    Hello again,
    The Google map with your itinerary (from Here We Are section) is not very accurate. You have a picture with Tarnita dam (on Tarnita Lake) but this is not marked on your route. I guess this is happen because you don’t have so much time to spend on the internet… Have a nice trip!

    Reply
  • Thomas Alboth
    Posted May 11, 2010 at 11:24 | Permalink

    @Septimu: Fine, that you are following us so well :).
    You are totally right — the our road was slighly different, but try to explain this to GoogleMaps… /cheers / tom

    Reply

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