Day 13:
Today was Carpathian Mountains Day. In fact, we were scheduled to go over what I am told is the highest mountain in the Carpathian range (which makes it the highest mountain in Romania) because that is, unaccountably, where the Romanians decided to make the road over the mountains. The day dawned cold but clear, a big change from the rain we'd had the last couple days. We all piled into the Dacia in high spirits and prayed there wouldn't be snow on the road. To the left you'll see Emma doing her best Cee-Lo impression as she belts out "Crazy" for the rest of us.
A short way up the road, we ran into our first obstacle. Although snow-colored, these sheep fortunately posed little danger to our trusty Dacia. After a short delay, we were back in business.
It got much, much colder the higher we got. Emma and I bought gloves at a roadside stand. The cloud and fog layer started coming closer and closer to us.
I tried to get some photos showing how steep the drop-off was, but it just doesn't come out in pictures. Sometimes it's fine, but there are lots of stretches where the cliff is nearly 90 degrees. You walk up to the edge and look down and it's like looking over the roof of the Empire State Building.
About an hour or so in, we were above the snow-line. The bright sun of Versailles was far, far behind us. The roads at this point were slushy with some snow, but the Dacia -- loaded down with all four of us, our luggage, and towels -- handled it just fine.
Keep in mind, by the way, that it's just a week outside of summer at this point, but there's a bunch of snow on the ground up here. Io said the highest parts of the mountains have snow essentially year-round, with maybe one month of melt.
Further up, and the snow is higher. They don't have an actual snowplow, but the Romanians keep the road clear by driving a back-hoe down the road with the front shovel blade lowered, clearing out a single lane that sort of wanders over the road.
This was definitely challenging to our doughty driver, Gagi. But he handled it like a champion.
The mountains themselves were really gorgeous:
As the road got closer to the top of the range, the Romanian engineers apparently looked back at the miles and miles of snowy switchbacks and collectively decided "Fuck this" and blasted a tunnel through to the other side. Let me just tell you all right now: do not cross the Carpathians if you're claustrophobic. The tunnel was quite long, completely unlit, and curved enough so that for about a third of it you're in total darkness.
Once out the other side, we started heading down again and ran into yet another herd of sheep. That shepherd has got some real stones herding sheep this high up. I mean, I was freezing just looking at him.
The snow thinned out again as we headed lower, which was a happy thing for all of us. Eventually we made it down to a little town on the other side.
I think of this place as Rachel-town, because they had horses that just wandered around wherever they felt like. We stopped for some tea and hot chocolate and then pressed onwards.
Unfortunately, Ioana got a pretty bad cold starting on Day 13. She stayed in the car bundled up almost the entire time. The only time she really got out was for the horses. She maintained her good cheer, though:
We drove for quite a while down the mountain, passing an old Romanian fortress on the way. Io told me we'd be climbing up to that fortress tomorrow, which involved going up 1,500 steps. I figured I had better eat well for lunch, dinner, and breakfast tomorrow, and probably for the two or three days after the climb just to be sure. When we stopped to eat I got a traditional Romanian stew with pork and sausage, polenta and fried egg. Io got an entire fish with a head on and everything.
Fish With Heads Still On: Yuck
We stopped for the night in a great little place where we all got our own rooms, which even had showers with hot water and actual water pressure. I had my first good shower since I got here, which as you can see by looking at the title of this post was two weeks ago. Yay!
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