Ames and Jo in the Ro: Lake Balea

We left Sibiu in a bit of a daze and ready to get back to Bucharest but we needed to make one last stop. I took the ladies up the Transfagaras Highway.  With blue sky stretching over both sides of the mountain I ignored my whiny stomach that protested every curve of the road by rolling the windows down in the refreshing 45 degree air. I mean really, who gets car sick when they drive themselves? It's just ridiculous.

Below Lake Balea: Transfagaras Highway.

At any rate, we parked at Lake Balea and my wimpy, lethargic self wanted no part in this thing called "exercise" especially at a mind blowing 6,670 feet. However following Jo's initiative, she singlehandedly whipped my attitude into shape. Before I knew it, all three of us were hauling ass up the trail and we didn't even need a stinkin' key-chain flashlight to do it.

Above Lake Balea from the top-ish part of our hike,
right after a marmot screeched at our intrusion.

Baures bringing it ON.
Forget bear watching...

Spunem cascaval! 

True to random Romanian fashion, there was a blue bendy-bus from Germany creeping along the two lane mountain road on the way home. We got stuck behind it for several looooong painful miles before I felt ballsy enough to pass. Where did this thing come from?! 

We cracked ourselves up pretending to be the driver of that bus, making multiple 90 degree turns all along Lake Vidraru with his three foot steering wheel and air suspension chair. Ok maybe you had to be there, but Google Map that freakin' lake and see what we went through...

It maxed out at 10mph had to make complete stops around the curves. 

Ames and Jo in the Ro: Sibiu

Continuing our Romanian tour the girls and I loaded up the car after a gut stuffing breakfast at the Zarnesti pensuine and said our goodbyes to the bunica who told us all about her four grown children, her bad hip, and the recipe for making high quality clatites (pancakes.) All in Romanian of course but I was thrilled understand her stories and act as interpreter for my friends.

I drove them to visit Bran Castle where we joined the masses touring one of Romania's most popular pieces of history. A local tourist perked up immediately when she heard them speak and insisted we detour to Suceava, only a mere 350km away to see the painted monasteries. In theory I agreed with her, but we would head to  Sibiu, a town known for its Saxon heritage.

Life of Bran began in 1211. Check out their fantastic website
to hear all the details and drama. Seriously.

We would stay with some acquaintances Mark met via embassy business. The husband: a professional photographer, teacher, and local government board member who never sleeps. The wife: an engineer for a clothing company that manufactures high-end work-related wearables, and festival organizer extraordinaire and enthusiastic Rotary club member.  Oh, and two kids. Greeting us like old friends, Amy and Jo were treated to a personal tour of Sibiu. We met a local orthodox priest, stared at beautiful iconography and learned about architectural directional drilling to reinforce miscalculated church walls.

The big one. 

Ironically, directional drilling is a subject of extreme interest for my best friend because of her husband's career in energy procurement. And since our local Sibiu friend is a genius of many random subjects, they lit up the night talking at length about the subject.

After visiting a few churches, the famous fortified city walls and loitering in the piatas, we spent several more hours at the kitchen table engaged in some of the more interesting conversations we've had in a while. On the first night alone we learned about homeopathy, a man named Bill McCallister, the sacredness of milk chocolate versus dark due to restrictions during communism, and sewing machine inventory processes just to name a few.

The next day the husband took us to an 800 year old fortified church that overlooks the beautiful quiet town named Cisnadoara. Back in the villagers defended themselves against intruders by chucking giant rocks over the walls. Those same rocks were like badges of honor for the manly men who manned up and carried them from the river bed and up into the citadel to prove their manliness in order to marry the glorious women of the town. 

Jo Jo thinking
that hard, original wood.

After admiring the scenery and history the four of us hopped back into our vehicles for a tour of Sibiu's Astra Village Museum where we walked through hundreds of years of houses, churches and mills. At one point our loquacious guide mentioned he'd need to slip out for a civil wedding in the afternoon, but our company proved too good and he opted for beers and YouTube videos on the patio instead. 

He hadn't heard about the Asiana Airline's plane crash debacle with the names, so we felt it necessary to inform him. He was laughing so hard he insisted we share it with his wife later on that day. So that was how our evening ended, after an entertaining visit to the Brukenthal Art Museum where the room monitors chased us around the room with their death stares. To me, art is always worth seeing once. I saw their collection twice and certainly had my fill of darkly painted canvases and sad looking faces.

Yet again time passed too quickly and we found ourselves on the road again for one last stop: the famous Lake Balea and the Transfagaras Highway...

Hiking 101: What NOT To Do.

Last week I went on a hiking trip with a couple of girlfriends visiting from the States. Nature lovers and hiking enthusiasts from Buffalo, Wyoming (which sits at the foothills of the Big Horn Mountain Range), we signed up to go bear watching in the Piatra Craiului National Forest. Not having high expectations to see an actual bear, we were mostly excited to leave the Bucharest cityscape and get some much wanted exercise.

 Farmers, sheep herders, mountain guides think nothing
of tackling this terrain. Hard core.

 
The day had been cold and rainy, but bits of sunshine poked through the late afternoon clouds as the company owner arrived to pick us up. She began the conversation with,  "well I didn't bring release forms, so please don't do anything stupid" which was followed by obvious disapproval of our attire and the question, "have you ever even been in the great outdoors before?"

Subtle. I know it sounds like we showed up in flip flops and tank tops but we really did prep for our trip, guided by her emailed recommendations based on light hiking necessities like a bottle of water and comfortable shoes.


Undeterred we met our expert guide and hopped into the 4x4 with plans to return by 8:30pm for dinner. We bounced around the rough road, flew around unguarded curves and enjoyed the scenery. Romanian mountains are visionary: with farms and thick leafy trees plotted along the rising gradients the unending green sprawl inspires all sorts of suppressed emotion. With hearts lifted, our guide led us to the winding trail and took off practically skipping up the mountain.

New York City this way, Shanghai that way.

After a solid hour of uphill pursuit we settled into a field of new tree growth with clear instructions to keep our eyes open and mouths closed. The silence was deafening, broken only by bleating goats, barking deer and the ringing of cowbells. For about 60 seconds of titillating suspense, at one point the guide thought he spotted a bear 200 yards away. Turns out the ass of a bear looks similarly like the ass of a cow.


Peaceful yes, but while scanning the land for further signs of movement I drifted off, feeling my head drop and snap to attention.  Water will freshen me up, I thought. So I reached for my bag which conveniently held the suggested items in addition to extra layers of long underwear for the evening.

Caught nodding off on a tree stump. How zen.

Earlier that day I sent Deets to school with my old backpack so I packed up my messenger bag instead, but with its industrial strength Velcro, I failed to discreetly open it. It was worse than opening a Wurther's Original Caramel wrapper during church vespers. Upon opening the bag, I was almost knocked flat from the waft of spilled red wine on my jacket from earlier on. Bemused, the girls watched on as I tried to air dry the crinkly rain jacket and then getting my head stuck in the extra layers of wool long underwear I tried to pull on.

Then it happened. I was stifling a laugh and started to cough uncontrollably. Likely scaring off any dim hopes of animal sightings I mouthed my apologies to my friends who were also snickering at my idiocracy.  I finally caught my breath and settled down to take a drink of water. I just happened to bring my son's water-bottle that he filled with old carbonated water, a flavor just gross enough to make me spit it all over myself.

Hard at work. Ready for them bears.

Finally accepting that our evening would likely end without a best to grace our presence and shivering from the dropping temps, I requested to start moving. And so, hiking down the mountain in the dimming light, we thought we'd be heading for the car but of course our guide had different plans: make us stumble down highly technical terrain and take a detour for an extra 60 minutes. In the dark. Obviously our guide thought nothing of it, as he mentioned this was his childhood stomping grounds and pranced down the trail only occasionally using a teeny keychain flashlight to make sure bears weren't loitering ahead.

My high tech binoculars.

Yeah, so we blindly followed him back bit not without difficulty. Thank goodness for my girlfriend's cell phone had enough juice to light our way to the car. After insisting our guide to slow down a bit as the trail gave way to God-knows-what, he asked me "why I didn't like hiking in the dark" and it took all my patience to keep me from punching him in the mouth.

As all great things come to an end, we did arrive back to the car two hours late with only mild irritation, muddy shoes, a few bruises and absolute hunger. The good news was we'd have cold beer, and a bunica (Romanian grandmother) waiting to stuff us with sarmale, ciorba de fasole and clatite back at the pensuine.
One "adventure" down and more to come...

Good friends who tolerate all my awkward shenanigans are hard to find.