Laku Rosu

Northern Romania has come in as a huge (and very pleasant ) shock although with a few reservations! As planned, we left Gheorgheni on Wednesday morning, my 64th birthday, and headed for Laku Rosu, the Red lake, but not before Taz and Joel presented me with a Romanian birthday  card and a huge slice of cream cake complete with two candles. Setting of from the Hotel Rubin we had only ridden a couple of hundred yards when low and behold we pulled to the side of the town square and stopped. Taz immediately disappeared into the local tourist information office and re-emerged carrying a 1lt mineral water bottle, which much to my astonishment she presented to me with a huge grin. It seems that the previous day she and Joel had spoken to the guy in the office about “acquiring”  some home made Palinqua, the local hooch distilled from plums in almost every backyard, which they knew I had a taste for. How thoughtful is that?

The tourist Tat shops at the Lake

Then it was time to head east to the much hyped Laku Rosu and Bicaz Gorge. The lake was easily found, as not only was it right by the main road, it was, as usual surrounded by wooded shacks and stalls selling the same old tourist tat! I guess that is what happens when such developments are completely unregulated. We stopped just long enough to get a couple of photos and got the hell out of it. Just up the road we ran into the gorge, and guess what???? Yes, every spare square foot of space at the edge of the road was taken by yet more tourist tat… I just don’t know how all the vendors manage to scrap a living from the few tourists that pass through the gorge! And it certainly wrecks the ambiance of the place in no uncertain way! All in all a huge disappointment.

Bicaz Gorge

We continued in a north easterly direction with a view to getting up to Voronet Monastery, one of the many so called “painted” Monasteries with beautifully preserved frescos covering the outside walls. As we approached a huge reservoir, Joel turned left and then stopped to check the map fairly close to a large 4x4, the Romanian driver of which came over to speak with us and it transpired that he had spent many years working in the USA but had recently retired back to Romania partly to make his pension go somewhat further, a feeling I know only too well! Anyway he confirmed that the road we had turned onto was the scenic route to where we wanted to end up, and ran through one of Romania’s national parks. The road started out well enough but it soon deteriorated with huge pot holes and even some areas with just a gravel surface. However the scenery was superb, climbing steadily through heavily forested area until the it suddenly opened out with magnificent views across the huge reservoir. I stopped on the apex of the bend and parked up to take some photos; Taz and Joel turned around and joined me a couple on minutes later, just as 2 cars full of people also drew up. As the kids played on the mountain side I got chatting to one of the guys who spoke really good English. It transpired that although he was Romanian, his wife was English and they lived in Essex just outside Maldon, a town which I know really well as I used to live just up the road… As we talked an even more amazing coincidence came to light in that the school that there daughter attends in Maldon collects books to ship out to a school in…. yes you’ve guessed it, Bansang; it really is a very small world!

The highest point in the National Park where we met Essex Girl!

We didn’t quite make it to Voronet that night, instead doing another wild camp some miles short, which although fairly hidden from view, was in reality a little too close to the road which had an awful lot of heavy forestry truck crashing up and down it for most of the night. It was also not too flat so Taz and Joel set up their tent between the legs of a large electric pylon, much to my amusement. I did suggest that they wouldn’t need a torch as they could just hold onto the pylon and their eyes would light up. In the morning, just as we were cooking breakfast a car pulled up the track close to us and parked, followed a few minutes later by a huge tractor and another car full of forestry workers. Having carefully checked the track the previous evening when we stopped we were sure that it hadn’t been used for a long time, so just out luck that they had chosen today to start work on that particular bit of forestery. However they were not in the least worried about us as our little camp was well out of their way.

Once packed up and ready to move, unusually, I pulled off first and stopped by the entrance followed by Taz, as we waited for Joel, Taz looked down and to her dismay saw a huge and increasing puddle of oil under her bike! A recurring problem with the little Kawasakis had struck once more. The oil seal behind the front chain sprocket slowly works its way out over a few thousand miles  and unless regularly checked, pops right out causing the oil to pour from the engine. Fortunately Joel had some new seals with him and although it didn’t take long to replace it with a nice new seal, trhe fact remains that this is potentially a very serious fault on the Kawasakis. If Taz hadn’t noticed the leak it could easily have caused a catastrophic engine failure by loosing all the lubricating oil. An hour or so later we were on the way to Voronet once more  However being the kind person that I am, I didn't take any photos of the problem !!!

Voronet Monastery

We found the Monastery easily enough, partly due to the huge number of Tat stalls clustered around the car park. Was it picturesque? Yes, undeniably so. Did it live up to the guide book hype? No, definitely not! In reality it hardly justifies the title of Monastery in my book at all as it doesn’t appear to have any accommodation for monks or nuns so is really just a church; yes, a nice decorated church and again, yes it is remarkable that the frescos are generally in such good condition after all the centuries, but to to this heathen at least, not worth going too far out of your way for. Then it was on to the next! Humor monastery was all but identical in every respect, even the intimidating looking Mother Superior standing by the admission kiosk. One other thing that caused us some agitation was the additional 10 lei (double the entrance fee) demanded if you wanted to take photos of the outside of the Monastery! Photos inside were banned completely, with or without flash. To enforce the charge, Taz and Joel were made to hand in their cameras at the admission kiosk as they were unwilling to pay the extra charge. I on the other hand managed to slip in unnoticed as Taz was buying the 3  tickets and in any case their was no way I would have left my camera at the entrance, I would simply have returned to the bike and missed seeing an almost exact replica of Voronet….  That episode left rather a nasty taste in all our mouths so we decided that we would try just one more so headed even further north to Sucevita.

At least Sucevita was a “proper” monastery with accommodation buildings forming a perimeter wall around the now familiar fresco covered church. It was somewhat more interesting that our previous visits, but still left a feeling of disappointment, I guess after seeing the fantastic Monasteries in Greece at Meteora ! So that was to be out last Monasteries, we were now on the trail of the wooden churches of Maramures a little further to the east. A little further on we spotted a rather picturesque church on the left hand side of the road and stopped for a closer look and to take some photos. Whilst looking around the inside we heard some voices and giggling coming from the balcony but couldn’t see anyone.

Andrew and friends at the door of their church

Then just as we were about to leave, two young lads appeared and we asked if we could see the balcony. Not only did they agree, but went a step further and asked if we would like to see the view from the bell tower and then led us right up to the top of the tower. They both spoke quite good English so we spent a pleasant time chatting to them about their lives. One of them, who was 16 years old was off to Ecclesiastical college to train as a priest  The day ended with one of our most picturesque wild camps. We had struggled a bit to find somewhere suitable due to the amount of houses and farms along the roads, there was just no open space anywhere. Stopping at a well to fill our shower, Joel went off along one track and I another. Walking along a dirt track across a field, the track turned right, dropped fairly steeply and then opened onto a bit of a plateaux which I thought would do us admirably.

The view was outstanding, looking out due south with only one small cabin in sight and plenty of shade and sunshine, cover for our shower, and nice easy access.

Enroute to Maramures we passed through some amazing villages with some of the loveliest little houses I have ever seen, and to cap an already amazing day we suddenly spotted what appeared to be a very small but beautiful church, up a drive, close to a house. Riding up the drive I arrived at a pair of rather large iron gates with a sign warning of a loose guard dog, not exactly an invitation to visit…

 

Taz, Vladirmir and Joel at the small private church

Then just as I walked back to the bike I spotted a man walking across the yard and lifted my arm to wave. He waved back and seemed to give a bit of a smile so I walked back to the gates and he met me there. Asking about the church, he told me that it had been built by his brother and was not yet complete inside. He then asked if we would like to see it and went to put the dog away before opening the gate for us. It realy was magnificent, a real labour of love. Covered in frescos which had been painted by a student from the local art school, it was every bit the equal of the more famous monasteries of Vornet and Sucevita in my eyes. Vladimir, said that he had let us in to see it as we were obviously travellers and not just tourists! A small comment but one that we all took as a huge compliment!

Before we got to Maramures there was yet another wild camp, this time a little further from the road than a couple of nights ago, and separated from it by a river and a couple of hundred yards of field; the only problem was that it was just over 1000m up so we kept ourselves warm by having our second camp fire.

As before there was plenty of wood lying around to burn and although very un Ray Mears like, a good dose of petrol soon had it roaring away nicely!  Yet again we were disturbed whilst making breakfast by a damn great tractor coming up the track close to us, it’s getting to be a habit! Finally we did get to Maramures and it was well worth waiting for. We crossed another mountain pass near Borsa at just over 1400m, stopping at the summit for a coffee then continued on down into the famed Maramures region in search of the wooden churches and unlike the monasteries they didn’t disappoint! The workmanship was simply stunning, the detail incredible and the state of preservation nothing short of miraculous. Yes, they were all fairly similar but each had something special to off by way of detail or location. From whatever angle you look at it Maremures has certainly been the highlight of Romania for all three of us.

Romania troubles me a bit as I see shades of Ireland after it joined the EU. I was expecting a country struggling to get over the legacy of its recent past, somewhat underdeveloped in comparison to most western European countries, but instead I have found a country far more developed than I would have thought possible with a feel of rural France or Italy, shops well stocked, cars…well too damn many of them for my liking! So much building and renovation is going on right across the country that one wonders just where the money is coming from. To say the transformation is miraculous is to understate it by a huge degree. I have no knowledge of the economics of the country other than what I can see with my own eyes, but I fear very strongly that what we are seeing is simply not sustainable. As with Ireland, I feel the bubble has to burst at some point. In Greece we saw many abandoned building projects, in Bulgaria huge volumes of empty houses, yet in Romania it appears to be full steam ahead. My problem is that I have seen precious little in the way of industry other than farming, timber and tourism. And talking of tourism, I would guess that there must be at least 100 hotel rooms for every tourist in the country and that is not counting the hundreds of hotels still under construction… no, something has to give, one just wonders why the politicians can’t see what is so obvious to a simple tourist like me !