Gorges, Ice Caves and Cave Bears (Road Trip ~ Romania)

October 2019

We hired a car for a few days as some of the sights we wanted to visit were off the beaten track.

Ladies Fingers

First stop was a Rarau Massif  did a walk up to the base of the Ladies Fingers rocks. Popular place with the locals including a group of monks (in full religious garb - hats, black robes etc) scrambling past us.

Bicaz Gorge

Next destination was to be the Bicaz Gorge which is about 8 Kms of narrow windy road through an impressive gorge - damn near sheer walls either side.

Unfortunately due to road works we ended up doing a 80 km detour - but on the plus side ended up staying at a very nice pensuine and had the best Tochitură Moldovenească. Now Tochitură is a traditional Romanian dish and comprises of pork stew (smoked pork, belly pork and pork sausage), bellows cheese (a white goats cheese) an a lump of semolina with a fried egg on top - unfortunately by the time I thought of taking a photo I had finished the dish. But here's a photo I poached from the Web.

Driving through a couple of small towns in this area  we found that someone has come up with a novel way of making zebra crossing more visible and that is to draw shadows of the white stripes to make them look as if they are floating in the air.

And then we got to the gorge.

On the other side of the gorge is the Red Lake which was naturally created in 1838 when an earthquake triggered a landslide that blocked the river. The remains of the trees that once grew here can still be seen poking through the waters surface.

At Praid is Salina Praid - a salt mine. The mining of salt here (which dates back to Roman times) has stopped and the mines have been in part converted to a sanitarium, recreation center and concert hall - all a 100 or so meters underground. Possible as the method of mining has created huge regular shaped caverns.

There is a natural cave that has a subterranean glacier, the deep ice dates back to the last ice age, and is one of 9 known to exist, a definite go to place for us.   Now you occasionally read about tourists being lead astray by GPS and been taken down roads nobody in their right mind would attempt. Well that happened to us - though we did have the good sense to give up after a few Kms. To top it all off the cave was closed for October.

Our accommodation for that night was a little bit odd as it was a log cabin! Definitely in the wop wops!

Groapa Ruginoasa

On the way to our next stop we did a short but steep walk up to a large canyon - quite neat views.

Bears Cave

More successful with the destination known as the Bear's Cave. Discovered about 30 years ago the interior has been largely untouched and is full of stalactites and stalagmites but the real high light is the skeleton of a cave bear that died sometime in the last ice age. Very cool.

From here we dropped the car of on Cluj Napoca and was back to public transport and off to Turda.