Day 161, Baia Mare – Mt. Mogosa

Weather: ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪🥪 (4 out 5, at a good bakery in Baia Mare)
Track: 🇷🇴🇷🇴 (2 out of 5, first 60% was roadwalking, after that it was trail through the forest. Beautiful but hard to follow, because there were many more tracks than my map showed…)
Hotel: 🛌🛌🛌🛌 (4 out of 5, cool cabin style hotel at a beautiful mountain lake)
Name of followed trail: – (own detour carei-baia mare)
Special mention: all the friendly people who helped us today to make our day a better day. David the cyclist, the people at Dedeman, the lady at the hunting store, Cipri at the phone Repair centre, The man at the DHL service point, the people from the Maramont Outdoor store, the lady that sells vegetables at the roadside and the people at hotel Suitor cota 1000.

As you can see, today was very much about the friendliness of people. A lot of people helped us today, with a friendly gesture, or by truly helping us out. We needed a bit of luck today, and the people of the Maramures region delivered!

We started on time this morning, because we had some chores left to do that we couldn’t do on a Sunday. The main one is: collecting our package from Annemieke, with new shoes, at DHL, and buying gas canisters. Both can be done in the industrial area outside of town, so we take a taxi to Dedeman (huge building and gardening shop). Here we are helped by the employees that point us directly to the right path in this huge hall. We are in luck, there is one left! Later we see another one, so we take that too. First job done! From here we go to the hunting store, to get some extra precautions against the big sheepdogs people warn us for.

On our way, a cyclist stops and asks if he can help. David is part of mountain rescue team in this region. We share some stories and he wishes us luck. We are happy to meet another hiker out here, that confirms that we are on the right track with the materials we have with us!

The lady at the hunting store helps us very kindly, and with the right materials, and a bag of plums, we continue on our todo list.

At the phone repair shop we are also assisted very helpful by Cipri. With the broken screen, the problem isn’t hard to see.. 🙈 He can fix it within an hour, so that is absolutely perfect for us! Cipri gives us his phone number in case we ever need translation or help. Super kind! We continue to the DHL service point and hope that today’s good fortune will last a bit longer.

We find a DHL employee that opens the doors 15 minutes prior to opening times. He tells us that the package isn’t there, because another cargo company does these deliveries. We try to stay calm, but that doesn’t sound good… Then he calls a colleague to check if she knows more about it and we are in luck. The other company delivered the package here and the colleague that received it was confused what to do with it, so he put it in the office. Our package is here! Mark is the happiest person on the planet right now 😅😅😅!

With all the new stuff, including 2 pairs of shoes, we repack and get a taxi back into town. After a short lunch, the hiking day can begin at 13.00.

We walk past the Maramont outdoor shop in the city centre, where they have waterproofing for Marks new shoes (and would have had plenty of gas canisters too…). They also help us by answering our questions about water supply and give some advice on the route.

very grateful for all the kindness we received this morning, we start our roadwalk to Baia Sprie. Boring, but now with a direct purpose, getting back into the mountains. That makes a lot of difference!

At the roadside there is a fruit and vegetable stall, where I try to buy a capsicum, but the lady doesn’t want me to pay for it. I also get a cucumber and some tomatoes with it, and a lovely big smile. More kindness in the road today!

We go up the hill from Baia Sprie into the forest. the trail is sometimes hard to follow, and we have to retrace our steps quite a few times.

My navigating has been quite alright upto now, but at the end of the day I find out I’m only human and do make mistakes. I navigate us to a point (A), but according to our booking we should go to another place (B). Not to far, so we walk the extra 10 minutes. I find out that the hotel is somewhere else altogether, where we have to go with the chairlift (C)… Only now the instructions from the hotel make sense to me! And I realize that the sign I saw (pointing right where our trail went left) to our hotel along our way (d), indeed pointed to…our hotel! 🤔😖😅

Lucky for us, here too the people are very friendly. It is no problem for them and at 20.00 the chairlift is turned on to get us and our backpacks up the hill.

With beautiful views, we arrive at the hotel. It’s a great place and the restaurant still serves food too! After a good meal we get a shower and go to bed after a tiring but great day!

When we go to bed, I read a bit in the hotel information and find our that this region is known for its friendliness. The Maramures people sure delivered today!