Day 162, Mt Mogosa – Neteda valley

Weather: ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪 (3 out 5, wraps on the creasta Cocoslui)
Track: 🇷🇴🇷🇴🇷🇴🇷🇴 (4 out of 5, tough but really cool track. Sometimes the markings were hard to follow, but generally ok)
Campsite: ⛺⛺⛺⛺ (4 out of 5, flat-ish soft spot on the cranberry bushes, with the most amazing view we’ve ever had.)
Name of followed trail: – / E8!
Special mention: the 3 men who drove by our campsite and made a chat with us. And a Palinka 😁.

Another beautiful yet demanding day today. I bet we’ll hVe more of these the coming months…

After breakfast we go down with the chairlift and start our track. It’s again challenging to navigate, especially the first 5 kilometers. After that we rejoin the E8. It feels good to be back on ‘our’ trail!

From here we go steep up to the Creasta Cocoslui, the roosters comb. This is a beautiful rocky ridge, where we have our lunch. We meet quite a few dayhikers here, the first we’ve seen since we left Kosiče a few weeks ago. We walk along the ridge and then down to Neteda

pass. We go slow, because the track winds through the juniper and cranberry bushes, and after that it goes down quite steep. We hope to find some water before the pass, because otherwise we will have to make a 2 km detour to get water somewhere. Only a small trickle to be found, so we go for the detour to the hotel/café on the map. They only seem open in winter, but there is a builder that turns on the main tap in the well, so we can drink and fill up.

Happy, with now heavy packs, we go back to the trail and continue up the hill. The last 10 kilometers are quite tough but again beautiful. It’s getting late, and we are getting tired, but the evening sun on the hills makes it worth it. At some point I doubt if it’s smart to continue, but we are getting so close that we do. On our way we encounter our first set of shepherd dogs. They keep their distance and we can continue our way. We’re glad with this easy happy ending.

We enter the valley where we want to pitch our tent and see a small house there, with a few horses next to it. The dogs are also there. We wave at the owner, that waves back and calls his dogs to him.

We walk past the house, further up, towards the rim of the valley, in a beautiful sunset over the mountains. We find a place to pitch our tent with the most amazing view over the mountains. We quickly pitch and enjoy the fact that we made it today. Job well done!

We see a car coming our way. A man gets out to see what we are doing. When he finds out we don’t speak Romanian, he asks his friend to come out of the car. A third man comes out to join the conversation, because by now they’re really curious to what we are doing here.

When we tell them we are on our way to Istanbul, one of them runs back to the car and gets 2 beers for us 😂. That we started in Ireland makes it even worse, or better… I don’t know.

We get our Slovakian Palinka and the glasses we got in Hajduszoboszlo, and have a drink with them. We have a fun conversation, explaining we really don’t need anything. When they leave again, 2 of them give us some money. ‘To get a good beer!’ A cash donation, that’s a first 😅!

Normally we pitch our tent out of sight, so we don’t get fined. Now we camp in the open and we get to meet new people, have good conversations, beers and money…

Surprised we wave them goodbye. I’m not sure who is more surprised now, the men or we 😁😁😁!