Weather: 🌧️☁️☁️☁️☁️
Lunch: 🥪🥪 (2 out 5, cup a soup and some cookies in the hut, rationing food à bit for now…)
Track: 🇷🇴🇷🇴🇷🇴🇷🇴 (4 out of 5, at least..the parts we could see we’re very beautiful 😅)
Hut: 🛖🛖 (2 out of 5, basic, not very clean, mountain hut)
Name of followed trail: E8
Special mention: Paul, Max and Deniz, our hut companions for tonight!
We wake up after a rainy and windy night. Truly grateful that we slept in the hut! We get up early because today will be a long day with a lot of elevation in possibly bad weather. It’s still rainy and cloudy when we look outside and we decide to wait until the visibility improves a bit. Autumn is really coming and not only in beautiful colours. Ofcourse we knew this was going to happen, but it’s still challenging to make the right decisions.
Yesterday evening we prepared well, by looking at the route, possible escape options and decision points. When we get ready in our rain gear to start this day of hiking I realize how basic and bizarre our hiker life is. We’re in a hut in Romania, about to go out into a misty unknown world. And we’re doing it because we want to walk to Istanbul.
I hug Mark. At least we’re crazy together 😅😂.
We first hike to Saua Gargalau, halfway through our hiking day. There we will decide if we continue, or stay at the hut.
The track is not too bad and the cloud sometimes lifts and gives us some great views. We enjoy the walk, even though we need to walk carefully because the trail is slippery at points and sometimes hard to follow. We need to be careful not to loose our way when the visibility ik s poor. When we get to the hut, it’s about 12.00. We hear voices at the hut. There are 4 hikers inside, about to leave. We have a short chat and when we tell where we’re going, one of them says: “you’re that guys from Facebook!” We have to laugh, because indeed I posted a message in the ‘hiking Romania’ Facebook group, asking about tips for watersources, bears and dogs. This group is apparently well used, because it’s the second time I meet someone that’s also seen my message there! 😂
The other hikers leave and we take our time to discuss our options. The weather hasn’t improved, and we’re in the middle of the clouds. It’s also a bit windy and we’d still need at least 5 hours to get there. We decide to stay at the hut and replan the other days.
So we get water from the spring and make ourselves comfortable. Since we’ll take an extra day to get to Vatra Dornei, we ration our food. We still have enough, bit we need to be a bit more careful on what we use when.
After a while, we hear voices. We first think it’s the 4 hikers coming back, but it’s 3 new hikers! Paul, Max and Deniz are going to sleep here as well, but first they leave part of their gear here and go to the top of Gargalau. When they’re back, we spend the rest of the afternoon and evening chatting with them about hiking, Romania and the Netherlands and all kinds of other things. They are very kind and share their snacks with us, let us use their powerbank and even offer to bring our rubbish with them! So kind and so everything you can wish for as a thru-hiker!
What a great way to spend our half day off!