Weather: ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪🥪 (3 out 5, bread from the supermarket in Potiza)
Track: 🇷🇴🇷🇴🇷🇴 (3 out of 5, beautiful view at the start, forest trail and trail through Botiza were nice. The trail to Ieud was hard to find)
Hotel: 🛌🛌🛌🛌🛌 (5 out of 5, very hospitable hotel with a pretty room, good shower and great food.)
Name of followed trail: E8
We wake up to a beautiful view during the sunrise. Around our tent people are already at work, picking berries. We wave at each other, and I realize how little one would understand of the life of the other.
Yet there is respect in our wave and smiles, and that’s enough.
Mark and I continue our packing and leave this lovely place. We walk down along a 4×4 track through the forest. It’s a nice track, and we see some evidence that there are indeed bears here (and we find out that bears indeed poop in the forest 😅😁, something a Dutch saying doubts).
We also find nice blackberries and a few streams! That makes me really happy, because water sources are still a bit of a worry.
The trail leads into the valley where we enter the village of Botiza. This is a lovely village with nice houses and many small fields where people are harvesting their crops. It’s a village where people take pride in decorating their homes, with skillfully crafted woodwork, or ornamented plumbing on the roof. Some houses are brand new, and in the ways of transport we see everything from a Tesla to a horse and carriage, from an old farmer with his shovel on an electrical scooter to a man with a tractor front on a carriage full of hay with his wife sitting in the hay. All these ways of transport exist next to each other, on the same road. To us, it’s a sight to see. We enjoy the friendly attitude off the people. They all greet us and we even get offered some potatoes by a lady in the field. Children coming from school greet us in English, and giggle and run when we respond. The English class hasn’t covered answering yet I guess 😅😅.
In Botiza we have lunch and after that we continue to Ieud. From Botiza, the trail is unmarked, and that makes it hard to navigate. We loose our way a couple of times, which is quite frustrating. The track we need to follow is overgrown and almost invisible, and other tracks that are clear aren’t on the map… We need both our navigational skills to find our way, but we manage to get to Ieud around 16.30. Quite happy to be there!
We stay in Casa Traditiilor, a super nice place with a very friendly owner and some cute dogs. Even Mark likes them!
We first go to the village to visit the Wooden Church, with impressive, wall covering paintings. It’s a beautiful place where faith is expressed in a pure form of art. It’s an impressive place to visit indeed!
After this visit, we go to the supermarket to get our resupply for the next 5 days.
We get back to the hotel where we enjoy a shower, and after that a great meal with soup, cream, home made bread and stuffed capsicum.
The lady at the hotel helps us out by doing our laundry for us, what a service!
Happy and well fed, we go to bed.