Day 203, camping Sura Banatului – Iabalcea

Weather: ⛅☀️☀️☀️☀️ (rating 5 out of 5, perfect, slightly cold hiking weather…)
Picnic: 🥪🥪🥪🥪 (4 out 5, bread and buren on a bench near the bakery in Resita)
Track: 🇷🇴🇹🇩🇹🇩🇹🇩🇹🇩 (4 out of 5, great trail through the forest, with the trail through Resita as an awkward addition to the day)
Campsite: ⛺⛺⛺⛺ (4 out of 5, lovely spot in the orchard, with a real toilet and running water) a
Name of followed trail: Via Transilvanica

We wake up in a frozen tent. We get up and get packing, because we have a long day ahead. We are invited inside by the owner, and he has our breakfast ready in no time, so we’re packed and having breakfast before 7.00, eventhough we agreed on breakfast at 7.30. That’s a big difference with yesterday 😅.

After a nice chat with the owner we leave at 8.00, starting up hill. We have great views and really enjoy this part of our walk. We do miss a turn, which makes us hike 2 km extra on an already 32 km day, but it’s pretty never the less.

We walk towards the town of Resita, a factory towh with 2 large factories that seem long out of use. It gives the town a strange feel to it, with the dirty and overgrown factory buildings, sometimes even reused as houses. In the town centre it looks better, but the huge pipelines that go over the valley where the town is in, are a reminder of the industry that once was. Or might still be, because a few of the buildings still seems in use…

We have lunch in Resita and dry our tent next to our bench. It feels a bit weird, but it works. Until an angry man comes out, telling me that this is private property and that I shouldn’t be doing this. He even makes a point of our hiking poles leaning against his fence. With this man we make another discovery; the first unfriendly person in Romania!

5 minutes later, when we’re repacking, another man comes by and asks if he can help us in any way. The unfriendly people are definitely a minority 😁😂.

We are happy to leave the strange town of Resita and get back into the beautiful forest. The rest of the hike is once again beautiful forest track, and we hike to our destination of Iabalcea.

Iabalcea is a sleepy little village in the middle of the forested hills. We walk through the village to find our campsite in the far end, hidden in the forest.

We get to the campsite La salasul Fermecat together with a company in 4 cars, who rented the rooms in the cottage on the terrain. The owner is slightly confused when we appear not to belong to the group. At first she says there is no space, until we say that we want to pitch our tent. Then it’s no problem, and we even get invited for dinner by the group of people. Ofcourse we can’t say no to that!

We first pitch our tent, relax a bit and then go and ask if the offer still counts. It does indeed. We join the group of befriended speologists and Chef Vasili makes a very tasty Romanian goulash in a pot over the fire. I finish 2 plates and Mark 3, which makes the chef extremely happy 😁. Meanwhile we have a nice conversation with other members of the group in English and…French. The latter is a brainf@ck for Mark, switching between too many languages 🫨. We get told that palinka makes this easier, though we doubt that it will become more understandable 😂.

We also meet the park director, whom they had invited for dinner.

We have a great evening of Romanian hospitality, and go to bed grateful for all of these beautiful people we meet along the way.