The Final Hike

The final hike was supposed to be the highlight of the trip. I had looked forward to the hike the whole week. You see  - I love to go up to peaks. There is something so rewarding about doing that. It is a bit strange that I love that so much, since I have a fear of heights. But somehow I always manage. For every time I manage to get up to a top I become a little bit tougher.

So I woke up in a really good mood, the day of the final hike. I prepared all my things and went down for breakfast. When I was relaxing after breakfast, just hanging with the others, I started to feel ... well, not so good. I excused myself and went back to my room where I immediately had do place myself in the bathroom. I spent the major part of the next hour there. I took some stomach pills and hoped for the best.

This hike started in an usual way - we drove there with horse and wagon. It was so nice, even though I had some difficulties during the ride. I felt nauseous. I hoped it would pass, but it didn’t. The first part of the hike is pretty much in a blur. Someone suggested me to take Resorb, which is a tablet that consists of salt and other good things. I put it in my camel bag and slowly started to feel a little bit better. At lunch I took some vegetable soup and coke and at last I felt almost as my usual self. It was pity though that I ”missed” the first part. It was very beautiful as far as I have seen from the pictures.

A horse and wagon ride

A bit tricky but beautiful part of the hike

After lunch we started the final part to the peak. It was as beautiful as the rest of hikes that we had made that week. But it was somewhat challenging. At a couple of points it was quite steep and we needed to use a wire to climb. We did the climb one by one, with the help of our great guides. The wait for your turn was the worst. I felt like a lamb waiting for the slaughter house. When it finally was my turn I asked Lucian, our guide, to carry my back-pack and started to climb - extremely focused on the task in hand. Which of course meant that I climbed very quickly. Lucian wondered a bit why I was in such a hurry, but the only explanation I had was that I just wanted the bad part to be over soon. 

On our way to the top.                         Happy at the first peak!

The view from 945 m above the valley!

Memorial of the soldiers that died in First World War.

There were several people that overcame different obstacles on that hike. We were many with a fear of heights and we all managed to do the climb. But the hero of the day was the guy in the group that has osteoarthritis AND a fear of heights. He was just a BIG smile on the peak and the rest of the day, since he was so happy that he managed to do it. Some people back home had told him that it would be too difficult for him to manage that kind of a climb. But he made it!!! The fact is that the whole group made it, which is not always the case. Yeah us!

On the way to the second peak!

We were all rewarded with a great view and a feeling of being on the top of the world in more ways than one. We actually visited several peaks up on the top. It was AMAZING and I was soooooo happy that I didn’t stay in bed in that morning, even though I didn’t feel fine.

On the way back down to the valley we walked through the forrest, on unofficial trails. The only reason that we found our way was that Lucian knows the forrest as the back of his hand. We entertained ourselves with singing songs from different musicals. It was a lot of fun.

A farmer that we met on the way down.

The final reaction to the somewhat exciting day came during the dinner. I could hardly keep my eyes open while eating. I was so tired. But it was the right kind of tiredness, the one you get when you have done something amazing.

The Fourth Hike

The fourth hike was a hike that I expected to be sort of ”in between” hike. It was, as far as I understood, more of a transport hike. We were also told it would be quite easy, not any steep uphill anywhere. 

On top of the hill down to the valley we came from

It wasn’t hard, that was true. We started the hike, by walking through the village with all the cute old houses. Then we continued up the hill to reach the forrest. We then followed cute little trails in the forrest and arrived at a wonderful grass field on the top. We walked over the fields and continued to follow nice little trails downhills. On the way we walked pass cute little farms, meadows and forrest. It was an absolutely beautiful hike where I enjoyed every minute of it. 

Up the hill   

Through the fields

I love hiking since it is my kind of meditation. During a hike I focus on my basic needs (water/drinks and food) and to move my body. I clear my head and I just fill it up with what I see and experience. This means that I prefer to hike where there are beautiful views and a calm surrounding. I don’t want to see cars, planes or any other kind of machines. I don’t want to smell petrol or exhaust. I just want to smell the clean air. I don’t want to meet too many people, preferably only locals.    

On top of the hill, on the grass field - it makes me want to run

Farms, meadows and forrest - The surrounding was changing all the time

The best things with hiking in Transylvania is the feeling of being in another time. You meet mostly shepherds and people working the fields, not too many tourists, while hiking. If you would pass farms in Sweden there would have been a lot of noise from machines cutting grass or similar. In Transylvania it is all quiet, since they don’t use any modern machines. It only smells of forrest and fields. The most disturbing noise is actually the mobile phone of our guide. :-) Which shouldn’t be a problem for me, since I will start to work for a telecom operator - again.

So the it fourth hike was very, ver beautiful and ended in the small city of the area, Zarnesti, and a local bar. And as always the beer tasted wonderful after the hike.

Don't ask - I don't know what the sheep are doing

The Third Hike

After we had spent a night in the mountain rescue hut, we started the day with a visit to a cave. The Ialomitei cave is 1660 m long and has an old monastery build right at the entrance of it. It was nice to see it, but my interest for caves is always lower on hiking trips. The hikes are the main thing, the main focus, everything else is just white noise.

On the way to the monastery and the cave

In the cave there was a lot of water

After the visit to the cave we started to go back over the mountain. The weather was fine and it was quite hot. We saw some dark clouds in the distance but hoped for the best. It was an easier hike on the way back, not so steep, not so much of a trail, it felt like we mostly just walked on fields. Again - lots of animals around us. We stopped for lunch at the peak. We didn’t sit there for very long, before we realized that some bad weather would arrive shortly. Our guide, Lucian, didn’t even allow me to prepare myself completely before we took off. He took my back-pack, so we could save some seconds. The reason for this is of course the danger to be on the top of the mountain when there is a thunderstorm. Most of us didn’t even have the time to put on the full rain-gear (in other words - all of didn’t manage to put on the rain trousers). We walked quite quickly back/down-hill. The rain poured down and after a while we got some hail storms. It was an exciting hike. You need to have this kind of hikes in between. The problem was that everyone who didn’t have the trousers on now had soaking wet hiking boots, since the rain poured right down in them. I belonged to the lucky few, but I was still quite wet. No rain gear in the world can protect you completely when it is raining as much as it did. 

Cute donkeys on the way up the mountain

And again cows close to our trail

Just before the thunderstorm arrived

In the end of the hike, when the rain had stopped, we walked through some amazing trails in the forrest. Soft nice trails with a little bit of down hill. I couldn’t help myself and started to run, even though I had my back-pack and hiking boots on. I then realized that my body needed a run. I needed to stretch my legs and I decided to start the next morning with a short run.

After the hike we took the bus to our next destination; A lovely little place which was more of a home-stay. The dinner was an amazing home-cooked meal, where one of the sons in the house decided to play key-board for us. Suddenly it felt like we were on party at a friend’s house. The hostess showed us how to dance and my friend Erika (who is a good dancer) joined her on the dance floor. It was an amazing evening. One of those you will always remember.

The son of the house playing for us

Erika dancing with our hostess

The next morning I did what I had planned to do and went for a run, 5 km together with the neighbor’s dog.:-) It felt absolutely amazing. It was the first time ever when I run on the same day as I hiked. It will not he the last.

The Second Hike

Our first day of hiking started with a quite steep uphill. Some of us (not me ;-) ) suffered a bit. We were warned that the second day hike should start with an even worse uphill. On the first day I was allowed to walk on my own, first in line. On the second day Alex, our other guide, walked first. He was told not to walk too fast. Yeah - the uphill was quite steep and Alex kept his promise and didn’t walk too fast. And I got impatient. As always. I love when I can start my 4-wheel drive (arms with poles and legs) and just walk. To use my body completely, push my limit, get the pulse up and just WALK. With Alex in the front I couldn’t. I had to adjust my speed to his. It was a little bit frustrating. I know - this is MY problem. But it’s my blog so I’m allowed to ”complain” and tell all my feelings, right?! ;-)

After the first steep uphill. I feel fine. :-)

The hike over the mountain and the saddle was absolutely amazing. During our first day we had seen mostly wonderful fields of flowers. On our second day we saw more rough cliffs and green fields. The trails were absolutely amazing. I honestly think the trails were some of the best I have seen in the whole world. I found myself going around with a silly smile the whole day. I was just feeling very happy.

Do you see the saddle?    

                                                                               Amazing trails - don't you think?

You have to agree - it is beautiful!

Look at the views we had while hiking!

We had our lunch break just after we passed the peak/saddle. It was a beautiful spot for a break. We had a great view over the mountains around us and the trails down to the valley.

On our the way down to the mountain rescue hut where we should stay the night, we passed many shepherds with their sheep, cows, horses and dogs. Even if the dogs sometimes seemed a bit aggressive the overall impression was that is was very idyllic. It felt like we were in another time - a much calmer and more basic time. 

We walked quite close to all the animals

Cows and dogs kept us company  

We saw some frogs

We arrived to the valley and the mountain rescue hut already at 3 p.m. so we decided to stop for a beer on the local bar. It ended up being quite long stop at the bar. The three single girls: Erika, Maria and I sat down with Alex, our single guide, for long discussions about love, life and other important subjects. It was a lot of fun.

The rest of the night we spent in the same direction - discussion about this and that. And then a long sleep to prepare for the next day of hiking.

The Dogs

On almost every hike during the week we had some additional company - dogs. There were different dogs every day. But the two dogs that made the biggest impression on us were the dogs that followed us the first and the second day. 

We never named the dogs, but I called one of the dogs for Charlie and the other one for Tree-legged. Three-legged came up to us the first day while we were waiting for Lucian, our guide. She was a cute little dog with one leg badly hurt, couldn’t even walk on it, so she was jumping around on 3 legs. She decided from the start that we were her new family and as soon as we started our first hike she came along, jumping on her three legs. When we walked down the street to the first trail Charlie decided to come along. Suddenly we had Charlie in front of the group and Three-legged in the back ”protecting” us. It was so cute.

           Erika's first meeting with Three-legged                     Charlie asked if he could come along

The dogs really took their assignment seriously. When were having a great relaxing lunch a man approached us from a distance - The dogs went wild, barking and running around. No one should come close to our group. 

Our dogs together, Three-legged to the left and Charlie to the right.

Their reward for the protection was of course food. They were sitting close to us during every break, looking for a good snack. They quickly become spoiled - bread was not interesting enough and would only be accepted if they couldn’t get anything else. Salami seemed to be their favorite.


At one point we took a longer break at a farmer’s house. The dogs were tired after a long day of hiking, so they went to sleep under the table. When we were ready to leave I pushed the dogs a little and told them ”we are leaving”, but they kept on sleeping. So we started to hike again, without the dogs. When we reached the other side of the small valley, the dogs suddenly woke up and realized that we were gone. So from the other side of the valley we saw how the dogs came running like crazy to catch up with us. Three-legged didn’t manage the high grass, so she had to run a detour. But since we all noticed this, we waited until she reached the group.

On our way home on the first day Charlie picked up another female dog in heat. Suddenly the whole group were surrounded with dogs that wanted to come close to Charlie’s fiancé. There were some dog fights and blood so it got a bit dramatic, but in the end Charlie got to keep his new girlfriend. The next day we didn’t see Charlie, so I guessed he stayed home with his new girlfriend.

All the villages dogs were interested in Charlie's fiancé

Three-legged came along on the second day as well. The leg seem to have improved during the first day of hike, strangely enough. This hike headed to a mountain rescue hut where we spent the night. We were a bit concerned that three-legged would follow us there, since we knew that there would be some nasty dogs on the way (the shepherds used quite aggressive dogs) and that we would spend the night away from the village where she lived. But she was a smart dog - when the angry dogs came she put herself between Alex and I and we protected her with our hiking poles. During the night in the mountain hut she seemed to have found some new friends, because the last time we saw here in the night she headed for the direction of the camping site. The next day she was gone. We wondered a bit what happened to her.

Angry dogs

The following days we had more dogs around us, but no one made the same special impression on us. I miss ”our” dogs. 

The First Hike in Transylvania

As I told you before I had heard, prior to this trip, that Transylvania had the best hiking. My expectations were therefore high. Could Transylvania really live up to them?

Already during the first hour of hiking I was amazed. The mountains, the fields, all the flowers, the small mountain huts were all SOOOOO beautiful. I couldn’t believe our luck. We had arrived to this amazing country before they had cut the fields of grass, so all the beautiful summer flowers were still around. I don’t think I have ever seen so many flowers while hiking.

In some of the hikes I have made the trails have been wide and well used. I call them hiking autobahns. Of course you cannot expect perfect narrow forrest trails on all the hikes during a whole week of hiking, but we were off to a very good start. All the trails were beautiful. We hit a little bit of roads in between, but that is normal. The major parts were really nice trails.

During our hike we ran into a couple that were up in the mountains cutting the grass. That really put things in perspective; they had walked up the mountain and were working hard all day and then walked down. That is hard for me to do and I do a lot of exercise. But then add to the picture that they were using a scythe and an old rake (In Sweden we would have used machines) and they were in their 80‘ies!!! Do you get it? How amazing isn’t that? They were smiling and looked very happy. You start to think - what is the best way to live your life? Chasing money and career in the modern world or to work hard outdoors in a surrounding that you love?

On our first day we also got to experience the hospitality of the Romanian people. Due to the risk of thunderstorm (which never came - we had nice weather the whole day) we decided to take a different route than it was planned from the start. Lucian then called some people he knew and asked if it was OK that we came by. So suddenly we found ourselves sitting in a garden being served blueberry liqueur, homemade cheese and bread and freshly made doughnuts. It was amazing. These people stopped to work on their fields just so they could serve food and drinks to a group of people they have never met before. You will not find this kind of hospitality on a lot of places around the world. Because we didn’t pay, Lucian did.

So as a summary - we started of our hiking week in the best possible way.

The Transylvanian Hiking Group

It is always a bit of a lottery when you join a group that you will travel with. Will you like all the others? Will they like you? Will there be conflicts? Will you like the tour leaders and guides? The fact is that I very rarely haven’t liked the group that I travel with, the tour leaders or the guides. But once in a while you are unlucky. The sad fact is that I have been most unhappy with groups that consists of only Swedish people. Some Swedish people tend to complain a lot on little things and that is really annoying when you just want to enjoy your vacation. This group consisted of only Swedish people, so of course I was a bit worried before the trip.

This trip had one advantage though - I made this trip with my friend Erika. We know each other since many years and have traveled together before. I knew that I would always have at least one person that I enjoyed to hang around.

But there was no need to worry this time. Everyone in the group was easy to talk to and enjoyed hiking (I’ve been on hiking trips with people that don’t enjoy hiking) and we had GREAT guides: Lucian and Alex. What Lucian didn’t know about the mountains and the forests in Transylvania was not worth knowing. Alex was a walking encyclopedia and could tell you everything about the history of Romania and its traditions. They were a great team. On top of that both of them were easy on the eye. Yeah - I found Romanian men to be very handsome. Please have a look below. :-)

The whole group, Lucian is in the front to the left.

Alex as the group's photographer

The fear of losing your luggage and to travel back in time

I’m a big fan of Lufthansa. They have safely transported me and my luggage around the world so many times. I’m not a big fan of KLM. They have NOT transported my luggage safely (lost/delayed twice). They have also made my trip somewhat uncomfortable (no working toilets for half the flight time to Ecuador). In other words I was not happy to fly KLM to Transylvania.

On top of that our tour leader told us in the pre-information that they have had problems with lost luggage before on this trip, while flying KLM. With this in mind the packing was made with extra care. What hiking essentials needed to go in the hand luggage, in case of lost luggage? Of course the hiking boots, but also hiking clothes, sunscreen and other important things. But a couple of my hiking necessities I couldn’t bring along: my Swiss army knife and the hiking poles. :-(  I hoped for the best and ”hold my thumbs” as we say in Sweden.

We were lucky!? No one in the whole group lost their luggage. We were so happy that it all went so well. But when you think about it - isn’t it weird that you are happy if a company is doing the service you are paying them for? Anyhow - I was still happy. I got my Swiss army knife and my hiking poles with me. :-)

The first impression of Romania (the airport and the city around it) was that it was like any other country. We saw all the ”normal” stores and restaurants. But the more distance we put between us and the airport the more beautiful and different the country became. We saw more and more beautiful mountains, cuter and cuter villages AND more and more animals. Finally we saw the horse & wagons and the men in the fields cutting grass with scythe. We had travelled back in time. We had reached our destination - beautiful Transylvania.

The BEST hiking trip ever?

It’s blog time again. In other words it’s time for another trip. This time I have done things a little bit different. I’m writing my blog after I have come home. The reason for this I will come back to later.

This trip has been on my mind for a long time. Already in 2005 I wanted to go, but I ended up doing other trips (Bulgaria, Austria, round trip in southern Africa and so on). Then in 2007, when I went to Cuba, I met some girls that had done the trip and spoke about it as ”the BEST hiking trip”. So the year after I looked for the trip again and I couldn’t find it. :-( I was so disappointed. Ever since then I have looked for the trip and I was SO happy when I this year found it again.

The issue this time was that I had quit my job without having a new one. Could I really book a trip when I didn’t know my financial situation? I hesitated for the longest time, but then I finally decided that I would take the chance. I believed I afford the trip as long as I didn’t spend to much money on other things. You see - there is nothing else I rather spend money on than hiking trips. I’m not the average girl in this sense. ;-)

So I booked the trip and came happy to the office and told my colleague and friend Erika about the trip. She had told me earlier that she was out of vacation days, so I hadn’t asked her to join me, but to my big surprise she liked the sound of the trip so much so she somehow rearranged her vacation and decided to come along. YEAH!!!!

So which trip has been on my mind for such a long time? It is a hiking trip to TRANSYLVANIA. Even the name of it sounds exciting, don’t you think? For those of you who understands Swedish: here is the description of the trip: http://www.favoritresor.se/Favoritresor/Vandringsresor/Transsylvanien-1/ 

Oh, I almost forgot - I need to tell you why I didn’t blog during my trip. Well - one of the BEST things about going to Transylvania is that it is a trip back in time. There you still use a scythe (lie på svenska) to cut grass and you use horse & wagon for transportation. It is not a high-tech country. So I decided to fully enjoy ”the old days” and leave my high tech equipment (my computer) at home. The blog had to wait.

Come along for a trip to BEAUTIFUL Transylvania! :-)