The Search for Dracula

Miles on trip: 12583 miles

Countries: 24 (+ Romania)

Days on trip: 131

Number of Dracula venues visited: 7

On Friday 7th October, we drove back into the EU from Serbia. Once we crossed the border into Romania, the road conditions worsened – there were pot holes everywhere, and we reduced our speed considerably. This was not a great first impression, but on the other hand, there were also beautifully decorated houses with ceramic tiles in the villages and lots of horse (or donkey) carriages on the road. One of the first sites we visited was the Bigar Cascade waterfall in the Cheile Nerei national park. It’s a pretty cool small waterfall, looking a bit like the mushroom waterfalls that you find in water parks. Interestingly, they were selling entrance tickets for 1 euro, though we’re not sure why since you can see it from the road.

If we thought the roads were bad now, we were in for a surprise. One of the blogs we had read recommended a nice route around a lake in the Domogled national park. The route is a national road throughout, but turns into a sand road part way along. Initially, the drive took us through some nice forests, past rivers and fields, and had some spectacular views, but then the sand road started … then the road got a bit narrower and stony… then large holes appeared, and because it had rained the night before, they were filled, so now we couldn’t see how deep they really were. We were desperate to just find a pretty place to stop by the lake, and stay the night…

As the road became more windy, the pot holes got worse, the puddles bigger and there just wasn’t a nice place to stay the night in sight. We were now also quite worried about getting stuck, or whether something might break… No mobile phone reception and no one anywhere nearby should anything happen. We go through another puddle at a moderate pace and a light illuminates on the dash. The fog light comes on. Whaaat? Minor panic as we both fear Baloo has had enough. We round a bend and the trees thin, then we see a house in the distance. Certainly more civilisation than we’d seen in the last two hours. Our spirits were raised as we thought the road would improve, and fortunately it did. Baloo kept going, and once dried out, the fog lights no longer came on randomly. We found a nice flat area by a stream to wild camp, we made a camp fire, ate sausages, and it looked like we also acquired a pet.

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The next day, on the improving road, we even saw other cars! So we continued our tour and it was time to tick off our first Dracula sight: Hunedoara castle. The real Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, was imprisoned here, and it certainly looks scary.

Passing the red stones in Sibiu (a disappointment) we found a wild camping spot with a lovely view and then the next day, we continued to Sighisoara, where Dracula was born. The entire town was very pretty and quaint with a clock tower, cobble streets, narrow paths and a church with big wooden stairs up.

We’ve definitely made it to Transylvania now! The decoration on the houses changed to more oriental (pagoda) style roofs, and the weather changed to constant grey (for 3 weeks! – who knows whether it’s ever sunny there).

Next castle on the list is Peles Castul, another very pretty castle, but situated in an area where there are bears! We had planned to wild camp, but we were recommended against it due to the local wildlife. Anyway, the campsite we found was a bargain, had wifi, and also gave us a chance to go to a restaurant to try some Romanian cuisine. It seemed to consist of lots of smoked meat, smoked cheese, and bits of animal we weren’t sure about – not our favourite unfortunately.

We weren’t done with castles just yet. Next is Bran castle, often seen as the Dracula castle. The real dracula never lived there, but this is the setting for the story by Bram Stoker. Whilst Andi was excited to go in, she soon thought it was more interesting to people watch than the castle watch. It was so packed with groups inside that you could barely see anything, and everyone was complaining about other people being in their way, usually in their own language, so the offending party often had no idea. Anyway, the outside and the park of the castle were pretty.

According to Top Gear, one of the best drives in the world is the Transfagarasan. Crossing the Fagarasan mountains, the highest of the Carpathians, you climb to over 2000 meters, travel along switchback turns, all the while with beautiful views down the valley around you. This road is closed every year between November and April because of snow, and heading there in October we were worried that with all the grey, cold, and rainy weather we’d had recently, it would have already started to snow at the top, and might be closed. In fact, they had already closed the road and we didn’t know whether they would open it again. It would be a big shame to miss out on it, so we thought we’d drive as far as we could, and camp for the night. Our wild spot was just below the snow line near the Balea waterfall, so Andi went off to take a look… or at least she tried. The walk quickly turned into a climb after the snow line, and as it got harder, she was eventually crawling on all fours – as the safest way to progress. Needless to say, it wasn’t long before she turned around.

The next day the road was still shut. The weather was much nicer though and finding some wifi near a cable car up to the top of the mountain, we saw that there were clear skies at the top. So while we waited, we thought we’d take the cable car up, since that way at least we’d still get to see the scenery no matter what happens to the road. Unfortunately, it turned out that a recent snow storm had damaged the cable car, and it was closed for repairs. Unsure what to do, pacing around, getting bored, we looked up at the closed road and started noticing a few cars coming the other way, and then one car going up – he reopened the road. Yay! We jumped into Baloo and started driving.

The drive up was very pretty, we had some lovely views of snowy landscape, mountains, a valley (partly covered in clouds), the Balea lake at the top, a view of the bendy road up and Andi threw her first snowball of the season (or second, if the snow ball in Norway in July counted as the first of the season). It certainly wasn’t the usual experience, given that most photos of the transfagarasan are not in snow but it was very picturesque. And on the way down we saw some pretty forests and fields and camped at a nice lake.

Our forth and last castle (and fifth Dracula sight) was the Poenari castle on the transfagarasan. The castle is mainly (rubbish) ruins but after you’ve climbed the outrageous 1500 steps (!) you do get a pretty view and a sense of achievement.

The sixth Dracula sight was the princely court in Targoviste. There is a nice park outside it with a lake and sculptures of all the Romanian Emperors, including Vlad. And then in the court there is a nice church, a tower with a pretty view and ruins of where the emperors lived. Unfortunately due to some spectacular food poisoning, Martin decided to skip the inside of the court, and take refuge in a cafe nearby.

After this we finally made it to Bucharest. We ended up staying there for 1.5 weeks –a little longer than planned – because it was time for Baloo’s 12000 miles service. We’d arranged a slot for Monday at a land rover garage, but our increasing list of service items (oil change, windscreen replacement, renew some corroding wiring) outgrew the time allotted. They also found a few other pieces which also needed attention (naturally), but unfortunately they couldn’t do anything until Friday. Then on Friday, it turned out one of the problems was different than originally diagnosed and they had to order spare parts, which meant another few days. It was a faff, but we had no stresses and enjoyed the change of pace (and warmth).

Bucharest itself is pleasant. It has another princely court (Dracula sight #7) with a very pretty church, it also has some interesting roads and buildings and a few nice parks (Carol park and Tineretului park). Carol Park was supposed to have a reconstruction of the Poenari castle, which would have been Dracula sight #8 but we couldn’t find it anywhere. Other than that there isn’t much in Bucharest except lot of bars. No matter what time it is, you should always be able to find a drink there.

The extra time there meant that we could do our clothes washing again, plan the next leg of our trip (booked flights to singapore and australia) and catch up on things like blog and our machine learning course. It also gave Martin enough time to sample the best Indian restaurants in Bucharest, of which there are a few. Thankfully the Bucharest curry club had already done the pre-selection, so we just had to check out their better ones. Indian food for breakfast, lunch and dinner … or at least it felt that way to Andi.

Before leaving Romania we still had a couple of stops planned. The first was to the Danube delta. The drive up there was pretty and we had arranged for a campsite to give us a boat tour on the delta, but we were a bit worried about the weather. Clouds we were used to, but forecast of rain was not what we wanted on the water. Anyway, we went out on the boat, quickly filled up at a boat petrol station and had a fantastic time. It was very pretty to go on the different arms and lakes of the delta, to see all the different birds and simply enjoy the scenery and wildlife. We had some rain but it could have been much worse. On the way back, our boat got stuck – but the tour guide, with a bit of rocking and pushing with a handy wooden pole, got us out of it. It’s often described as the most beautiful part of Romania and it certainly was very pretty – despite the weather.

Our last stop in Romania was Constanta. It’s a reasonably small town, but we liked being at the seaside with the typical view of the casino and the port. While it was nice to be back at the beach, it definitely wasn’t beach weather, but the town had some nice bars to enjoy.