1st August Baia Mare to Sapanta

Jessie the wonder dog

ummm no thanks

Maramures

A clumsy Bek and a rushing river - not such a good combination!

Cat and the dinner lol

We said goodbye to the family and Jessie the gorgeous family dog who looked like a lamb and made our way to Sapanta. The drive once again took us through The Maramures region past tiny little villages where people feed off their land and wear traditional dress, we drove past more horse drawn carriages pulling hay, cement mixers, scrap metal and wood etc than we did motor vehicles. If the locals aren’t working the land they appear to congregate on the side of the road, when we drove past they looked like they hadn’t seen a campervan before and many gave us a smile and a wave. We also drove past people selling wild berries and what appeared to be fungi scrapped off the side of the tree. We like trying new food and buying food off the locals but we think we will give these a miss as we don’t want to end up in a Romanian hospital suffering from delirium.
We arrived at the campsite mid afternoon and the heavens started to open, Bek had what she calls her ‘near death experience’ . We had plugged the vans electricity into a power point which must have had a faulty earth, as Bek went to open the vans door she acted like the earth and got a 220 volt shock. She was left feeling very shaky and Cass wondered how many times she was going to hear the story in future lol The rain soon stopped and we sat by the fast flowing river reading our books, Cass commented that a dog or child wouldn’t have much chance if they fell in the river. Ironically about 5 minutes later one of the camps dogs fell in, there were a few tense minutes but he had a lucky escape and managed to scramble free on one of the rocks.
Later that evening we had a bbq, we fed the dog who had also had a ‘near death experience’ our left over bones and then gave the bbq a wipe over with a sponge. Cass put the sponge on the floor and a while later it was nowhere to be seen , we then spotted it at the back of the camper although now it was a quarter of its original size. The camp dog must have taken a liking to the bbq fat which was smeared on it!

31st july Baia Mare ( Firinze)

View from the pension

The tortoise and the pension

Flowers and the yard

After two months of no TV we decided to make the most of the rooms TV and we spent much of the day switching channels between Animal Planet, National Geographic and The Discovery Channel. Bek made the mistake of giving the remote to Cass who watched CSI lol In between TV we enjoyed the view from our balcony which we shared with a swallow and chicks. We also took a walk to the top of the hill in the garden on the way down Bek flashed her the camera to the landlady to say she had been taking photos of the scenery, the lady thought Bek was asking to take a photo of her and she gestured that her hair looked a little untidy. Never mind that she was a large lady and was only wearing a leopard print bikini!
We thought the landlady thought we were weird as we had only eaten eggs for 24 hours, in the evening we took a stroll and went for dinner in a pastravia (Trout Farm) the waiter said they had no whole fish left but only pieces, we said this was fine and wondered what sort of fish farm sold out of whole fish but had still had pieces available. When the dinner came out we had a huge plate of fish but after some time we realised we didn’t have anything that resembled Trout and we had been given salmon. We had 5 huge pieces each, enough to feed a family, needless to say we ate everything but doubt we will ever have salmon served in such huge portions or for that price ever again.

30th July Gilau to Baie Mare (Firinze)

Main street cluj-napoca

We were leaving the campsite and dumping our grey water when Cass discovered an outside tap under the camper, she turned it and a huge amount of foul smelling discoloured water literally poured and poured out. It transpires that the waste water tap we had been opening for the past two months was actually only draining fresh excess boiler water (so that’s why it only trickled out). For the past week or so we had been accusing each other of missing the toilet at night and weeing on the bathroom floor, Bek being a nurse was obviously the one to clear it up although she didn’t think it was typical urine and was rather puzzled. The puzzle was now solved however as we soon realised the ‘ urine’ on the bathroom floor was actually waste water that had made its way up the pipe from the very full waste water tank, and now we no longer have puddles of ‘ urine’ on our bathroom floor!
On our way to Baie Mare we stopped off in Cluj-Napoca for several hours, while we were here we visited the pharmaceutical museum which was the site of a pharmacy until 10 years ago and still contained all the original pharmaceutical items many dating back to the 14th century when the pharmacy was established.
We later arrived in Baie Mare which is in The Maramures region of Romania and is very rural. We got slightly lost trying to find our campsite and in doing so we stumbled upon a pension (guesthouse) which only charged 9 euro each and the room had a balcony with a view of the mountains, river and countryside. We were the only guests staying here with the owner and her children.

28th July-29th July Gilau (Cluj-Napoca)

Spot the kittens amongst the tortoise and the washing

The drive from Baile Felix to Gilau was very scenic as we were driving alongside the Crisul Repede river and the Apuseni Mountains. The campsite was in a very picturesque location and had a washing machine so we decided to spend a few days here and do some much needed washing, catch up on a few camper chores and recharge our batteries. The campsite had a restaurant and one night we had trout caught in the local river which was delicious, Bek thinks she’s now mastered the word for trout in Romanian so let’s hope she has more success ordering this than a tomato and cucumber salad lol

27th July Timisoara to Baile Felix

Local transport

On our way to Baile Felix we stopped off at a farmers market and stocked up on fresh veggies, we stayed well clear of the ‘ sweet capsicums/peppers’ . During the week we purchased some at another farmers market, while preparing dinner Cass took a bite of the ‘ sweet capsicum/pepper’ and then rubbed her nose and eyes, several seconds later she was on fire, her face felt swollen and her throat constricted. Cass was doing the whole breathing thing you do after eating something very spicy but this didn’t ease things so Bek gave her some milk to cool her mouth down but after taking a huge swig found the milk had curdled. Turned out the sweet capsicum/peppers were very spicy chillis lol
We arrived in Baile Felix late afternoon and went for a stroll in the small town which was full of thermal baths and also full of local tourists. Later that night we cooked dinner at the campsite and watched a DVD while breathing in the fresh aroma of pig poo which they had used to fertilise their grass and due to the incessant rain was all over the cement to walk through lol

26th July Timisoara Romania

Timisoara square

romulous and remus in centre park

Timisoara is the birthplace of the 1989 revolution and the 4th largest city in Romania it is also famous as the city of flowers and parks. After having an ice cream in The Park Of Roses we wondered around the city which is unique as it has two large squares and was built on a swamp. The city had some lovely old buildings and many had clocks on the top, all said a different time but we weren’t surprised by this in the slightest .We were surprised however to stumble upon a street lamp which indicated that Timisoara was the first city in Europe to have electrical street lighting back in 1884.
At night we went for dinner in a pizzeria and randomly ordered two pizzas off the menu, apart from pizza we didn’t have a clue what we were ordering as the menu was in Romanian and the waiter didn’t speak any English, luckily both pizzas were nice.

25th July Baile Hercules to Timisoara Romania

We spent a large part of the day driving and were tired by the time we reached Timisoara campsite. After chilling out for a while we decided to go out for dinner unfortunately we couldn’t find anywhere open near the campsite, the campsite had a restaurant but we didn’t want to give them anymore money as they were already charging us 20euro per night which was a rip off but we had no choice as it was the only campsite in the area. We are not quite sure how The Lonely Planet came up with the conclusion ‘excellent campsite’. To make matters worse the owners were rude and miserable and drove a flash car lol Instead we watched some David Attenburgh Dvd’s and ate our new invention of egg toasted sandwiches.