(Daniel) After a fitful sleep, I awoke to find some stray dogs outside, and some bemused officials arriving for work at the bear cave. Rowan and Gabby got up, and made a breakfast of eggs ham tomatoes and mushrooms, we also opened the family size HP sauce that we brought along! After breakfast we walked up the hill and paid about 3 euros each to enter the cave with a guide. The cave was really amazing, and had huge stalactites and stalagmites some of which were over 20,000 years old, there were also remains of cave bears, huge creatures much larger than normal bears that spent most of their 20/30 year lives living in caves. I took a few photos, but the phone camera was not perfect for the dark caves.
Once we had completed the tour we walked back to the Wolf and headed for Padis (Padeesh), a settlement on the top of a mountain that apparently could not be reached by vehicle. As we drove up the mountain, the track got worse and worse until eventually it was pure ice and then snow, it looked like only one other vehicle had been up there recently, and that was a tractor with snow chains. The Wolf coped perfectly, climbing the hill in Low range with the Differential lock engaged, and eventually we made it to Padis. The mountain was high up in the clouds, and we could only see about 20 feet in any direction, which made the going fairly slow, Gabby mentioned that there were some Cabanas further along the way, so we pressed on into the snow, eventually arriving at the closed resort. A few people were living there, and they came out to see us. We asked if there was a short cut back to the main roads if we carried on the way that we were going, and they said yes, but that it was a hard road. We decided to try anyway, much to my pleasure, as I was really enjoying the drive.
After a couple of kilometers we started back down the other side of the mountain, and had very little trouble, apart from meeting a loggers truck coming the other way. The loggers jumped out as did I and we used the shovels to dig a new road that I could pass them on. When we got further down the track, we came to the area where the logging was in full swing, and I tried to pass the huge logging machines through a river, only to get stuck! I winched us out again, with an audience of workers, and we carried on. Some of the tracks were washed away, and all of them were treacherous with Ice and snow, however the going was good. After an hour, we realised that the track we were following was leading us further into the mountains, so we asked a villager who was driving along in his Dacia for directions. He was very animated, and eventually told us to follow him. We tailed him all the way back to his village which we had passed through earlier, and he spent a long time explaining in Romanian how to get to Cluse Napoca, He even drew us a map. Satisfied that we were now ok, we pressed on following his directions to the letter. However, the track that he sent us up was completely unused and extremely treacherous, to make matters worse it was starting to get dark. Eventually we arrived at another village, where a man told us that this was a dead end, and that we would have top go back the way which we came. Frustrated we headed back down the mountain, and nearly came undone, as the truck slid on the sheet ice that was getting worse as the temperatures dropped. We drove all the way back to the first village, and tried again, with a different route, but realised that this was never going to work. Our options were to camp in the forest, or to retrace our steps. We decided on the latter, and with all 12 front lights blazing, we drove back up the mountain in the snow.
It was extremely hard going, and very dangerous, I took the tracks very slowly, and got stuck once or twice, because the trailer was dragging in the deep snow. Remember the Wolf weighs 3.2 tonnes, and the trailer around 1.2 tonnes. So there is plenty of weight to stop you climbing steep mountain tracks in fresh snow! After 7 hours of off roading, and over 100miles of tracks and snow we eventually arrived back in Chiscau, to find that all the pensions were closed. However, a local man allowed us to use his guest room. Rowan cooked an omelet and brought out some beers that were extremely well received!
Before I came up I checked the trailer and vehicle. The trailer plug for the lights had come undone, and been ripped off, and the gas bottle had bounced around so much that it had come undone, and leaked gas into it’s compartment, also the kitchen had not been packed well enough, and there was sugar everywhere. The mud and snow covering the vehicle was inches thick in places, and made the door handles stick, there would be some repairs to carry out in the morning! There were also a lot of lessons learnt, the packing of the vehicle, and deciding to change our route for a short cut on unmapped tracks, not a good idea!
Distance driven 100miles off road.
Meals eaten – Fried breakfast, Cheese and tomato omelet.