The wild Carpathians

In Sibiu, we stayed at a small campsite in Cisnadiora, just outside the city. From here, we took a small bus into the city, had a great view of the southern Carpathians, and went on a beautiful day hike. We spent the first evening with beer and a funny group of four people who were driving off-road through Romania with a converted fire truck and two jeeps. The jeep convertibles were retrofitted with metal roofs in advance to prevent a nightly bear visit.

Then we continued towards the mountains. We found a wild stream where we set up our sleeping camp. From here, we hiked into the mountains a bit, and instead of views, we encountered a lot of forest workers with adventurous tractors on steep, muddy slopes - it was different than we had imagined, but still good. The next day, we drove to Brasov, a very beautiful city in the heart of the Carpathians with many nice cafes.

We decided not to visit the bear sanctuary so that we could drive deeper into the mountains. In Busteni, we discovered an amazing place to camp. A valley at an altitude of 1000 meters with signs saying “Camping prohibited”, where we found a festival-like congregation of Romanian permanent campers right next to a bumpy road and a stream - in the middle of a bear area, mind you. We were warmly welcomed and our Romanian camp neighbor quickly took us to heart. The “Beware of bears” signs can definitely be taken seriously here!

In the first night, a bear climbed onto another camper. In the second night, we were lucky enough to observe a young bear during its dinner in the trash can. The greedy bear was so engrossed in his meal that we could get pretty close to him.