In true Romania-never-sleeps fashion, we had quite a few cars go by during the night. There was never any hassle, though, and I suppose it should have occured to us that even in this remote bit of Romania there'd be people driving about in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. The trail cam recorded them all; but alas no big mammals.
Today's drive has almost all been on unsealed mountain roads (narrow, badly pot-holed and dusty tracks, really) but at least it's been largely traffic free and meant we've passed through some truly stunning heavily-wooded mountain scenery.
Not long after a lazy lunch we chanced upon a roadside 'faucet' fed by a spring that was signed potable. Never look a gift horse in the mouth and all that! We probably had something like 100 litres of fresh water remaining, but seized the opportunity to top up, anyway. At our normal rate of consumption of ~5 litres per person per day, we should now be good for the rest of the trip, and have loads of reserve, too.
Dropping off the mountain tracks saw us back on a short section of major road and heading for tonight's intended overnighting spot. On this road, we passed about four small communities of Roma who were seemingly really struggling. Their accommodation ranged from truly battered and ancient caravans at the luxury end, to polythene covered wooden framed structures at the economy side of things. Even by Romanian poverty standards, this looked bad.
On a different (but possibly connected) tack: Bee Trucks! We saw a few in this same mountain-pass area on the way out and managed to snap one today (pic). We've seen five or six in total. Basically, the commercial operation consists of trucks (and also large draw-bar trailers) converted into mobile bee hives. The keepers then set up stall at the side of the mobile hives along the length of the mountain pass and sell jarred honey to passing motorists. I'm not too sure how the bees cope with such semi-nomadic foraging, but It all seems to work rather well. Trade seemed brisk.
Tonight's stopover is in the same general area we stayed exactly one week ago on our journey out. That was the night we were awoken and displaced at a quarter past midnight by - well, we'll never know who. Tonight, we're up a different and much harder-to-access track, hoping that history does not repeat.
It's cool up here tonight. We're at an altitude of >1500m and there's a bit of a breeze that's seen us necessarily donning a few layers. It's a shock to the system having been fairly consistently simmered at around 30 deg C for the past three weeks.
We've come here to try for big mammals and - though we've done well for birds - a single fallow deer and a fleeting glimpse of a smaller mammal (most likely a fox) have (so far) been the best we could do. Best bird sighting here was a male Montagu's harrier that flew so close by it was better viewed without bins! Animals or not, the vistas from this spot are just stunning.
Post composed at 22:10 on Monday 11th August from our intended overnighting spot N 47.59524°, E 24.81704° / http://maps.google.com/maps?q=loc:47.59524%2C24.81704