Although the day started with a touch of red terror - total power failure in our hotel and a breakfast buffet consisting of stale white bread and cold coffee - it ended on a natural high as we climbed the 1480 stairs to the 'real' Dracula's castle (Poienari) and drove the serpentine Transfăgărăşan Road through the Fagaras Mountains, inhabited only by grazing sheep, their shepherds, the odd wild donkey and some cute stray dogs.
The 30-odd kilometre road, inaccessible for most of the year when it is covered in snow and ice, weaves through thick pine forests, passing waterfalls and glacial lakes. In summer its a popular camping spot and if only I'd known this before, I would have pitched for a night or two as it is unbelievably gorgeous and isolated. I know that is entirely unfaithful to my glampacking manifesto, but there's an exception to every rule. Truly, this is one of the highlights of my entire trip. The road itself has to be seen to be believed - think Daytona, only with lots of potholes, cyclists with adeathwish, the odd horse & cart, livestock, wild donkeys and stray dogs
I couldn't cull these photos down, sorry.
Kudos to Alex, for her driving skills on this beast of a road. Schumacher got nuttin on her.
This is Vlad, our team mascot. He also assists with navigation, and sometimes functions as a footrest.
A shepherd with his flock. Its hard to make out but in this picture he's actually sitting down having a yarn on his mobile phone. He let us take his picture for a couple of smoko, lucky we had some. I suspect it was as strange for him to come across a couple of Australianis on an ordinary day at the office as it was for us to come across a shepherd on a mobile in a remote corner of Romania.
Evil, evil globalisation.
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