Mayan Prophecy Countdown

WE had a good nights sleep and woke up to another wet day, not fair. I really need to do something about my gear, it is taking the enjoyment away. Anyway, we saddled up and rode about 200m, because according to the GPS, we had a simple cache right next to the hotel 🙂 But, although we looked hard, it could not be found, it must have been muggled 😦

We understood it to be from the hint ‘under a rock next to the bench’ as being under that rock on the left of the bench, but it was empty, oh well, onwards, we had plenty of day left. And a wet day it was, I was going to stop and inspect a couple of biplanes we went past, but the roads were narrow and wet, not a good combination, and then later on we flew past a jet, mounted by the side of the road, once again in a bad location. We did stop at the site of another cache that was supposed to be an easy one, I was fixing a broken tool tube strap while Ant looked for it, but he came to a locked gate and fence and could not get around. I had a go and decided that the only was to go around at the bottom of the hill and climb from around the other side, which I did do. It was a bit of an effort, but I did after much hunting find my first Romanian cache, well done me 🙂

I went back down the easy way, straight downhill and ended up on the back porch of the nearby diner, they need to modify this cache location so it is easier to get to, or change the wording, but never mind, it all ended well 🙂 We traveled through mainly crop lands for a while and we once again stopped at an OMV station (I think I said OSV yesterday) and had what they called pork ruffy and chips, basically some pork meat, it was hard to work out beforehand, so we ordered it 🙂

It tasted alright and after another hour or so of riding we arrived at another church place for another cache. I looked after the bikes while Anthony went ahead and arrived back successful, then it was my turn and I found it also. This time the description and hint worked a treat 😉

There was a major tourist vendor selling going on here, lots of cheese products and other home made stuff, but we continued on north and east without any. We started to see some wonderful views in amongst the rain showers as we entered the Carpathian Mountains, and some of the houses were very old and interesting to look at. We stopped at another scenic view with a cache a while later and here it was that Anthony succumbed to his beliefs and bought some cheese from the little old cheese lady. He actually believed she would put a hex on him if he didn’t, lol. But the views were worthwhile and while he was distracting her, I grabbed the cache 🙂

I decided to give the old lady a couple of my little Koalas and she let me take her photo, she was quite nice really, it must be a hard life. A group of Romanians turned up and bought some cheese of her and we spoke to them and they gave us a small sausage and bread roll each, after I had handed out more Koalas, then the old lady gave me some cheese as well, lots of giving going on, check her out 🙂

We were not that far from the town of Bran and Dracula’s castle, only about 20km, but we had 10km of tight twisty roads in the wet to get to the top of the range then ten down the other side, and now it was foggy as we went higher. Once again, prudence made us keep an eye out for accommodation, it was the lack of local currency that made the decision and the fact the roads would be safer if we could see them. Anthony had spoken to a local lady and she said 7 Lei for a night in her house(I was ahead and knew nothing about this at the time), but we had no Lei’s so in the end at the top of the mountain, we found a hotel that took Euro’s, which we had some of and we booked in. Beer was the 2nd thing, a nice hot shower the first as I was wet again, our boots were leaking still, although his wet gear worked , so he was drier up top.

We were the only people staying there to start with, although a few more did pop in later, but for once we had an early night, tomorrow, we wanted to visit the castle, get the cache near there then hit the road and head West. His time was nearly up and I personally have been riding in the wet for 4 days straight and wanted out of it, so maybe back to the coast or something like that. Anthony brought up the point that until I got either new or better wet gear, my whole trip would be stuffed because I needed to get used to wet weather riding as all of Europe was like this. As my gear was designed for Australian conditions, wet but not cold, I agreed with him and would have to do something soon.

Cheers from the Carpathian Mountains, Romania
TravellingStrom