The outdoors would be lovely if it were not for the insects. A massed fly attack forced me into my tent by as soon as it was pitched last night. They then accumulated between the inner and outer tent, buzzing above my head. When answering a call of nature in the dark before going to sleep, my head torch attracted a swarm of the little devils which battered against my face. They followed me back into the tent, where I had trouble persuading them to leave. Although I managed to kill a few, a annoying number remained in the inner tent until morning.
At around 5 am, I was woken up by the sound of a car stopping nearby, and its door openning and shutting. Hunters I thought. People have been accidentally killed by hunters so when I left my tent at around 7 am in the morning twilight, I left my head torch switched on, so I would not be mistaken for a dear. The 4 wheel drive responsible for the noise was only 10 metres from my tent, nobody was inside when I walked by at the start of today's hike. Shortly after there were another four vehicles, and later I passed others. My landlady tonight suggested they may actually have been collecting boletus mushrooms, which are difficult to cultivate artificially and fetch a good price, unlike wild cranberries which are also picked around here.
My first target was to climb the mountain of Cucurbâta Mare, also called Bihor. Although the aerial on top looked close, I knew I had a 300 metre climb. From a distance it appeared there was a hut on the summit, but close up I could see it was a substantial three storey building. The steep and rock strewn path went straight up through the juniper bushes, following a line of concrete pylons. No wire ran through these poles, replaced by three thick, red electric cables that ran under the path, occasionally revealing themselves where the rocks had slipped away. However, the pylons provided mini-milestones as I pushed myself up using my trekking poles to full effect, climbing from one pole to the next. I was glad I was in the shade of the mountain which prevented me sweating too much, although when the low sun's rays reached me around the mountainside, they blinded me, making the trail beneath my feet dissappear into invisible darkness.
My tiring ascent was rewarded at the top by a panorama of wooded mountains in all directions except to the west where the land flattened out towards the Great Hungarian Plain. In the valleys I could see a scattering of houses and fields except where obscured by low cloud. The highest point was around the back of the building where there was a cross, a pillar and a sign giving the height as 1849 metres, one of the higher points on the E3.
On the other side of the mountain the trail descended swiftly, before climbing over a number of smaller, but still substantial summits as it progressed north. The final descent to the village of Vartop was especially steep and rough with loose stones.
Vartop has a lot of construction work in progress, and a few attractive chalet style buildings. A ski resort, although with only a few lifts more suitable for beginners, it seems to have a lot of closed accommodation at this time of year.
For dinner I had chicken with boletus mushrooms in a sour cream sauce, very nice. Then a glass of red wine watching the Romanian version of Masterchef.
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