Ludwig's Odyssey: Voineasa

So, our ‘appointment’ took us south onto the Transalpina road to make our way to a small town called Voineasa.
Not really on the tourist trail at all but that wasn’t the reason for our visit here.
We came here to see some friends we’d met during our travels in India back in 2014.

When we first met Andrei & Alexandra, in Jaisalmer and then again in Udaipur, they were travelling around Nepal & India just like us. Now four years later, they’re married and have and adorable boy, called Luc.
They fleet between Bucharest & Voineasa, Andrei has a fantastic job which he loves and takes him to all corners of the world, and Ali, as well as being a full time mum, is a keen blogger and has published a book!
They put us to shame, all we do is travel around…

We were made to feel like kings. Not only did they put us up in Andrei’s parents’ (currently empty) apartment, Ali’s family took us in like one of their own, her parents Alexandru & Florina and her brother Mihai are so kind, generous and hospitable. They insisted on feeding us everyday and we had some delicious traditional Romanian foods.

Voineasa used to be a very popular place to come back in the 1970s and for a couple of decades after, people came to enjoy the mountain air. The main resort, Hotel Lotru, just around the corner from their apartment, has been neglected for along time and still looks like it did 40 years ago. It looks almost abandoned, but it is actually still open.
Andrei & Ali have started a drive to try and revive the area, clean up the resort and bring life back into the holiday cottages, but this may take some years, not through lack of effort but red-tape.

Alexandru works at the local Lotru-Ciunget Hydroelectric Power Station, one of the biggest Hydroelectric plants in Europe.
So he asked us if we wanted to visit, we thought “yeah, that would be great, not something you see everyday”, We’ve seen the outside of a few dams but never the inner workings.
Fascinating stuff, and as you can imagine, the powerhouse was huge to house the three generators here. The noise created by the turbines, which were enclosed in an insulated room a few levels below, was deafening.
Some techie info (Steve Harrison I hope you’re reading this as this is mostly for your benefit);
It’s fed by Lake Vidra further up the mountain via an 800m long underground pipe, it has an installed capacity of 510MW, and the plant generates around 10% of Romania’s annual electrical output.
Alexandru was happy for us to take photos but we were asked by another person not to publish any. It did seem strange as if you google it, you’ll see plenty of images and info about the place. Anyway, we don’t want to get anyone in trouble.

After our private tour of the plant, Andrei and Ali took us on the ‘proper’ Transalpina road. We thought we had driven on it to come here, but we had turned off before the best bit, higher up above the trees with the wonderful views. It certainly was spectacular, 2000m up, can’t believe we nearly missed it!

We hadn’t intended to stay as long as we did but the decision was taken out of our hands a little. There were some parts that I wanted to get changed on the van, so I asked Andrei if there was a mechanic around, sure enough a neighbour, Florin, was an enthusiast and he said, “you buy the parts and i’ll fit them”. Great, we thought, however, the parts took a week to come from Germany, I thought I was buying from a Romanian website as well… But, everyone said for us not to worry and that we could stay as long as we liked.

So while we waited and the weather was great, we had three fantastic walks in the mountains.
The first was near the Transalpina road—an hours drive from Voineasa. We parked up and walked for around five hours, ascending 550m. There and back to Lake Gâlcescu, absolutely magical views. We thought we'd got there after clearing the woods and we were then into the plateau. But no, we had to literally go up through Juniper bushes for about 20mins to finally get to the lake.
We saw some new fauna which we were quite excited about, a couple of Three-toed woodpeckers, a Camberwell Beauty butterfly, but most exciting of all was spotting the elusive and shy Pine Marten—Wendy had wanted to see one of these since she was a little girl—we were lucky. No Bears though, probably just as well!

The following day, we drove a short distance to start a walk to the Scorus waterfall—highest in Romania, perhaps, but unofficial as of yet.
As with all three of our walks here, it was a steep scramble at times on uncertain terrain, ascending about 400m, and we also had to take our shoes off a few times and cross the river barefoot.
There has been some ‘serious’ rain this year and all the bridges have been washed away.
The waterfall was great, and gushing with perhaps more water than would be the norm for the time of year.

The day after, we walked up with Mihai from our doorstep in Voineasa, up above to look down onto the town and around, another 400m or so ascent.
It was great fun, we got completely lost on the way up and had to scramble though forest and a small river eventually finding our way out onto the top into open meadow land filled with colourful flowers including some Masterworts (Astrantia), and, of course, the views were awesome.
We decided perhaps we should stick to the much longer path for the return journey, until we came across an old cowman and his herd. He showed us the path back down the forest, much easier this time!
Mihai had said it would take us about three hours to do the walk, it took us five!

The sun didn’t last and the rain came back for about four days, so it was probably lucky that we had to wait for the parts to come for the van (which eventually arrived after a week). They were expertly fitted by the very charming Florin.
While we waited, we chatted loads to the family, watched some of the World Cup, and planned ahead a little.

 Thank you so much families Lopotaru & Cioboata, for your kindness and hospitality, it was a real pleasure to meet you all and it's with a heavy heart that we leave.

 Next stop the Transfăgărășan.

Driving to Voineasa