A few stats: about 24 km, about 1032 m elevation gain, about 9:30 hours with breaks. We took the Sadova stamp from Pensiunea Alvy Iezer.
Spoiler alert: this was my favorite day. If I were asked today whether I’d recommend other people do Via Transilvanica, I’d say it depends. It depends on whether it bothers you to hike on roads where cars or ATVs might pass close to you, not one after another, but there’s a chance of it happening. From what we did, from Putna to Vatra Dornei, yes, I would recommend it, but from Vatra Dornei to Bistrita, not so much, as there’s a lot of walking on roads. But this particular day, yes, I would recommend it, if you have the condition, and are able, if you know you can do the distance and the elevation gain, yes, this day was amazing. I’d also like to come back and do this section again in the future.
So even though I woke up a bit chilly and with a headache, this day was about to get good. We started the day by visiting the Vatra Moldovitei monastery, where we were to meet our travel companions again. The visit was very nice, the voices of the nuns were very soothing.
This is a long and tiring day. It’s also the third day, so your legs are tired from the kilometers and elevation gain of the previous days. This section is a long one, so we decided to take a longer break on a hill, where we could listen to the cowbells and had access to a fountain nearby for water. We had a nice lunch, a quick nap, a really nice rest on that hill at the base of the forest before the steep climb.
When we started the climb in the forest, we met a cow. She was very friendly, and we got to pet her, and she also licked us.
During the climb we got to eat more berries, and we also met two people with their dog on a walk to harvest wild raspberries. We chatted with them a bit, asking how much further uphill we had to go, about the bears, and stuff like that.
The landscape was so beautiful, we had a nice clear day, so we were able to see the mountains in the distance. We also had to walk through some cow pastures; at one of them a little dog came in front of us, but it was all fine, he did bark, but when we got close he let us pass with no problem. We also talked a bit with the owner of the cows before moving on.
Then we got to the cow pasture I knew we had to cross, as it was mentioned in the guide. They have quite a few dogs, the owner, Nicu, was with the dogs, rounding up the cows to bring them home for the night, so the dogs didn’t bark and were absolutely gorgeous. I think they were the most beautiful dogs I’ve seen in my life, the paws of one of them were so adorable. I just fell in love with those dogs. One of them let us pet him, so it was a meaningful interaction.
And then there was the interaction with the woman looking after the cows. She let us look inside their house, answered all our questions, gave us cheese to try, we also bought some cheese (urda, in Romanian). She also gave us salt, since I hadn’t thought to pack any at home. This is an interaction I want to have again, so if you’re on this section of Via Transilvanica, a stop at Stana lui Nea’ Nicu is a must.
After this we also met a few more hikers, I can’t remember where they said they were from. They’d done all of Via Transilvanica and came back to do the Bucovina section again because they loved it so much. We talked a bit, walked together for a while, before each going at our own pace.
We camped in a locals courtyard, no toilet, no shower. We had asked if we could camp there just a few hours before arriving, and I think the owner doesn’t live there full-time, so it might be a different situation if you call ahead. Our plan had been to wild camp at Lake Iezer, but we couldn’t find a private enough spot with access to clean river water.