Good evening from a tent in the middle of nowhere 🙂

DN66A – more off-road is not possible. We drove part of this route last year and were very enthusiastic about off-roading, even though the car we had at the time wasn’t actually designed for it. The nature here is so pure and so vast that you are always gripped. We had picked out a few highlights for this tour where we really wanted to take a break, because that didn’t work out last time.
Marco will describe the off-road part for you, I’ll give you a few general insights into our day.

The DN66A runs continuously along the small River Cerna, sometimes very close and sometimes a little further away. Sometimes the river is a little bigger, sometimes a little smaller and just like a stream. The Cerna has its source deep in the Carpathians and then heads towards Herkulesbad, where hot springs can also be found and tourism is correspondingly high. Similar to our spa resorts. After many meandering kilometers, the Cerna finally flows into the Danube at Orșova.
Like last time, we made our first stop in Cerna Sat. A very small village with maybe ten houses and what felt like five inhabitants. It is very quiet and tranquil. You hardly ever meet another person, but there are cows walking around in the pastures and on the road and there is a large radio tower there, so we sent a sign of life home.
Marco unpacked the copter and took some really nice aerial photos. I got busy with my kind of photography at some very dilapidated houses.
Then we went on to a guesthouse near which there is a very fascinating deep gorge. It goes about 200 m into the mountain with supposedly deep black water. But this is deceptive. The extremely high rocks simply cast so many shadows on the water. You have to climb a bit, but we already know this, to get to a kind of natural “half-pipe”, at the end of which you can see a waterfall. This half-pipe used to be a cave and the ceiling collapsed at some point, so you now have a half-pipe.
Marco also unpacked the copter here and let it climb, which was a bit difficult due to the narrow gorge. We stayed here for quite a while and let the place work its magic on us, and we were really amazed at how many other visitors had come. There was even live music playing in the guesthouse at one point.
We continued on to an old hotel that looked okay from the outside, but was clearly abandoned. We wanted to rummage around a bit and soak up the zeitgeist. The lower floor seems to have been used as a cowshed from time to time. The floor is covered with plenty of dried cow dung – fortunately odorless 😀
The hotel looks like many houses here, started and not finished. The facade is almost finished, the complete interior is missing. You can no longer see whether there was ever anything else inside. However, nothing is broken. No vandalism and no graffiti on the walls.

Our next stop was the dam, which causes the Cerna to flow into a huge reservoir. We were so lucky with the weather, a bright blue sky with just a few clouds, sunshine and nice and warm. The perfect weather for this setting. We were so happy. Unfortunately, only Marco was able to take a few pictures with the Insta360. When I went up to the dam, I was asked to leave by a gentleman with a badge around his neck, as photography is not allowed due to the power generation plant. Understandable but a great pity, because this scenery is simply unbelievably beautiful. To make up for this, Marco flew again to take some aerial photos.

Well, and from here on I hand over the pen to Marco – it’s not possible for me to describe the following…

Yes, it’s really not easy to put the experience into words. I’ve been on the DN66A twice now. The first time was the Carbage Run with around 200 cars and 500 people and the second time was with Regine in the rental car. Not once was there any security at the reservoir, so why today of all days when everything was just right: the car, the weather and the equipment. Well, I didn’t know anything about it at first and just climbed over the barrier as usual to take pictures in the middle of the reservoir. I could hear it shouting from afar in Romanian – of course I didn’t understand anything and didn’t see anyone. Luckily for me, I managed to get a few nice pictures from here.

The rest of the route felt very familiar. We still had almost 40 kilometers of off-road road to go before we reached the campsite. The road was peppered with sharp rocks and deep holes – often filled with lots of water. Even with an off-roader, the road needs to be well thought out, as we wanted to avoid hitting anything with the car. We actually managed this quite well – until we finally stood in front of the “beast” – it loomed hugely in front of us. This refers to the “mountain of death” (as it was “christened” in the WhatsApp group during the Carbage Run). Many terms for one and the same thing: a steep ramp on a cliff face. It is about four to five meters wide and drops vertically to the left. So it wouldn’t be bad if you didn’t get too close to either the left or the right edge. However, there is one more pitfall that is quite a challenge. This section is so rutted and peppered with large stones that driving over it can lead to a flat tire or a hard landing. Really the very last thing you need in this place.

So I didn’t think about it for long and stepped on the gas. The route was never clear, I kept correcting from left to right and vice versa so that I was more or less driving up in serpentine lines. You come within a meter of the abyss. We touched down hard once or twice – but that didn’t matter at the time – we had to get up, come what may. And since you’re reading this, it probably worked. 😊 But in first gear and with a reduction gear, it went much better than in the Golf back then, which couldn’t get any further halfway up and had to be pushed.

Full of adrenaline, we celebrated a little at the top and calmed down again to document the whole thing photographically. But it’s like so often: it just doesn’t come across in photos. Otherwise, you could be forgiven for thinking that the DN66A was a dirt road around the corner in Germany. If you haven’t seen and experienced it for yourself, it’s really difficult to convey this impression.

We continued at walking pace along very narrow and stony paths until we finally arrived exhausted at Camping Valea Iarului. What a day!

Conclusion: nature is awesome. 😁 In all its facets: gorges, forests, (death) mountains – the DN66A gives you the full experience. But beware: if you want to experience this yourself, don’t do it alone and only drive in with 4×4 and have enough ground clearance. Then it is an experience of a special kind.