Good evening from Ciungetu.

What a day. But let’s start at the beginning! We woke up at dawn to the dreamlike tranquillity of our tipi tent. If you don’t become one with nature on this campsite… you’re doing something wrong 😀 There are several white tents on wooden platforms on a large meadow. Always with enough distance to the next person so that you are not disturbed at night. There is a “bar”, a kitchen with a barbecue area and a few spots for romantic campfires. We would have liked to stay longer, but the plan for the day included the route, but we wouldn’t find out how long we would need until later. We didn’t really know what to expect.

First of all, the navigation system led us through Petroșani to the start of the Transalpina “DN67C”. After we turned in there, after about 10 km we entered the so-called “Transalpina Strategica” – the name was to become the program – without a high level of strategic driving skill, you can really stumble here. I (Regine) left it all to Marco so that we didn’t end up falling head over heels somewhere 😲. In return, I was allowed to do the photo documentation – in a few places, however, I was more concerned with holding on tight to be able to pull out my cell phone. But: at the scariest passages, the view was phenomenal every time. How mean. Fortunately, there are enough spots for pictures on this narrow gravel road. The path with mostly rocks, lots of dust, small and medium-sized boulders runs more or less along the slopes of the Carpathians. So direct that it goes up and down, new panoramas await around every bend and you constantly climb higher only to ride a few meters downhill shortly afterwards. But that doesn’t mean anything, even just 7 kilometers before the end we were still at an altitude of over 1100 meters. The maximum altitude deep in the mountains was exactly 1991 meters. Wow. And crazy. And soooooo beautiful.

Almost the whole time, you have an amazing view of the Carpathians with a clearly visible tree line (apart from a few outliers). We couldn’t resist a turn-off leading away from the “Strategica”, as we had spotted a “bus stop” up there. At the very beginning, a white Citroen (small car) drove past us and who did we meet on this detour, which was barely manageable with our 4×4? The white Citroen and its owner! It had run into problems at a spot that had been washed out by water and could go no further. He was already working around with a jack – whatever he was planning to do with it. In any case, he had badly injured his finger. The blood was already seeping through his makeshift bandage. He quickly disappeared into his car, re-parked it so that we had more space, tore some textile cloths and wrapped them around his fingers. Despite everything, he immediately placed a few pieces of wood over the chicane and used hand gestures to tell us to drive through 😀 He raised four fingers and wanted to know if we had four-wheel drive. “Yes? Then it will work!” – he told us in broken but understandable Romanian English. I (Marco) was skeptical. The spot didn’t look good despite the wood. Meanwhile, the Romanian kept waving his bloody fingers and told us to back up a bit and drive across the meadow at the top. You can do it with four-wheel drive. Yes, that would probably work too. Why always drive on the road? But no, now he’s draped the wood so nicely, so over there! We tried it and of course it worked. We talked to the man for a while and he explained a bit about the area and nature. On the slopes above the tree line grow flat bushes with blueberries, good for the stomach (the leaves are used to make tea, which is good for the lungs – did you know that?). Shortly afterwards, we were joined by a shepherd with his 250 sheep, a goat and a donkey. Once in the flow, we also took selfies with them. Such nice people here 😍😍 By the way, we discovered a little later that we have the best internet here at almost 2000 meters. Crazy – but thanks to Google Translate, we were able to talk to them (hence the information about the number of sheep – we didn’t count them ourselves 😅)

Well, but somehow this route took us in the wrong direction, so we had to drive back again. Once again over this chicane *ahem* and back onto the Strategica. The paths were absolutely fine, off-road feeling at its best! Pure nature and just being among yourselves. Other people here and there, of course, but very manageable. Things got interesting again later on, when the route suddenly took a completely different turn. The ground was mostly flat before (just steep and sometimes with holes), but easy to ride. However, we suddenly found ourselves in a situation where we had to get out of the car for the first time to discuss the best way to get there. We thought about the best route for us, Regine went ahead and used hand signals to tell me (Marco) which way to go. As you can see, it was a matter of centimetres. But not because it was so narrow – the ground was fissured and a wrong steering movement or a wrong route would lead to touching down and/or damage to the vehicle. This is where our Vitara, which by the way does a great job, reached its limits. The gear reduction and four-wheel drive in first gear were not able to cope with this gradient. The surface was too loose – we had to find an alternative, which we did quite quickly. Now it worked better and we were proud to have mastered this hurdle. However, this was just the beginning of an adventure that we will remember for a long time to come.

The route continued to change. The ground was rocky and real chasms opened up. We approached passages where we weren’t at all sure how to drive. But it must be possible, as other vehicles were already coming towards us and there was another Wrangler ahead of us. Again, it’s difficult to put into words, but just imagine, to the right of the car it goes down quite steeply again, to the left there is a wall and the road leans sharply towards the slope. So we were driving on an incline, plus there were rocky bumps that caused the vehicle to sway in this position. Not for the faint-hearted. And to make matters worse, a flock of sheep and their guardian came towards us. From his facial expressions, it was clear that he didn’t think it was that cool that we were driving around here. However, we stopped the car well in advance and turned it off so that the sheep (which are quite shy) could pass us by.

The wild ride went on and on, deeper and deeper into the Carpathian Mountains. We left the difficult terrain behind us and saw a convoy of several vehicles from a distance. As it is only possible to get out of the way at certain points on the Strategica, we stopped and waited. These were conspicuous vehicles, similar to the carbage run. Was this supposed to be another kind of rally? As with any off-roader in the great outdoors, you greet each other as you drive past. Here too! But the first car stopped, we shook hands and were surprised that the young occupants of this “scrap car” spoke German. And very well at that. It turned out to be a group of friends who were driving the Strategica together. We wondered about the cars – not all of them were 4x4s and we knew very well what to expect. We wished everyone a safe journey and then we were on our way.

However, what we didn’t know was how long this journey would last. Although there were already one or two obstacles here that made our hands tremble after driving through them, things would get a lot worse towards the end. The day was slowly drawing to a close and shortly before 9 p.m. we were still going uphill. The sun had already disappeared behind the mountains and it was slowly getting dark. In the meantime, the firm ground had changed and turned into soft sand. In addition, the road itself could hardly be described as such – I would call it a “mini-Carpathian” and I’m not understating it when I say that you could make a Fiat Panda disappear in the ruts.

Let’s summarize again: It’s getting dark. It’s still going uphill. The ground is sandy and slippery. Our Vitara has already slipped several times. One wrong steering movement could cause us to slip into such a crevice. This could mean that we would no longer be able to free ourselves under our own power or, even worse, that we would seriously damage the vehicle.

With a lot of teamwork, we maneuvered our way through all these passages and finally arrived back on a paved road at 21:52 in complete darkness. Our host at the apartment had already called twice to remind us that we had booked today and when we were coming.

When we told him on arrival that we had ridden the “Transalpina Strategica”, he said in his finest English: “Oh, that’s such a beautiful route!”
Well, most people only know the Transalpina – not the Strategica! 😁

Conclusion: There’s really only one sentence here: Marco, I’m incredibly proud of you for the way you rocked it! ❤😘🥰