Good evening from Jiblea Veche.

Woke up after a short night at Villa Ursul, still a bit kicked from yesterday’s experiences. Today please: Asphalt. No gravel, no boulders, no sand, no shallows or ruts – just asphalt. Thank you. 😀 Yes, Marco did a great job, but I don’t need something like that again so soon 😉

But it’s “just the normal Transalpina” anyway. We drove a bit of it yesterday to get to the Strategica and had fabulous views in perfect weather. Unfortunately not today. The sky was getting more and more cloudy and it even started to rain as we got higher. Not just bad for the photos, but also for the technology in general. Will the Insta360 still take good pictures? Take it down? Leave it on? Never mind, keep it running – we have to test it and gain experience.
As the 360° images have quite a lot of data, we’ll “hand them in” later – we’re still working on the best approach.

At least the clouds were high enough that we didn’t have to drive the whole way in the fog, as I did the first time. We also had a great view. There is a large parking lot at the starting point of the Transalpina, which was full of cars and motorcycles today. The square was lined with souvenir and food stalls. We took the opportunity to have a lunch break with typical Romanian sausages, polenta and cooked meat. Back on the road, we wound our way up with everyone else, bend by bend. I hadn’t expected it to be so full. We even saw another convoy of “carbage runners”. (Probably a privately organized group like yesterday).

While almost every viewpoint up to the highest point was already quite full, it was frighteningly crowded at the very top. Not just because of the Transalpina fans, however, but because a movie was obviously being filmed up there. We could see a crazy camera crane and some actors in Roman-style costumes as we drove past. Wow! Maybe we’ll see the movie by chance one day? Can we find out what was filmed there? 😀

Marco took a few aerial photos, which really show the charm of the Transalpina in a very impressive way. At the parking lot near the “rocket base” (yes I know, it’s a radio tower) there were also several stalls with souvenirs, syrup, meat and cheese – you can try them all. Very sales-promoting! Actually, we just wanted to have a coffee. 😀

With a bit of pressure on our ears and in our heads – we lowland Tyroleans don’t do 2141 meters of altitude just like that – we slowly made our way back down – towards our accommodation today and the evening’s blogging. On the way, we gave the Vitara a good foam wash and are now close to the end of the day 🙂

Conclusion: After the last two days, an “easy” asphalt route did me some good. Whereby easy is not to be taken literally, because the sharp and mostly steep hairpin bends are quite tough. There were too many people on the road for us, but like the weather, you can’t choose that 😉