Good morning from Ploiești.

The motto of this vacation was “Adventure!” right from the start. This also applies to our accommodation, more about this in our last daily report 😊

From Ploiești, we drove towards Berca to another natural spectacle: the mud volcanoes. There was a moderate wind in front of a bright blue sky at around 30° C. There are two areas with mud volcanoes about half an hour apart:

• Pâclele Mari (the great volcanoes)
• Pâclele Mici (the small volcanoes)

Each area can be visited for a few euros. A path leads from the parking lot to the Pâclele Mici, where there are signs at regular intervals that tell a beautiful mystical story about the formation of the volcanoes. According to the story, a seven-headed dragon lives underground. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the story together afterwards, but we thought it was beautifully done.

Once you arrive at the actual site, you pay the entrance fee and can then move around freely. You immediately get the impression of a lunar landscape, with craters and muddy holes in which it bubbles and seethes, sometimes more, sometimes less. Some of the craters are connected by dry furrows. As we had caught a hot day and it hadn’t rained for a while, it was quite dry and the holes were clearly visible. However, tracks in the mostly dry mud told a different story. When everything here is wet, it becomes a slippery affair and certainly not so easy to recognize the holes. However, a misstep can quickly become dangerous. Some of the mud from the volcanoes comes from up to 3 km deep.

We can’t say whether it was due to the weather, but we were spared the typical smell of sulphur gases (i.e. the omnipresent smell of rotten eggs). However, the sun really burnt our fur 😁 Marco took some aerial shots and I also had a good time playing with motifs. I’ve never seen anything like it, found every crater exciting and was fascinated by the power of nature on display here.

Of course, we also drove to Pâclele Mari, took a lunch break there and then explored the large volcanoes. This area is somewhat smaller and not as extensive, but the volcanoes and craters are larger. Here, too, a story is told about a dragon to sensitize visitors not to leave any garbage behind and to stay on the paths and not to walk too close to the mud holes for their own safety.

Conclusion: Very exciting, very worth seeing, very impressive and absolutely recommendable. Marco got the tip during the Carbage Run and we are glad to have been here. The day was great all round.