Visiting Romania: Șuior

I have to admit that I haven't seen too much of my home country. I've set foot in at most half of the counties and I've actually visited and done touristy things in even fewer of them. I've visited more countries than that as a tourist.

But after a recent trip to Maramureș, a county in the Northern part of Romania, I was so impressed by how beautiful it looked, that I want to fix this deficiency I have.

Last weekend we went to the Șuior area with some friends who had been there before. First we stopped by Lake Bodi to have lunch there. It's a very calm lake, with very nice surroundings, good for sunbathing, swimming or taking a nice stroll.

Then we went to the Șuior peak. It's a short drive from the lake. During winter, it's a ski resort, so they have a chairlift, which is also operating during summer.

I always enjoy going on chairlifts. It's so quiet up there, as you slowly go up the mountain, with just the trees around you.

Reaching the peak, where there is a weather station, is done by a 40 minute hike, on a 30% slope. As we were going up, we started hearing thunders. Looking around, we see some dark clouds forming. Should we go back or should we press on? Despite me barely catching my breath, we decided to reach the peak, no matter what. I was soaking wet anyway, what's some rain going to do?

We got to the top safely, without only a couple of drops falling on us. We could see in the distance where the rain was flooding everything, but we were safe. We picked some bilberries and then we started going back.

It rained on us a little bit going down and the grass was more slippery, but we got down safe. When we got there, the chairlift operator told us that the previous group rode the chairlift during the rain and got soaking wet. There was even hail where we left our car. But fortunately, we avoided all of that.

After finishing what the leftovers from lunch, we started the two hour drive back. The other great thing about Maramureș is that even the roads are really scenic. At least the roads we took were really good and often we would go through forests.

All in all, it was a really relaxing day. Thank you our dear "godparents" for taking us out for this fun day and thank you for all the really good talks as well!

I’m publishing this as part of 100 Days To Offload - Day 34.