A Deep Freeze in the Carpathians

Vanessa Couchman experiences Romanian mountain driving on a trip she won’t quickly forget. A finalist article from the PureTravel Writing Competition.

No. It couldn’t be him.

I looked through the window at the hunched, shifty-looking character in jeans and a tatty black jacket, his greasy hair slicked back and a cap tilted over his eyes. He was chain-smoking next to a battered blue Citroen which had seen better days— around thirty years ago in my estimation. Its paint was flaking, a deep rusting gash ran along its side, and its fractured wing mirror was held together by tape and some nasty-looking foam that had hardened in the cracks. As nine o’clock came and went, I became uneasy about the beat-up car and its driver whose eye I now seemed to be catching as I waited for ours to arrive.

We were leaving Braşov for the baroque elegance of Sibiu, 60 kilometres to the west, following the line of the Făgăraş Mountains, the highest of the Southern Carpathian range. We’d planned the trip before experiencing Romanian driving, and the texting, speeding and overtaking on blind bends that represented a national disregard for road safety. In our naivety, we’d arranged a detour along the Transfăgărăşan Highway, Ceauşescu’s spectacular Carpathian crossing, built in the 1970s. We were bound for its highest point, the glacial Lake Bâlea, 2000m up, and I’d spent the past two nights sleepless at the thought of the jagged, cliff-hugging bends.

The man took a final drag on his cigarette, ground the butt with his foot, and entered the lobby. It dawned on me that he was in fact our driver, and this was the vehicle in which we would be tackling one of the world’s most thrilling yet treacherous roads.

‘I’m Ovid’, he introduced himself. ‘We’re going to have a great day together’. I had my doubts. As we settled into the grubby seats he turned to find me struggling to locate the seatbelt.

‘It’s OK, you’re in the back, it’s not necessary’.

In my desire to see the day out I insisted, and he proceeded to dismantle the back seats, muttering that they were in there somewhere.

‘Ah-ha.’ He was triumphant, finally locating the fasteners amongst the dust and general gunge. ‘Look how stuck down they are’. He laughed heartily. I tried to smile to show what a good sport I was, but he didn’t look terribly convinced.

Still, he was a cheerful chap, we were finally on our way, and the day was bright. Two days earlier, a brief storm had blown through, taking with it the Transylvanian summer and leaving behind a deep golden chill. Almost overnight the trees had turned to amber, and as we wound out of Braşov, their leaves spiralled and danced in the wind. My spirits lifted a little.

The Făgăraş Mountains loomed to our left but soon after we turned to begin our ascent, something splattered on the windscreen. Out of absolutely nowhere it had started to snow; sleet at first then fat, heavy flakes which dusted the pines and clung to the road. By the time we reached the waterfalls, halfway up, we were in the midst of a blizzard. Ovid had taken to describing the landscape in lieu of the real experience and I clung to the filthy seat as I listened to enthusiastic descriptions of ravines, gullies, and steep drops.

‘It’s a good job you can’t see anything really’, he chuckled.

As we climbed, Ovid fell unusually quiet and I suspected that he was no longer finding it very amusing either. We slithered the rest of the way to the top in silence and parked up. It was a complete white-out, and impossible to see further than a metre or two. The wooden cabins— the sort we’d seen selling Dracula keyrings and Vlad-the-Impaler paperweights—were bolted shut except for one, its light beaming through the blizzard and its rafters strung elaborately, and somewhat optimistically, with Romanian sausage and cheese.

‘The lake is over there somewhere’. Ovid gestured vaguely with his hand before lighting a cigarette and shambling off, but we only lasted moments in the freezing air before trudging back to the car. I was relieved to begin our descent. All of a sudden on the way back down, a crack of blue split the sky and the sun shafted through; only for a moment but long enough to glimpse the road snaking through the mountains, threading its way through the sweep of pines to the glow of autumn deep below. The sky closed in again and we continued on our way.

‘What an adventure. Wait until I tell my wife.’ Ovid pulled out his phone.

‘It’s a shame you missed the views’, he bellowed as he picked up speed and the car began to slide. ‘You’ll just have to come back’.

Tempting……. but I’d probably give it a miss.