When we're on an adventure, we usually try to not oversleep it. So we meant to get up at 5 AM not only to roll up our wild camp before any curious human being will appear, but most of all we wanted to watch some nice sunrise creeping over Tatras. Drink some tea and coffee. Relax while enjoying the view. Make time slow down... But not this time.
Emergency adventure evacuation
At early dawn I opened my eyes for a fraction of second and closed them slowly so calm and relaxed in the warm sleeping bag…
Just to open them aghast again – I thought I heard the storm starting to roar sluggishly in the distance.
“Was that a storm?”, I asked Dawid, puzzled and a bit concerned as the storm meant all of our stuff will soak wet in a couple of minutes. Not cool.
This night the sky was starry without any cloud, so it was hard to believe it could change so dramatically in few hours. But…
We opened the tent entrance and here you have it:
So there was no time for any coffee nor any possibility of any lovely sunrise timelapse recording. It was still 4 AM, but we just ordered the evacuation immediately, thinking of how naively we forgot that mountains are usually kind of fussy.
Here what was left of the sunrise, which we awaited:
We geared up and picked our equipment just in time before the rain started falling.
Thank God for those super fluorescent rainproof suits, which we’ve bought recently and which you can put over the normal motorcycle suit quickly. Quicker than zipping up the normal waterproof membrane. One of better purchases, which saved out precious body heat. Althought we rather wished that it was the last time we used those on this trip.
As the Tatras sadly expeled us, we decided to move our motorcycle adventure toward Poprad. Because some boneheads forgot to check what memory card fits their camera and needed to find an opened electronics shop at Sunday to buy a proper one :)
To Poprad and nearby
We took road 542 to Rel’ov and Vojnany. It got it’s merits.
Before entering Poprad we’ve rided past it stopped at Kvietnica stone pit for a quick and modest breakfast to level up morale.
The view from the other side of the street was also, as always, worth photographing.
In Poprad a shopping center was opened. There a really nice Mr Seller helped us and even let us test the memory card for the camera before buying. Of course nothing happened without problems. The new and fresh card wasn’t working! So we thought we will be left without decent photos from the trip. Left with anger at the dead camera as the second brand new card wasn’t working too. But then nice Second Mr Seller appeared, formatted the card and everything was working like a charm. The day was saved :)
Crossing Slovakia
From Poprad we rided down the road 66. Just after passing Vernar we turned to road 67 to Stratena. There is a nice viewpoint, which is worth taking a break before riding further I think. It lays between Stratena and Dobsina, at crossing of road 67 serpentines with road 535.
From this viewpoint we moved through road 67 straight to Rozniawa. There we took E58 to hit the Hungarian border at Aggtelek through road 587.
Hello, Hungary
Hungary welcomed us with 100% sunny weather and landscapes full of sunflower and canola huge fields. Only there we started to take off some clothing from our backs as it was getting hot as hell.
The road to Romanian border at Bors was just… well, straight.
Don’t get me wrong. We like Hungary, Hungarian people, Hungarian hot springs, Hungarian wine etc. We’ve been to Debrecen, Eger, Siofok or Hajduszoboszlo to chill and we had a very nice time there. But the roads… They’re good, but really not interesting to ride. You just ride dozens of kilometers with not even a sight of a slight turn whatsoever.
Althought I think we can’t complain at this fact much, as we used this Hungarian roads attribute to our advantage – we reached Romania really fast. We took road 26 to get to Miszkolc and then through road 3 we arrived to Nyekladhaza. There we chose road 35 and followed it straight to Debrecen, at which we turned to road 47. Few kilometers down the 47 we picked an unnamed road to Hosszupalyi. Unnamed (and *tricky), but decent and we rided it to the end at crossing with road 42, which leads to Romanian border through Artand.
* We have a friend, who broke chain in his motorcycle there. He tried to call up roadside assistance there (I won’t mention which), but they couldn’t even understand how the road can be unnamed and so they didn’t manage to get there anyway! Our friend waited there for hours for assitance stupids, until some Hungarian with a van stopped concerned and offered he can give our friend and his motorcycle a lift to some Debrecen mechanic :)
From Oradea to Minis
After crossing the border we could have stayed at a nice and civilised camping at Oradea. But the sun was still quite high, so we decided to ride further by E671 to Arad as this was about 2 hours of riding. At Minis, few kilometers past the Arad, we’ve got tested camping, which we visited 2 years ago.
To get to Minis from Arad, we took road 7 – straight, fast, ordinary.
But there is one strange thing noticiable – a big military monument at this busy road berm, just before Paulis.
We stopped curious what this statue does here and we learnt that this is a memorial for the WWII soldiers, which helped to stop Hungarian forces from advancing at this spot in 1944. Even the blocks behind the soldier have their meanings. The block immediately behind the soldier represents wings of victory and the block after – the flames and desire to win.
Camp, sweet camp
At around 22 PM we finally arrived to Camping Route Roemenie and we were let in and got some ground for the tent without any problem.
Like two years ago, the owners were very friendly and the place didn’t change much too – clean with rather intimate and low-key atmosphere. No herds of people and no tightly packed tents and campers at each free centimeter of space.
As it was late we only took a shower and made ourselves an adventure dinner.
Yes, it consisted only of beer and pasta with pesto :)
But after the long way and a day full of thrill and fighting with heat wave, this kind of stuff tastes like amborsia of gods anyway.
Some may nag about it, but I think it’s one of adventures perks – you can bring to mind how it is to just enjoy simple things – simple shower, simple food, simple favourite company and simple not overthinking two days ahead.
But be aware – even simple, but nice smelling food can allure animals. We had this petty thief guy lurking in the dark for our food:
There was another one too, but we didn’t catch him on camera.
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