Every single trip I've made to less known parts of Romania has paid off, eventually. Every road that seemed too bad to safely take us anywhere good brought along the most amazing scenery and the thrill of discovering unbeaten paths. The same happened last weekend, when we started off on a newly paved road and ended up offroading on serpentine tracks in Buzau county, admiring beautiful vistas from atop a hill, finding a monastery in the woods, drinking brackish water from a place only known by locals and eventually discovering a salt cave. All within one day.

From my countryside home in Dumbraveni, Vrancea county, my husband and I drove up to the mountains, hoping to cross the mountains to Buzau county, where we just wanted to discover the villages, as we're trying to figure out where we'd like to live sometime in our future. We like discovering villages and scenery, and imagine how much happier we'd be living there than in Bucharest (but that's another story).

For a number of villages in a row, the road was surprisingly good – recently re-asphalted, and the high hills in the area looked amazing robed in autumnal colors. When we tried to cross to Buzau county, though, things changed. Even though the map showed a local road – marked similarly to the good one we had used just before, in order to find the crossing we had to ask some people and then ask ourselves if we really wanted to do it. The crossing – from the villages Jitia to Bisoca - actually started off in a river bed – we were lucky it had not rained, otherwise the river probably would have been too big for our city car, and would have flooded us.

Once on the other side of the road, the adventure began. The road was indeed quite bad, lots of rocks, and even though our guides from across the river said they made it on that road also with a normal, city car – in many cases we had doubts our car would survive (note to self – get a car for offroading! ). After some ups and down – a thrilling adventure - we really were left in the middle of nowhere, and loving and hating it at the same time- we made it to the top, and then to another valley (took a wrong turn at some point, had to go back) and eventually to another high spot. And what beautiful scenery was waiting for us there. If I'd had to pick a place for a countryside house at that exact moment, I would have said 'There!' in a heart beat. Beautiful hills and valleys still velvet green all around us, burning red and sparkling yellow trees, a light end of summer wind- the perfect cure for city stress. (It only works in situ and for a couple of days after, from memory...)

When passing through a forest on our way to what we were hoping was 'civilization' - with dirt roads instead of stone roads, we found a monastery – Poiana Marului. It seemed like the perfect place to put a monastery – in the middle of nowhere, and divine nature all around.

The next 'Welcome to Buzau county!' sign in the middle of the forest lifted out spirits a bit – we were on the right path. We asked ourselves why nobody had ever thought of asphalting the road, as the area would probably get plenty of tourists looking for wilderness, but not looking to be stranded in the middle of nowhere with their cars broken. Even so, we concluded that if the car is good enough, it's better to offroad there than have the area spoiled by horrible villas, places for barbecuing, loud music and so on.

We finally arrived on the 'other side' and discovered a place where people seem to be closer to nature than in many other places. In the village called Sareni, people went to a hidden place between the hills to collect salty water for pickling. Yes, salty – in fact, extremely salty water – directly from within the earth. We asked around  for information - people are very nice and will explain in detail, even though not always the essential details, but I doubt anyone speaks English, so it would be good to have a Romanian speaking friend with you if you decide to do this. Eventually we saw some people coming back with bottles filed with salty water, so we went there too. It is close to the road between Sareni and Manzalesti, but it's quite hidden and not marked in any way. Imagine a valley of salt, a bit spooky at first, extremely silent, sometime in the afternoon – sun no longer up in the sky; a chilly, gray valley with visible white salt layers in the rock and a small stream of salty, brownish water running down the valley.

We had also heard of a salt cave from someone we had asked, and that around that area there was the longest salt cave in Europe, which was unfortunately not set up for tourism. We were unable to find it, but found something quite close. Just near the road, where the layers of salt in the rock were also visible, we found the entry into another salt cave, which narrowed down following a small stream of salty water into the darkness.

From that village, driving up several more kilometers to the village of Terca we would have seen the perpetual flames (in Romanian the living fire - Focul Viu ), but we decided to leave that for another trip. We drove back to Buzau city, on an asphalted road, which did not seem that cool anymore, somehow, and from Buzau we hopped on the two – lane European road 85 and in one hour we were back to the asphalt jungle of Bucharest. You can check our trip on the map below. E (Sareni) is the place for the salty water and salt cave, while the road between B (Jitia) and D (Manzalesti) is where most of the offroading happened. Things became much more normal between D and H (Maracineni), close to Buzau. 

There are many other places to see in Buzau – the cave churches, the Muddy Volcanoes, Sarata Monteoru spa, the vineyards on the hills, the beautiful villages in what they say it's the cradle of Christianity- so we will have to plan another trip soon while the weather is on our side.

By Corina Chirileasa, corina@romania-insider.com

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(photos: copyright Corina Chirileasa/Romania-Insider.com)