Ok, I might exaggerate a little… but let’s start from the beginning. In order to recover from the long exhausting roadtrip, I went to the balneary resort of Baile Tusnad. A few days in the mountains is just what you need after a few days in the mountains. Baile Tusnad is cute, almost deserted (like most mountain touristy places in Romania), with most of the tourists there over 50, hoping to relieve their pains with the sparkling and/or iron-rich waters springing from underneath the town.

Also, it seems the area is populated by some bears. They apparently come every night, in search of leftovers (the garbage bins are locked in cages, as well as the dogs). There are “Warning, bears” signs, but only in Romanian and Hungarian. There were cases of foreigners who ended up missing.. nobody knows why yet.

Anyway, from Baile Tusnad, after a short hike, I reached the volcanic lake of Sfanta Ana, unique in Romania:

But this was not the main attraction of the day. Close to the crater of Sfanta Ana was another, older crater, housing the Mohos peat-bog. The ground in the bog, sponge-like, was actually made of moss, a few meters thick, floating on the lake, with puddles of water 10m deep. We had to walk on a platform or on some steps. Trees couldn’t grow more than 2 meters. Among the plants, there were some carnivorous ones (first 2 photos – check out the dragonfly in the first one) or some narcotic ones (3rd picture).

Am I the only one who thinks the guide kinda looks like Schwarzenegger?