Coco’s cabin

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This post is about a 22km walk from Oaș to Iuriu de Câmpie. The Caboose and I fall over, and I sleep in a shepherd’s cabin.

Again there has been no rain all night. It is perfectly quiet on the hillside as I pack up my stuff. I walk past an isolated farmhouse where a lady tells her dogs to not chase me down. They are some very big dogs, and I feel grateful.

groceries

The road goes down until I get to a village, and then it goes up again until there is a supermarket. I buy three bottles of water, three bell peppers, six bananas, one lion candy bar, two jars of beans, one bag of trail mix, and four yogurts. It feels like a huge grocery list.

The road continues to go up, up, up, and one time, as I am hiding from the sun under a tree, a lady catches up with me and hands me a bag of tomatoes and a peach. I don’t understand much of what she says, but it becomes obvious that she thinks it must be difficult to pull the Caboose up the hills in this heat. And she’s right: it is difficult.

I walk on, wary of a thunderstorm that is visibly brewing in the distance.

choices

When I get to the next village the road branches off. The one that I am supposed to take according to the map is an unpaved road. Not very auspicious, I think, but I decide to take it anyway. The other road would’ve been much longer.

One time a lady comes out of her house to stop me. She has a lot of questions, I don’t know any Romanian, and there is no cell phone signal, so we can’t use the translation app. One thing becomes clear though: she thinks it’s a bad idea to be walking alone. Is this because she thinks it’s dangerous? Or because she thinks it’s boring? I wonder about this, but then the topic has shifted to her corn harvest: all of it has died because there was no water. She throws up her arms: it looks as if today there might be some water.

falls

As it turns out the dirt path that I have decided to take is pretty horrible. It leads up and up between fields and fields of dead corn, and it is so uneven that at one point the Caboose and I both lose our balance and tumble into the grass.

I find a spot to camp behind the next village. I set up the tent just as the thunderstorm is descending from the hills. And then, just a little while later, I find myself in a little cabin. I have been invited there by Coco the shepherd and his friend Pedro. They wanted me to be safe from the storm.

pictures

the walk from Oaș to Iuriu de Câmpie:

the hills near Oaș

drone view of the walk through the hills

the Caboose in the hills

old car

cows

EU flag

roadside fire

Jesus with his EU flag

this lady gave me some tomatoes and a peach

is this trash dump even legal?

the road to walk from Oaș to Iuriu de Câmpie

Jesus seems sick of it all

church in Soporu de Câmpie

old lady in Soporu de Câmpie

all is well

a choice

the path I didn’t take

the path I took

the Caboose and I fell here

back on a dirt path

curious horses

angwy dogs

dinner

Coco and Pedro

Coco’s cabin

inside the cabin