SOLITUDES

From the coast of gold, across the seven seas
I'm traveling on, far and wide
But now it seems
I'm just a stranger to myself
And all the things I sometimes do
It isn't me but someone else

I close my eyes and think of home
Another city goes by in the night
Ain't it funny how it is
You never miss it 'til it's gone away
And my heart is lying there
And will be 'til my dying day

So understand
Don't waste your time
Always searching for those wasted years
Face up...make your stand
And realize you're living in the golden years

Too much time on my hands
I got you on my mind
Can't ease this pain, so easily
When you can't find the words to say
It's hard to make it through another day
And it makes me want to cry
And throw my hands up to the sky

So understand
Don't waste your time
Always searching for those wasted years
Face up...make your stand

And realize you're living in the golden years

IRON MAIDEN - WASTED YEARS...

As promised , I am writing here the details of the Saturday's trip in the Fagarasi mountains. Thanks to Oana which was so kind to invite me sometime ago to join this group , after several delays due to the bad weather , finally last Thursday everyone agree on having this trip. I made an almost fatal mistake Friday evening to try to take some photos on fireworks on a local festival which ended in no usable picture , in one and a half hour of listening some crap music and also in some malfunction of my own body , which was so close to make me to give up to this trip. But I said that the night should decide if I will join or not so Saturday morning I felt good enough to try to go. So , there is was: Saturday morning at 8 :30 we departed to the Sambata de Sus village ( around 1 hour by car away from Brasov ) on such a lovely summer morning.

At Sambata we meet the others and there was a 25 persons group ( with or without the dog, I am not sure on that ), starting somewhere from 14 years ( I think ) and ending on more than 60 ( also , just a presumption ). At 10 we started from the village , near the monastery ( and you should visit that even if virtually at http://www.manastireabrancoveanu.ro/ ) with an easy walk through a forest road ( about 5 km long) until we reached and forestry point and from there the real fun begun. For the next 3 hours , we started to climb the mountain , walking near the river and passing some real amazing landscapes. I was quite surprised that I was able to walk after several kilometers ( I was expecting to die in pain after the first ones ) and step by step I accommodated myself with the climbing even if the last 2 or 3 kilometers until the cottage were quite hard , being really hot outside. Anyway , the surrounding landscapes were truly amazing so when I finally reached the cottage , I forgot about being tired and so on and I made of course a stupid mistake so I took a good lunch which took all my power after. At the cottage we stayed for about one hour and half and we tried to figure if there is any point in trying to reach the final target ( to reach one of the peaks) but we decided that it is too late for doing this , being already 15:00 PM and the road to the peak was something about 5 hours so we decided to try to reach another point much closer so we started again to walk. Too bad that my lunch made me powerless so I was forced to gave up somewhere on the road , when we started to climb again a nasty hill but I said that this is more than Ok , I have to recognize and respect my limits because there is no point in crawling another several hundred meters and just to exhaust myself , considering that from that point there were another 3 hours of descending.

It was a good decision because I had plenty of time to take a very close look to the surroundings and to try to take some good pictures. Unfortunately the light was s powerful that a lot of the photos are unusably at this moment ( maybe someone with good Photoshop skills will be able to process them much better , but I am not that guy now) but same time some of them are quite nice. Part of the group rejoined at the base of the nasty hill which forced me to gave up so we spent some nice time watching Ares ( a lovely black Labrador ) playing in the river and having the time of his life while we were waiting for the brave ones which were able to pass the bloody hill. Later on everyone show up back and somewhere close to afternoon we started the descending on the same route. I have to say that I am little bit sorry that I was not able to pass that hill but I was proud of myself considering the 11 hours of the whole trip ( which I understood that it was 38 - 40 kilometers of walk ) being really satisfied that I managed to reach even that point , so close to the peaks. Anyway , I made a promise to myself and to try until next year on this time to repeat this trip much better equipped and to reach the peak. I used almost all the time my 55 - 200 mm lens with some exceptions when I used the 18 - 55 mm lens but the most valuable lesson is that next time I should take with me another memory card and also to buy some filters because the light was crushing and even with the highest underexposure on my camera , I was not able to use many of the pictures . Also I have to buy another pair of boots cause the one I had are not good enough.

I reached again the monastery at 21:00 in the evening and then our lovely driver Zoli , which was in a huge rush , forced us to go asap back to Brasov and he was so quick to reach the Brasov town that we got lost in Fagarasi city , so lost that we managed to find even other lost peoples until we finally reached the right exit of that bloody town.

As a final idea , I have to say that it was a brilliant idea to go out , to go there , to meet some new really nice peoples which I hope that they will give me other opportunities to join them in this kind of trips , it was an wonderful day and most of all I was finally proud of my achievement.Thank you Oana once again for this chance and for your trust and support and to Zoli for driving us there and back safely.

For technical details and route on the trip I made , please visit this

I will put again the pictures , in an much logical and chronological way. Almost all of them are on my Facebook account , here