Tuesday, August 11 [Diary entry]: Morning clear and sunny. Was awoken to watch sunrise. In good mood, as if yesterday I had died and was reborn. Tune in my head: "Here among the wrecked detritus of my sad sad life, I...have...come...to...plaaay."

Must have been the altitude. This morning, if not awakening squarely in the lap of nature, we did see the sun rise from the lodge porch (very nice), then packed, breakfasted and set off at around 9:30 on winding ridge tracks only a shoe-width or two broad. Peter stopped frequently to take close-up photos of edelweiss (no, they don't only grow in Austria) or some other rare flora. Somewhere along the hike back, through open country, we were surprised to see a woman, walking a dog, come out of nowhere and give us lemonade packets and cookies. "She must have been an angel," said Csongi.

And so we wound our way through the gorges and down the rocky slopes, arriving at the Romanian Alpine fantasy mountain-house meeting point at a bit past one. We laid our burdens down and had something over an hour to wash in the pump fountain, brush our teeth, sun ourselves and just -- what luxury -- do nothing, before the second group finally arrived to meet us with Barney the Driver in the Horrible Old 1990 Blue Van. It was here that we found that Adriana, Robby and Szilard had dropped out of the program and returned home; none of us mentioned their names again. (I was surprised at Adriana, not at the guys.)

And so we set off in the van. It soon became evident that our guardian angel had stayed behind in the mountains, because somewhere in the flatlands, toxic fumes start to spurt out from below the dashboard, along with steam, nearly scalding my legs; gasping, I hold my yellow T-shirt to my mouth as the radiator/coolant bubbles over and the engine sputters out. Numerous attempts at our pushing the van backwards and forwards, while Barney runs the engine, come to nothing, and in the end we finally take out our backpacks and start hiking down the road, thumbs extended in the universal position. Nobody stops; we decide to spread out in packs of two or three. After ten or 15 minutes T.V. runs back towards us, excited. He's hit the jackpot: we all pile into the back of a pickup truck -- "he's from Mures!" the boyz yell happily, referring to the driver -- and, for a reasonable fare, we roll hell-bent through the Bicaz Gorge, screaming hairpin turns and all, the whole way back to Lacu Rosu. Warned against leaning against the doubtfully sturdy sides of the truck -- and to keep my head down, lest we be discovered by the local boys in blue -- I am nevertheless exuberant. So are the other boyz: "Now you can say you hitchhiked in Romania!" Danni shouts my way. Somewhere en route, there is a sudden stop and a near collision with an oncoming bus. But is there any doubt we'd make it back in the end?

We hoof it another five kilometers back to home sweet campsite, vegetable soup and potatoes; thankfully, our tents, and everything within, are still there and intact. We enjoy a lazy late-morning breakfast, featuring more fresh milk (and cheese!) from Tobacco Road Farm.

*****

At one point, during that hike or another like it, Csongi and I get into a conversation about the bad old days in Romania, or rather, he talks and I listen. There was the time Ceausescu came to Targu Mures, where Csongi grew up, and everyone lined the streets in forced cheers for the dictator. The high point of a Mures kid's everyday existence, though, was 10 minutes of Tom and Jerry cartoons broadcast once a week. "All the kids from the neighborhood would be out playing in the street, and in 10 seconds, the whole street would empty as everyone ran inside to watch Tom and Jerry."

On Christmas Day of 1989, Csongi added, when Ceausescu was shot to death in the coup disguised as a revolution, "We all celebrated; then after a while we stopped and said, "Okay, now what?" The answer is still up in the air.

From some store somewhere I buy a candy bar enclosed in a cardboard box, on which is printed this perfect design:

All evening and all night long, on the remote back road next to our campsite, trucks rumble past carrying...loads and loads of stolen wood, Danni tells me when I inquire. "The drivers are very low-paid for what they do," he explains. "They are making some extra money."