Saturday, August 8: The heart of the Transylvania trek, spent in and around the mountains. The heart of a national park, Lacu Rosu is a strange lake, with hundreds of tree stumps sticking out above the surface of the muddy brown water. Straw-hatted, T-shirted boaters out of Renoir paddle their way across the lazy, long and meandering body of water, deftly avoiding the stumps. Not for us this lazy idyll, as we grunt and groan (especially me) our way to the top of Kis (Little) Cohard, above the lake. Directly across from us was another mountain, the diamond-shaped, heavily forested Nagy (Big) Cohard, and below was a spectacular view of pine forests bisected by Lacu Rosu.

In the afternoon on top of Kis Cohard, stillness hangs in the air, the currents wafting occasional soft music up our way from the hotel far below. A hawk soars by. There's no shade, however, and the sun is harsh; two or three campers end up suffering mild heatstroke.