Drive drive, quick is the anxious call on my right. I am trying to take a photo from my driver’s seat and I look around to see Suzanne face to face with a juvenile brown bear paws holding down our windows, close enough to give Suzanne a big tongue kiss! I throw the car into first gear and the bear’s claws scrape off the side of the car with mama watching on from the other side.
It is 1968 and the Czechoslavakian revolution is quashed with Soviet tanks rolling into Prague much as they did 12 years earlier trampling on my parents’ life in Budapest after the Hungarian revolution of 1956. I remember the events as they unfolded as an adolescent. My parents shared their insights and the end results were never in doubt. Fascinatingly these events had reverberations in Ceausesceu’s Romania as this megalomaniac Iron curtain dictator suddenly developed paranoid delusions of Russian troops coming from Eastern Europe against Romania. He decided that he needed a way through the Carpathian Mountains for his forces to cross and repel any advances from Eastern Europe. The idea for the Transfagarasan was born. Started in 1970 and completed in 1974 and built with conscripted military, this is an amazing undertaking. Officially 40 workers died but it is suspected that hundreds actually died carving this track out of the raw mountains. At the top 2000 metres high there is a long tunnel 884 metre (Balea) blasted through the rock and down the northern slopes dizzying switchbacks make this one of the top drives in the world as described by Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson.
We have climbed the hairpin bends, seen the Balea Falls crested the summit and skirted the Balea lake when out to the right in the grass off the road I spot a brown bear. I drive my car into prime position and Suzanne does the rest with the camera. On an amazing high I remind her of my comments at the beginning of the drive that apart from the scenery all I need is a bear sighting for me to climax in my underwear!
A few minutes further on there are two bears on the side of the road, one sitting in the most gorgeous pose. We have prime position but it rapidly degenerates into a scene reminiscent of African game parks with vehicles crowding around a wild animal. We move on sated with our 3 bears and I crack a Goldilocks joke. Lo and behold we round another corner and it is mama bear to the let and 2 juvenile bears to the right. I am merrily photographing mama bear who initially looks aggressive when Suzanne has her intimate bear encounter.
We have one more bear encounter on my side of the car before arriving at the massive dam that encloses the Balea Lake.
We have climbed the hairpin bends, seen the Balea Falls crested the summit and skirted the Balea lake when out to the right in the grass off the road I spot a brown bear. I drive my car into prime position and Suzanne does the rest with the camera. On an amazing high I reminder her of my comments at the beginning of the drive that apart from the scenery all I need is a bear sighting for me to climax in my underwear!
A few minutes further on there are two bears on the side of the road, one sitting in the most gorgeous pose. We have prime position but it rapidly degenerates into a scene reminiscent of African game parks with vehicles crowding around a wild animal. We move on sated with our 3 bears and I crack a Goldilocks joke. Lo and behold we round another corner and it is mama bear to the left and 2 juvenile bears to the right. I am merrily photographing mama bear who initially looks aggressive when Suzanne has her intimate bear encounter.
We have one more bear encounter on my side of the car before arriving at the massive dam that encloses the Balea Lake.
One reply on “A Beary spectacular drive”
Loved reading about your teddy encounter!