Back to the nature

On last Sunday (just after Orheiul Vechi – lovely, busy weekend) I made a trip to "Pădurea Domnească" (Royal Forest) – natural reserve at the border with Romania, about 150 km from Chisinau. Unfortunately there won’t be any tips how to get there, it was an organized trip by my generous hosting organization and we had a mini-bus on our disposal.

We left from Chisinau about 8 in the morning, the journey is long, lasts about 3 hours. Our first stop was in Glodeni, the biggest city of the area, where we met our guide, the scientist who told us lots of interesting stories about the reserve. The entrance to the forest, at least to some areas, is limited and you should contact the reserve administration. The ticket is 25 lei (about 1,5 euro) so money shouldn’t be any problem. 

 

The day was very cold, cloudy, with freezing wind and some rain drops appearing from time to time. In addition, because the reserve is pretty big and the most interesting places are far from each other we had to spent most of the time in the bus, getting out only to see something, listening to the guide's description and go back to the vehicle. It could be better but there is no reason to complain, the day was really nice anyway. 

 

The reserve, besides that it includes of one of the oldest forests in Europe, is also a geological treasure, with the coral reef (!) hills, remained after the Sarmat Sea that covered Europe long time ago. You can easily find shelves and rocks with the prints of prehistoric sea animals.

Another sensation of the region is area called “The hundred hills”. On the plain ground there are more than 3 thousand hills spread along the Prut River and no one knows how they really appeared there. There are several hypotheses (one of them is the Alien’ contribution ;)) but even after many researches there is no answer to that question. What’s more, the guide told us that in the area the electronic devices, like computers cannot work and get broken, like when last year they installed there equipment worth 1 million euro and it got destroyed. Is it true or not? I have no idea. And I’m not going to be a person who will check it ;)

Our next stop is a forest and a nesting area of local herons. And we have another curiosity. The bird that normally builds its nest in rushes, here built it at the threes! Seems like everything is not in the right way in here ;) The guide tells us to be quite and watch out on the “surprises” from above. Indeed, the threes the birds sit on are all white and it is not because of snow, or anything pleasant. 

Fortunately, no one gets hit by the “surprise” and we continue our journey to the place everyone were waiting for – Zimbru reserve! Zimbru (rom.) – European bison extinct in Moldova at the end of XVIII century and now they try to renew its population. The first 3 were brought from Poland and now they have 5 of them, 2 little ones which stay in a small, closed area and 3 big ones that have a possibility to wander in a bigger space. An adult male may reach up to one tone of weight, but despite walking around the park we didn’t manage to see one. Before our return journey we had a lunch break, like some local Moldovans who shared with us two bottles of their home-made wine. The true spirit of hospitality!

I’m very happy I managed to visit this place, which is another proof that the nature of Moldova is stunning and it’s truly the best what this country has.