TRAVEL. NATURE. ROMANIA.

Where Cave Bears Once Were Roaming During the Ice Age

A cave displaying spectacular stalagmites and leftovers of these ancient species

It’s been bigger than I expected. More stalactites than I’ve ever seen. And stalagmites. Those rock formations were growing everywhere. From the top and from the bottom. And then those bones. They’re just bones but then again they are very, very old bones.

Let’s start at the beginning of the day. After two nights in Budapest, it was time for us to move on. We packed up our bags and left the apartment.

On our way to the parking lot, we entered a hallway where people tried to stop us. They said they were “shooting” something. I first stopped but then understood what they meant. However, behind the door they didn’t want us to go through was our car.

We did get let through. And after passing the film scene as quickly as possible, I turned around to take a picture of those cars standing on the side. I don’t know what they were filming but it looked cool.

And yes, it was raining.

Not long after, we found ourselves on the Hungarian highway driving further east.

There wasn’t much to see. The countryside is flat and mostly fields and forests were passing the window. I spotted an old train driving along the edges of the fields.

And then there was a border. And while border crossings in Europe have mostly been abolished, this border between Romania and Hungary wasn’t just one of our memories but for today as well.

My dad has stayed at this border for as long as 25 hours. That was before I was born. But even in my lifetime, we’ve spent hours waiting at this border.

Today, most cars were waved through. We weren’t. I handed in the ID’s of all three of us. Then the papers of the car. And the immigration officer was still not happy and asked for David’s passport.

Yes, while everyone is saying “but you’re married”, David does not have German citizenship or permanent residency in Europe. Through our marriage and several German language certificates he’s achieved, he got a temporary residency. Not more or less.

So, here we are. At yet another border. While the officer is holding our papers, he told me to drive ahead and pull over to the left. I wanted to say something but David told me to be quiet. He’s used to it. He knows the consequences of having an African passport.

I pulled over to the side and let David walk back to the officer. I would have just gotten upset. The temporary residency card David has does allow him to freely travel throughout the European Union of which Romania is a part.

However, this guy wanted to have his passport, searched through the pages and even gave him a stamp for entering. In the meantime, I was sitting in the car taking a picture of the long line of stalls selling toll tickets and exchange bureaus.

Yes, Romania is part of the EU but does not have the Euro. And while we still had some cash from our previous visit, we knew better than to exchange money at the border.

I was driving at this point of the journey which is why there are no more photos of the trip until we entered the Apuseni Mountains, a mountain range in Transylvania.

The Western Romanian Carpathians are also where our destination for the day was located. The Bear’s Cave.

You’ve probably heard of caves before and of bears of course. And yes, there are still many brown bears living in the wilderness of Romania. But this cave is referring to a different kind of bear. One of the ancient times.

“The cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) is a prehistoric species of bear that lived in Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene and became extinct about 24,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum.” — Wikipedia

While the brown bear also uses caves but mostly for his time of hibernation, the cave bear was home in this space judging by countless fossils found in caves.

The cave we entered is only accessible with a guide and I guess since we were visiting in low season, only a tour in the Romanian language was available. We decided to let my father listen to the guide and hung back so I could take pictures.

Talking of which. As we were entering the reception, we were told I had to put my camera away. No photos were allowed inside the cave. Many signs were referring to this rule.

As soon as we entered the cave, the group of 20-30 Romanians each pulled out their phones to take pictures. The guide also mentioned in his first sentence that taking pictures wasn’t allowed. But the crowd clearly didn’t care.

I know that most caves don’t allow photography due to people disturbing other visitors with the flash. Therefore I decided to hang back and take pictures with the phone without using a flash.

Looking to the front of the group I could see flashes going left, right and center. The Romanians clearly couldn’t have cared less about the rule of not taking pictures.

Soon after entering the cave, the guide now said it was allowed to take pictures from there on but only without the flash. This made no difference to the group as they continued to flash around.

I pulled out my camera now to capture the beauty of these building rock formations. Stalactites were growing everywhere from the roof. Some of them looked like ropes hanging from the ceiling. It was dropping everywhere.

And due to the dropping, there were even more stalagmites growing up from the ground. I also spotted a few of them getting together. The rough and weirdly shaped stalagmite connects with the straight cone growing from the ceiling.

Stalagmites do grow on average 8 to 15 millimeters per 100 years. Just to give you an impression of how “fast” those poles are growing toward each other.

“Bears' Cave received its name after the 140 cave bear skeletons which were discovered on the site in 1983. The cave bear, also known as Ursus spelaeus, is a species of bear which became extinct during the Last Glacial Maximum, about 27,500 years ago.” — Wikipedia

Yes, I do know. The above quote says 24,000 years ago. But who knows that? I mean, really knows that part of history. If it was 20,000, 24,000 or 27,000 years ago. Who will really know? And does it matter?

Getting back to our walk through the cave. As David and I were observing our surroundings, the green came to our attention and let us believe the grass and moss were growing in the cave only because of the light being constantly displayed on the rocks.

A bit later the guide was saying the same thing. Maybe we don’t need a guide. We figure things out ourselves.

And to close up this story about the cave here’s one of those 140 skeletons found inside the cave. The cave bear was about 1,50 meters tall while standing on all four. Just imagine his majesty when standing up on two legs. Surely not a creature I would have enjoyed meeting.

Having my father with us on this trip we have a lot more pictures of the two of us than normal. While I’m a passionate photographer, I don’t take many pictures of people and only take a handful of the two of us.

As we left the cave, we entered a thick soup. The fog was hanging low in the mountains and I was happy I had taken a picture or two of the sparkling colors of fall’s beauty before we entered the cave.

We hadn’t booked a place for the night but I had selected one about half an hour’s drive from the cave. It was dark already but that didn’t say anything since sunset is around 5 pm in November.

However, the place I had selected and not booked was located in a completely abandoned holiday village. We had to turn off the main road in the mountains and drive on a very bad rocky gravel road.

Just when my dad said I can’t drive this car any further (if he only knew where and how I drove in Namibia), we were about to arrive at the property.

We got lucky as the owners had been cleaning up from the previous tourists and were about to leave the house. They let us in and we had an entire house for ourselves.

What is called a communal kitchen, shared bathroom and living room were now all part of our premises. There were no restaurants in the vicinity as the owners said but that was no problem for us.

They left and I pulled out a canned soup and some sausages out of the car. For this exact situation, I had packed some canned food and it was all we needed this night.

We also still had some beers in the car.

The fog had lifted later that night and I was really keen on taking pictures of the sky in the mountains. But I knew we were in bear country and in a region abandoned by humans at this time of the year.

I asked my husband if he’d hear me if I scream and he just said I should scream loud enough.

I’ve never been so paranoid taking pictures at night as this evening. As soon as I clicked the shutter I turned my head and looked behind me. And to the left. And the right. I didn’t know where to look. It was really dark.

Lots of bushes and trees all around the property. And no, there were no fences. It was cold outside. The temperatures were just above freezing.

These aren’t the best pictures I’ve ever taken at night but they might give you an eerie feeling. The exact thing I felt standing out there.

“Stare at the dark for too long and you will eventually see what isn’t there.” — Cameron Jace

More about our trip to Eastern Europe:

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