Moldova - The Land of 1,000 wells

We left the somewhat strange city of Soroca and drove west, passing more over-the-top Roma houses along the way. There were so many gold and silver domes on both houses and churches that I realised I had no idea which one was which!

We stayed on a highway for a while then turned off it. The asphalt roads were so bad! We crawled along at less that 60km/hr. In some places, the asphalt had slumped creating car-wrecking high spots in the process. In other places, the surface had been repaired so many times that it resembled a patchwork quilt.  

We always laugh at these signs telling drivers about approaching hills. The hills are nothing! Why drivers need to be notified about small rises and falls in the roads, I have no idea.

We mostly drove through large-scale farming land. The primary crop was sunflowers. There were thousands of acres of them but they were almost ready to harvest and most of them had dried up. Corn was the second most common crop. Again, it was nearly finished.

Despite google maps and other map apps continuously lagging then jumping, making it difficult for me to navigate at times, we made it to our accommodation in the village of Cobani. We only drove about 1.5 hours that day, starting from right near the Ukraine border and finishing very close to the Romanian border! This is such a small country.

Our accommodation there was an agrotourism place. Around the world, these places are usually in rural locations and run by farmers or villagers. We were looking forward to some of the country hospitality and cooking that we had read about.

Our cabin was amazing! It was made of huge logs. In-between they ran lengths of rope to create a seal (sort of, lol).

The front door was a work of art.

Above the front door hung a pair of old suede boots.

All the furniture was hand-made, chunky and very solid.

The owner, Olga, was lovely. She didn't speak much English but with her sparkly blue eyes and fun personality, it didn't matter. We quickly learned that she had been a world champion (we think) javelin thrower in the 1980's. We realised later that Moldova was part of the USSR then so she would have trained in the old Soviet regime. That would have been tough! She was also the runner up European champion in the Masters games in 2019.

Olga was such a great cook! We only ordered breakfast and dinner here and I'm so glad we did that because there was so much food that we just ate leftovers for lunch.

Our first dinner was amazing! These pork steaks were probably the tastiest and tenderest ones I've ever had. Oh - plus there was a large salad (each!), bread and a huge, heavy dessert. Needless to say, we couldn't eat it all.

At breakfast the next morning, she served up a fabulous baked omelette each. And that's all I needed. There were also two bruschetta each, bread, butter, honey, a plate of cheese and four baked apples. We snuck a lot of it for lunch but she was seriously offended when we didn't touch the bruschetta!

I loved that she served us traditional meals. This is a traditional soup called zeama. It's basically chicken noodle soup but the chicken is local village chicken and the ingredients are all home-made. It was delicious!

Mamaliga (corn mash) plus chicken and strong, sour sheep's cheese plus sour cream (they put this on everything!) plus pickled vegies. I wasn't a fan of the pickles but everything else was wonderful!

We drank well water here, but Olga does things the modern way. A pump is hooked up to the well and is attached to a hose with a trigger gun. We simply pull the trigger and direct the strong stream of water into a jug. The jug has a filter and we have to wait a few moments for the water to filter through it. The water is slightly salty but is otherwise fine.

Olga has planted out the back section of her long block with grapes and lavender. The lavender is planted in neat rows and is kept trimmed with the regular cutting of the flowers. There are three types of wine grapes in this section and she gave us a bunch of each. The red variety, curiously called Moldova, was lovely. The Chardonnay was sweet and the Muscat was sensational! It was like eating wine! 

Strangely, this is all for the tourists! At the moment she only has the one room to let, but a larger building is in the process of construction. The place won't be the same once the big building is there but I can't blame her for giving it a go. She's a great host and I think she enjoys the company.

We went exploring the area. We headed north to Duruitoarea. It was only 20kms but it took half an hour to drive due to the condition of the roads.

We soon learned that wells are everywhere! Most villages seemed to have dozens of them and most of those seem to be operational.

My title of this post is "Land of 1,000 wells" but that is a serious understatement. I thought there might be hundreds of thousands of them so I googled it. Here's what I found:

Artesian wells: Over 7,000.

Water table wells: Around 179,574.

Shallow wells and springs: Approximately 120,000.

Wells with unsafe water: Over 47,000.

Hmmm, I hope we haven't drunk from any of the unsafe wells!

The Prut cliffs run for about 100 to 200 kms (depending on whether you believe google maps or the Moldovan tourist information!) from where we are staying to the northern border. The cliffs are limestone and the tourist info we've read raves about them but they're really just small cliffs. It was good to see them though.

Climbing up to the top we had good views back over the village we walked from.

From the top we could peer into the gorge. It really wasn't very big but it was nice.

At the edge of a finished sunflower crop, a lone flower sprouted very late, giving me a close glimpse of its sunny face.

We wandered around the village a bit and it was really interesting. We think this thatch-roofed house was part of a camp ground but nothing was open so we're not sure.

An older well in less pristine condition than many others.

The next day we explored the "Valley of the Hundred Hills". There are actually over 3,000 hills there apparently. They are just small rises but each one stands alone. It's quite unusual. 

We walked to the top of one.

From the top we could look across to Romania.

We saw so many wells but this one was the fanciest by far!

At the village of Butesti, we checked out a cave There are many caves in the limestone cliffs.

The village of Butesti looked lovely from above with the blue spires of the church reaching up above the trees.

John returned to the car and drove back to our accommodation and I walked back. I had to admire the amazing dark soil they have here. It's so fertile! 

I saw quite a few of these mounds. They're molehills!

The trail had been hard to follow and the walk took longer than I expected. I was walking into town along the main road when a horse and cart came by. The guy driving called out to me and offered me a lift! Normally I would never accept a lift in a car but a horse and cart was far different to a car. We were near the town, on the main road and seriously, I figured that if he tried to race the horse off with me in the cart, I'd just jump out. I couldn't resist - I climbed aboard.

There was no racing anywhere. The horse just plodded along. The guy didn't speak a work of English but we shared our names. I quickly dropped into the conversation (mostly miming) that my husband was driving the car. I always drop the word 'husband' early in a conversation when I end up alone with men, lol. (In this case I pointed to my wedding ring.) He may not have spoken English but I'm quite sure he said he drives a horse because a car is too expensive. I'm thinking all his money probably went on the four gold teeth he had in the front of his mouth!

A quick selfie in the cart. 

He had a load of walnuts in the cart and I think he was delivering them to different people. He pulled up at a house and I jumped out and thanked him in his language. It's the only word I've learned so far. He was rapt!

I walked back through our village. All the villages that we've seen so far are quite spread out because everyone seems to have their own quarter- or half-acre of land where they grow fruit and vegies. The villages have a lovely rural feel.

Many of the houses were small but very neat. This shade of green has been popular everywhere we've been

I saw some kids coming home from school. They looked like they were wearing traditional clothes but I don't know if that was a school uniform or they just had a special event on.

A well prettily overgrown with grape vines.

This style of well was very different. A huge arm with a bucket hanging from it had a support part way along it. The bucket was raised and lowered by pushing or releasing the lower part of the arm, just like a see saw.

Another walk took us to a limestone outcrop just near the town.

White limestone road and green plains.

We had to cross this very rickety bridge to get home. It was held together with hope I think!

Walnuts were everywhere - lining roads, in paddocks and in gardens. We later heard that the Soviets planted a lot of these.

I've come to realise that life in Moldova today is probably like life was like in most parts of Europe over the last few hundred years. Life is simple. Milk the cow. Watch over the sheep while they graze. Collect walnuts and berries. Grow your own vegetables. Round up geese and chooks that get out. These are practices that have been carried out for centuries, if not millennia. Moldova still holds onto the roots of our current civilisation, probably largely thanks to their long period of Soviet rule.

It was sad to leave Olga and her lovely cabin. She had been a real delight to meet. 

It's been so hard to get information here. Guide books give you background, an understanding of the place your visiting. A good guide book tells you about the good and the bad as well as the ugly. It makes recommendations for things to see and do in big cities and smaller villages. It highlights any areas of interest. There is no guide book that we could find on Moldova. Armed with nothing more than the Moldovan travel website, we've had to try to work things out for ourselves, which hasn't been easy when we can't ask people about things.

I saw on the website that a herd of bison were near us but we had no info on how to find them. Luckily google maps had a site marked so we just headed there. We found the place and saw one lone bison asleep in a yard. Oh well! T\

We had a nice walk in the large oak forest nearby.

Driving on to our next destination took us 1.5 hours to travel about 100kms. The slumps in the road and the corresponding asphalt mounds were shocking in places. Slumps and bumps became something we had to keep a very sharp eye out for.

It was interesting to see the forms of transport in the villages we drove through. An older woman wobbled slowly along the road in a village on a rusty bike that looked older than her. People drove tiny tractors pulling trailers. Speedy mobility scooters are used by anyone, not just those with mobility issues. We saw people driving rotary hoes, tractors of all sizes, headers, a golf cart, horses and carts and sometimes even cars! In villages, I'd say that cars are not the most common form of transport that we see!

Our next stop was a winery. There was a bit more English spoken here. First up, we had a wine tasting and again, the whites were amazing but John wasn't too keen on the reds. We met three American guys - one was Moldovan living in the US and the three had come across for a wedding. We ended up having a pretty big night with them!

Part of the reason we came here is because there are supposed to be walking trails here, however the staff didn't know what we were talking about even though there was a sign on the wall proclaiming that they were a part of the wine trails. We eventually just followed our noses and more or less found the walks anyway.

It's autumn here and the fungi are growing.

To our amazement, we came across this huge dome. It was in bad repair and was clearly abandoned. We later learned that it was a former Soviet radar. 

The acoustics inside it were amazing!

I found a sheep bell!

We walked back through the vineyard. It was lovely.

It's picking season and pickers were working on certain varieties. There are about 15 varieties of grapes here in only 16 hectares!

The next day was quite cool and it threatened to rain, although the rain didn't eventuate. We've carted puffer jackets and raincoats with us for the last four months and we finally got a chance to use them!

Once again, the people at the winery weren't generally warm people, but there was one exception. The amazing Marcella was friendly, warm and welcoming. I usually got a hug at the start and end of each day! When we asked questions about the winery, she gave us an impromptu tour. She even got some unfermented chardonnay juice for us out of one of the tanks. It was incredibly sweet and really lovely - much like her really!

We don't know what people get paid here but it can't be much. Decent, but not top-shelf, bottles of wine sold for about Aussie $13 to $15 in this winery. There seemed to be an incredible number of people working on the property and they all were given food at lunchtime. There were pickers, wine makers, cooks, cleaners, wait staff and more. They had nine hotel rooms I think. I can't see how they can sell wine for that price and pay all those staff. I did some googling and came up with an hourly average pay of $10 an hour in Moldova. That's actually more than I expected.

Marcella has two daughters but in summer she works 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. That's tough!

We had wonderful food here and met more English-speaking tourists than we have anywhere else so far.

Us at the winery.

To be honest, we're not finding Moldova to be all that amazing so far. The people keep to themselves quite a bit, there isn't a lot of English spoken, it's hard to get information and the country isn't exactly packed with amazing sights. Anyway, we're here and we'll make the most of it. It's certainly interesting in its own way.

Hooroo!
Heather and John