It was the way we decided to end the challenging year which is already gone and our choice to watch the last sunset from a new discovery where time knows no hurry and where the winter was almost absent. Goodbye 2020, welcome 2021!

A thing that was never missing from our adventures was the way we are saying goodbye to the year which was slowly coming to an end, and welcome the new one with fresh journeys that are taking a place into our hearts.
Though, after 5 weeks of lockdown in the place where I'm currently living we kind of lost our hope to simply meet each other and see my family during the holidays, but somehow the things have changed on the last hundred of meters being able to leave our houses without any kind of declaration and made us gather together and celebrate the end of a very rough year.
That was also our opportunity to not break our little tradition and ended up going with just one day before the New Year Eve a few km away from Sibiu to discover a place which we crossed countless times but never really followed the path to the end, namely the way to Gura Râului.

Gura Râului represents a tiny village from Sibiu county being located just 17 km away from the city and my new home, which is known for some of the purest water in the country, as well as secular trees and a dam which is the subject for today's post.

But this is not how our adventure had began.

After the post which I wrote around two weeks ago talking about a place of heart I kind of got really nostalgic thinking about the significant time since we last visited that location and wondering how much we are going to wait until this will happen again. Happily, my parents were always ready for a new adventure and sometimes they are even more excited than me, so after I and my sister had a photoshoot in the woods for some outdoors products, we returned the next day with the whole squad to the place that left its marks on our hearts.

We ended up reconnecting with nature, doing a BBQ, and letting our faces being caressed by the sun rays even though it was pretty windy back then. Though, our adventure couldn't come to an end so fast since the fact that we were always crossing a path with a road sign that was showing we are just 8 km away from Gura Râului, made us feel like we were indebted with a new journey on that way because we always promised we will go there someday but tended to postpone over and over again.

The journey to the dam was pretty short compared to how much time we are used spending on the road, and after we crossed a narrow road full of serpentines and a very poor village, just 3 km away from it our GPS announced us that we reached the destination.
Everything was quite unclear at first since we ended up on a forest road that led us to a pit full of people who were hiding while cutting off the trees, so we thought it was better to search for a different way, getting back on the road and driving away for 5 more minutes.
The 5 minutes were more than enough to reach the place which we were seeking for, realizing that the location we have first entered was positioned just at the base of the dam, so the GPS was not entirely wrong.
Though, we couldn't really take advantage of the discovery because there were some big gates and padlocks just in front of the way that offers you access to the dam, so we had to thank with the view we could admire on sides from the street.

Gura Râului Dam represents an artificial construction which was created with the main purpose of water supplying the city Sibiu and five more villages (Gura Râului, Sura Mare, Cristian, Ocna Sibiului and Șelimbăr), but the contribution of the dam doesn't end here because it also protects the county from possible floods and to produce electricity.

Now, learning a little bit more about how many jobs to do has a simple dam, it makes a lot more sense thinking why it's so hidden from people's eyes and why the access is forbidden. Not only that it's a place where time knows no hurry and whom have meet just a few adventurers, the damn was not less easy to be built back in 1973 when the construction has begun, because there were specially arranged railway tracks as well as a secondary stone wall for the aerial and railway transport of the materials needed.

The construction took 7 years and covered a total surface of 65 hectares, now being able to drink daily lots of fresh water right from the source, as well as feeling proud while staring on a huge basin which measures 330 m length, 74 m height and a capacity of sheltering around 15 millions of squared meters of water.

Gura Râului is the 2nd tallest dam from Romania, right after the one from Poiana Uzului which is just 6 m taller, and it represents the first dam with buttresses created in the country, from a total of four such constructions.

As peaceful as the location seems, keep in mind that there are a lot of activities tourists can enjoy such as: fishing right into the clear water of the dam, follow the mountain bike tours, enjoy the slope for the winter sports, or simply visit the surroundings since the dam is a good start to many other sightseeing locations hidden deep in the Cindrel Mountains' heart.

Though, as much as we enjoyed the place, the sun was slowly going down announcing us that is time to get back home and get ready for the night between the years, hoping that the one which is coming will be at least more gentle and forgive us for all the bad things we did during the last years.

So we took a deep breath filling our lungs with fresh and clean air, contemplated with the fairy-tale landscape and said goodbye for now, to the sun rays, nature, and 2020...

SEE YOU IN THE NEXT TRIP! 🗾

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