Exploring places that you've heard nothing about before and haven't read anything about them on any other blog, might be an exciting and awesome thing to do when you realize you are the one who brings a little exposure to less known treasures offered by nature. However, this is not always the best thing because you might end up exploring too early a place compared to what people are used seeing in 2021.

No doubt 2021 is going to be the most challenging year for a big part of us because we are far from anticipating what is coming up next following 2020 which literally broke the economy and world in thousands of small pieces.
However, our journeys don't seem any less challenging, or at least not the most recent one me and my family had.
I was actually doing researches on what less know places we could visit in Transylvania zooming in and out the map we have, when an interesting name caught my attention, called: Vulcanii Noroioși din Hașag.
I was pretty surprised because if you search for what mud volcanoes Romania is ready to offer for the tourists, most likely you won't find anything else, other than the ones from Buzau.
On a simple search on google, we haven't really got too much information about those we found on the map, nor some pictures to make an idea of what our expectations should be, so everything became even more challenging when I realized we were kind of playing Hide 'n Seek with a new treasure nature has to offer to us.

We didn't wait too much and jumped in the car ready to hit the road with the GPS turned on and the music turned loud as always.
The GPS was showing the destination being located just 34 km away from where we are living, so this brought an even bigger smile on our faces thinking that we won't end up spending too much time on the road but actually win some more hours which we could use for exploring more places until the night was settling down.

The road was pretty empty with not too many cars driving around so we managed to reach the location earlier than expected and hear the GPS announcing that it's time to pull the car to the right and walk a few more meters until we will reach the so waited mud volcanoes.

However, everything seemed a little bit wrong because we had to stop the car in the middle of nowhere, the new direction pointing to a huge ditch where a stirred river was passing through, being able to see just the crown of the trees which convinced us to look out for a 2nd track to follow because the one shown by the GPS was definitely impossible to be followed.
We ended up driving just 100 meters further where we noticed a tiny bridge going over the Vișa River.
Anyway, there was no way for us to continue with the car because we had quite a few rains lately and there was a lot of mud after that bridge so we pulled the car to the right again, took our cameras, and begun exploring the surroundings with the hope to soon run into something amazing to be shared with the others.
The first thing that caught our attention was the colour of the soil which was incredibly dark, literally black and with a more delicate texture than the others.
We actually noticed this kind of soil in the whole village which made us believe we are on the right way to discover the volcanoes we found on the map.

That's right that The Mud Volcanoes from Hasag are covering a total surface of around 50 hectares and there is just 1 hectare where the volcanoes are more visible, but we accepted this challenge, to literally look for the needle in the haystack because overall we were searching for a place where we could reconnect with nature and not just seek for some new places to explore.

There were lots of hills which made us go up and down countless times but every time we kept the hope that who knows? Maybe we finally hike the last hill and get to see what we were looking for.

Unfortunately, even though 21 years passed since the natural monument was declared a protected area, things are still very unclear for those who wish to explore the surroundings because there are no markers leading to the volcanoes and very few locals who actually know what you are talking about when you ask for some direction advice.

The Mud Volcanoes from Hasag represent a geomorphological and geological phenomenon caused by the salt to be found in the ground's crust, which during the phases created by the tectonic pressure eruption, forms diapir folds which are coming with some marginal ruptures of layers that allow the elimination of gases to the surface.
To be honest, we did find some areas where the soil was covered by salt and a few pounds with mud that gave you the feeling of stepping over a swamp, so there is no doubt that we were close enough to make the discovery and that the place itself has some great potential for the tourists, but as long as you don't manage to get any directions or clues, it's pretty hard to discover what you were looking for, from the first attempt visiting it.
The process I mentioned before it's all about entailing big amounts of salty water which are softening the marls that discharge forming small craters known as volcanic cones.
The thing is that we had all these proofs, but there was still no volcano to be found.
It's true that the volcanoes were inactive at that time when we made the exploration, but I wasn't expecting for them to be completely missing.

- Picture from the internet with one of the volcanoes from Hasag -
Source: skytrip

According to the explorations made in the past, there should be three mud volcanoes from which two of them are measuring 10 m diameter while the 3rd is 50 m wide and 6-8 m tall. Sizes that I doubt won't be visible from the distance.

However, the natural monument was first discovered back in 1853 counting over 100 mud volcanoes that are being of great scientific interest even today due to the pseudo volcanic relief which is changing its shape constantly over time.

I'm pretty sure that the changes of weather affected the natural monument as well while the volcanoes should already be active on the current time, plus the vegetation which if it was bigger, would make the volcanoes be easier noticeable because there is not too much grass around them, but since nature is still barely waking up after the late winter, I can only assume that we either didn't search well enough to find the volcanoes or it was just a premature expedition for 2021.

And I'm saying that because no matter how big the potential of the place is, there are no investments made by the town hall to promote more the treasure is resting in the village, remembering people that never heard of this place or people who heard about this place but are saying they are not existing anymore and that the hills are the volcanoes themselves because the hills were formed just a few years ago, as well as the lake which is in between, and that once in a while bubbles out.

There was also a man we discussed with who said that the volcanoes are around 3 km back from where we were coming and that most of the locals tried to destroy them through agricultural activities because the swamps created by these made lots of people lose their animals without being able to help them, a thing that made those believe that the lands are being cursed.

Unfortunately, we are far from finding the truth but hopefully, in a few years, we can return and see some improvements made with this purpose because there are lots of travel lovers writing on different forums about the existence of these volcanoes but without being able to reach them due to the lack of guidance.

The natural monument can be found on the western side of Sibiu (34 km away from the city), on the territory of Loamneș and at the Southeastern side of Hașag village.
To reach the destination you have to follow the county road DJ106B which makes the connection between Mândra and Soroștin villages and look out for a bridge that crosses the railway.

SEE YOU IN THE NEXT TRIP! 🗾

All rights reserved.

FIND ME ON:
↪ Blog: http://gabrielastravels.wordpress.com/
↪ Fiverr: https://www.fiverr.com/gabrielatv/
↪ Discord: GabrielaTravels#0104
↪ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gabrielaistraveling/
↪ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/gabiivdesign
↪ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/GabrielaTravels/
↪ Twitter: https://twitter.com/GabrielaTravels
↪ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GabrielaTravels