During the last days of the month, we focused on working in both National Parks: Buila-Vânturarița and Cozia. First of all, we had a meeting at the administration office of Cozia National Park with Pavel Prundurel, the manager of the Park. We presented him the idea about boosting ecotourism in the area. He agreed on it and gave us their support, as they first started planning to do the same in the Park a few years ago, we already have a starting point.
Our main idea is to boost tourism but in an eco-friendly way. In order to achieve this goal, we plan to do both online and on field research. We intend to create a database with eco-friendly accommodation, restaurants, local shops, events and folklore celebrations, hiking trails, wildlife watching spots and so on. Once we get all this information, we will share it with the general public by creating a webpage. The initial plan is to do this in Cozia National Park, but we will likely do the same in other parts of Vâlcea county in the near future.
On the last day of June, we had one of the most intense activities we have done during the project until now. Some of the volunteers went with Mihai to Buila-Vânturarița National Park in order to remark one of the hiking trails. Nicolae Tănăsescu, Monica Huidu and Robert-Ionuţ Uţă, members of the staff of the Park, guided and helped us with the task. We started the morning following the red triangle hiking trail until we reached the blue cross trail (Curmătura Builei – Bărbătești) which was our objective. Once we reached the “Curmatura Builei” meadow, we started descending following the blue cross path. We refreshed some of the marks and painted new ones on places where we thought it was necessary to avoid confusion among hikers.
It took a while to finish the trail and reach the end at the bottom of the valley but we really enjoyed a great day of nature, doing something useful and surrounded by nice people.