When you have decided to take the road to Duruitoarea Veche, your journey goes to the northern parts of Moldova.
The roads take you through a landscape where the fields follow the hills and villages shows up between the farmland, orchards, and small patches of forest.
As the kilometers pass, the countryside becomes a large part of the journey.
Gardens surround the houses, old fruit trees grow beside fences, and every now and then you pass someone working in a field or sitting outside their home resting or for just a moment to take a break.
The road be follows the land, rising and falling between hills and valleys.
It is not a journey or a road trip filled with dramatic sights, but with the kind of countryside that keeps your attention as you drive north.
The villages seem's like a natural part of the surrounding landscape, as if the landscape was designed for a settlement, from the very beginning.
Gardens are placed nicely behind the homes, old trees lean over fences, and now and then you pass someone working quietly outside while dogs rest near gates watching the road or guarding the homes.
There is a certain silence and natural balance in how things work, but far from the fast and sometimes noisy life of the big city.
Tractors stand beside barns, wood is stacked for the colder months, and vegetable gardens fill the spaces between houses and fields.
As you move on, the open countryside gradually begins to mix with rocky
hills, valleys, and the landscape that surrounds Duruitoarea Veche.
Many visitors first intention is to come because of the caves and the archaeological discoveries.
But when the journey is over, it is most common the landscape they remember the most.
For thousands of years, nature and human life have existed side by side here, leaving their marks on the same hills, caves, and valleys that visitors continues and proberbly always continue to explore, today and in the future.
The caves remain partly hidden within the cliffs, cool even during the warmer months.
Surrounded by limestone formations and sheltered valleys, it is easy to understand why people once stopped here and chose to stay.
Walking through the area is different from visiting a museum or a historical monument.
The caves, cliffs, and valleys are part of the landscape rather than separated from it.
You follow uneven paths between the rocks, pass beneath the cliffs, and every now and then stop to look across the valley below.
The history is here, but so is the landscape.
One helps explain the other, and together they make Duruitoarea Veche almost impossible to exsplain, why it is unlike anywhere else in Moldova.
As the landscape change, the softer hills give way to limestone cliffs, rocky outcrops, deeper valleys, and caves formed over thousands of years by
water and wind.
At first you notice a cliff rising above the trees and a little later another appears.
The valleys become deeper, the rocks more visible, and before long the countryside looks very different from the roads and fields you passed only a short while ago.
You'll see the landscape little by little as the road continues forward, each turn showing something new until you suddenly find yourself surrounded by a part of Moldova unlike almost anywhere else in the country.
After a while, you start noticing things that were very easy to miss at first.
The stone is not the same everywhere, some cliffs are smooth, others are full of cracks, ledges, and shapes formed over thousands of years.
Small plants grow from the narrow openings and cracks in the rocks, and every now and then a bird passes high above the valley before is disappears behind the cliffs.
The caves draw your attention at first, but after a some time your eyes begin moving elsewhere and observing.
To the rocks, to the valley below, to the way the cliffs rise from they other
parts of the landscape.
Children rarely walk straight through.
They stop, climb onto a rock, look into an opening in the cliff, find another path, then another and before long they are asking who lived here, how long ago it was, and whether more caves remain hidden among the rocks.
Some perhaps are playing and imagine they are a castle, or just using their
children imagination, like many of us did ourself, when we were children
Your journey will not, as you will exsperience, surprisingly take longer, than you have actually planned.
A valley appears between the hills and you stop for a photograph, a few kilometers later a limestone cliff rises above the trees and then another one.
At one point the road runs so close to the rocky formations that it becomes difficult not to slow down and look.
The landscape keeps changing, all the time, fields give way to valleys, valleys to cliffs, and cliffs to caves hidden within the hillsides.
Around every single bend there seems to be something new and intereesting to discover, and the road becomes part of the experience and your discoveries
The landscape around Duruitoarea Veche has attracted people for thousands of years.
Long before the villages, roads, and fields that exist today, people found shelter in the caves and among the limestone formations surrounding the area.
Archaeological excavations uncovered stone tools, ancient remains, and traces of some of the earliest human activity discovered in Moldova.
When you are standing among the cliffs and caves today, it is not difficult to understand why people once chose this place.
Water, shelter, and the natural protection offered by the landscape were all found here, just as they are now.
There is always another cliff to look at, another path to follow, another cave hidden among the rocks.
What was supposed to be a short visit often becomes a much longer one.
And when you finally decide to leave, you still dont think or convienced that you actually got everything you came for, which are quite normal in Moldova.
The cliffs, the valleys, the caves, and the silence of the landscape stays in your thoughts long after the road lead you away from Duruitoarea Veche.
Unii spun că anumite locuri nu renunță niciodată cu adevărat la trecutul lor, iar stând printre
stâncile și peșterile de aici, nu este greu să înțelegi de ce.
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Some say certain places never completely let go of their past and standing
among the cliffs and caves here, it is not difficult to understand why.
