A few days after my visit to Rosia Montana WHS I made my second attempt to visit the main component of this Dacian Fortress WHS, Sarmizegetusa Regia, this time by public transportation. 

My first attempt was in winter 2016-17 when I found the ruins covered by snow, as described in my earlier report below. For that trip I rented a car because it appeared too difficult to get to the site without it. I typically like to utilize public transportation in my attempt to immerse myself more in the local scenes, but this time the main reason I did not rent a car was because my California driver's license expired almost 4.5 years ago and cannot be renewed online. The only way for me to renew it now is to physically appear at a DMV in California where I have not been back over 5.5 years. 

I was staying in Deva and took a bus to Orastie and another bus to Costești. From there I was hoping to hitchhike to Sarmizegetusa Regia, some 20 km away, thinking having all afternoon in Costești was enough to do so.  As described in my report below, there were a dozen Romanian tourists even during the snowy day in winter, so I thought it couldn't be too difficult to hitch a car. But when I got to Costești by bus, to my bewilderment and disappointment, I hardly saw any cars going in the direction of Sarmizegetusa Regia. 

So after some 30 min., instead of waiting around to hitch a car in Costești, I decided to hike up to one of the minor components of this WHS: Blidaru Fortress. This 2 km hike was more strenuous than I expected and took more than one hour to get the fortress. It was of course just a cluster of rocks / ruins over a mound (photo).

A few minutes into the hike I noticed that a dog was following me for unknown reason.  She/He ended up coming all the way up to the ruins. It turned out later that the dog belonged to a cafe in Costești. One month after this trip the same thing happened at the Rocks of Belogradchik Fortress TWHS in Bulgaria: a dog followed me all morning. They were not quite the goat that followed me at the Kotor WHS, but I wouldn't vet them. 

After coming back down to Costești, I attempted once again to hitch a car to Sarmizegetusa Regia. Soon an English-speaking truck driver picked me up, who was transporting some building materials to a hotel being built some 4 km before Sarmizegetusa Regia. I took a chance and got on the truck, and at the hotel being built I had 15 min. to find another car from there to Sarmizegetusa Regia, as the truck driver offered me a ride back to Costești after his job was done.  I couldn't find one.  It's not difficult to walk for 4 km, but there was no way of returning to Costești in time to catch the last bus to Orastie unless I successfully find a ride back from Sarmizegetusa Regia.

So my 2nd attempt failed. This was a story of visiting a minor component of the WHS and failing to visit the major one. I am actually determined to visit Sarmizegetusa Regia one day, but it'll be perhaps after I go back to California the next time.