April 9th visit to Orheiul Vechi and Milestii Mici

An icy cold wind is blowing, as if we are in the mountains, which gives clear views on the rolling landscape and beautiful soils!  (says the agricultural expert  in me). The experts (Robert, Ron and Jaques) have a closer look at the spillway of one of the many dams.

About 40 kms north of Chisinau lies Orheijul vechi, arguably  Moldova's  most fantastic sight

The Monastery, carved into massive limestone rock, in the middle of a huge meander in the river Raut in this wild rocky, remote spot, draws visitors from around the globe.  

The cave monastery was dug by orthodox monks in the 13th century in a cliff overhanging the Raut river.  This region was a place of worship for Geto-Dacian tribes, from before Christ.

<-- The caves are in the steep rock  below map numers 12,17,13,14; view is from nr 9a over looking the valley           

                         This view above was seen from nr 12a on the map, standing on the ridge

            

According to the Orhei website (with beautiful pictures!)  http://orhei.dnt.md/: "The Christians in the process of searching for Messiah could not miss such a divine place near the nowadays Butuceni and Trebujeni villages".
In the 14th century Stefan cel Mare (returing in streetnames and statues al over the country) built a fortress here which however was destroyed by the tartars.

Transnistria (The land at the other side of the river Nistr). We make a small detour as we like to see the river Nistr, the border with the self declared, Russion supported, republic of Transnjistria; there are strong border controls but they let us through as we only want to see the dam, and of course get an impression of what Transnistria looks like, from a distance.  Well, this is what it looks like:

The wine road.

The area around Chisinau is famous for its rich soils and good wines. The Cricova winery is the grand duke under the wineries, with a special red sparkling wine.. It boasts 120 kms of underground labyrinth roads of which 60 are used for wine storage. Tunnels have existed here since the 15thcentury, when limestone was dug out to help buld Chisinau. This explains all the nice white buildings! Cricova wines and champaigns have a high international reputation. Vladimir Putin celebrated his 50st birtday here.

There is such a strong wind that we are almost blown away at the dam site.

We go to the cellars of Milestii Mici, who specialise in white table wines. They entered the guiness book of records in 2006 with the largest wine cellars, containing more than 1,5 million bottles of wine. All together 160 kms of cellar(see the site map below) of which they use only 55!  90 % of Moldovan wines are exported, being much at demand in northern Europe and USA.Wine export yields 130-150 mln dollars annually, accounting for 1/4 of the country's budget! We taste some of the wines in a beautiful underground setting, but the wines are not as impressive as the caves!

Purcari wines (south western area)  are famous, and at the end of the 19th century were supplied to the Royal British Court.

Back in Chisinau we celebrate this very good day with very good food in a very nice pub-like restaurant. Discuss the myths around natural and antropogenical influences on Climate change; Ron has started a very informative, neutral and scientific database for that, which I recommend: http://www.climatedata.info/