You arrive to Cluj Napoca airport. You will have a FREE guided tour in the city, depending on your flight hours. Transfer to the starting point.

You start out in the morning in a beautiful pine forest. After an hour you arrive to a great open area of rolling meadows, pastures dotted with pine trees and birches and scattered hamlets. This is a typical landscape of the Apuseni mountains, these areas have been used for centuries for hay making. The whole area is at an altitude of 1200-1300 meters above sea level and you have a nice view of the Muntele Mare, Great Mountain, the highest peak in the Gilau Mountains: 1826 m, covered in dense pine-forests. We cross a great section of these meadows, across scattered summer-huts, gently rolling hills, until we reach the edge of the Aries valley. Then we enter a strange world of white cliffs, this is Belioara meaning white castle. The cliffs do resemble the white walls of a castle: sheer rock faces, lonely spires rising tot he sky, huge crevasses end silent gorges. There is unique vegetation with lots of endemic species: the area is a botanical reserve. Best time to go is the first half of may when lots of flowers are in bloom, most notably the sweet smelling pink garland flower or rose daphne (Daphne Ceorum). You have a stunning view of the Aries valley: an endless chain of mountains rising up the horizon. We descend to a village where our bus is waiting for us. (Medium hike. Duratin:  7 – 8 hours. Distance: 12 km. Altitude up: 300m. Down: 700m.)

Easily combined with walk No 2, walk No 1