Discover Romania. The Mud Volcanoes

Declared a natural monument in 1924, Paclele Mari – Paclele Mici near Berca village in Buzau county is the only place in Europe where you can see muddy volcanoes. You can find similar phenomenon in Siberia and Australia, the biggest concentration of mud volcanoes (400) being found in Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea area. In 2009, in the photos that NASA took with the 2001 Mars Odyssey space robot, the specialists identified on Mars similar formations as the ones of the mud volcanoes.

The Mud Volcanoes seem to be a trip destination that every school makes. When we were younger, at leat one of our friends had been on a school trip there but we didn’t get to go there until much later. All we knew about the place were the ‘urban legends’ we’ve been hearing all these years that those volcanoes are so big that X fell into one and they had to drag them out. Or that they left the place all dirty and muddy and you couldn’t walk around without stepping into one. Of course that we couldn’t wait to get there and see these natural wonders ourselves, but our trip there was always delayed and didn’t get to go there until 4 years ago. We were very excited at first, that is until we did some research on how to get there and read other tourists reviews about the place. They were saying that you shouldn’t get your hopes up because you wouldn’t see real volcanoes. And this is exactly what we’re gonna say to you too. Even if they are called “The Mud Volcanoes”, don’t expect some miniature mountains, most of them are just some bumps in the soil.

You can find most of the mud volcanoes in Paclele Mici area, on a 10 hectares surface, the volcanoes having different shapes, but pretty small. You can find the already shaped volcanoes with cold “lava” on top, a mix of soil and boilng water, with bubbles produced by the gases. The mud is continuously pushed by the gases toward the top, then it goes downhill in little creeks that are slowly drying, thus always changing the shape of the volcano.

Few kilometers North-East is the Paclele Mari plateau, on a 20 hectares surface, having its name from the 3 biggest volcanoes situated in the center of the plateau. To reach Paclele Mari you have two options. You rather walk about two km from one plateau to the other or you park your car nearby and climb up a steep hill. We’ve been to the Mud Volcanoes twice and we’ve tried both ways and we can tell you that climbing up the hill on a scorching summer day wasn’t the best idea we’ve ever had. What is the most interesting thing about the volcanoes is the scenery. Because there’s no vegetation around and you’re in a arid area, like in the desert, it makes you feel like you’re on a different planet, we’ve always compared it to Mars. As a background noise you have the noises that the volcanoes make and everybody is paying close attention to the moment when one of them erupts. We’d like to go there again because each time we’ve been there there were fewer and fewer volcanoes…let’s hope they don’t disappear for good.