Our country shelters a great deal of virtually unknown tourist attractions, among which we can count the Dragons Garden in Salaj county.
The Dragons Garden is a natural reservation located 10 km away from the city Jibou, where a spectacular natural phenomenon around the Mountain Meses.
The Garden is constituted of an irregular ensemble of bizarrely shaped rocks – towers, pins, mushrooms, etc. – arranged at the bottom of the Dumbrava hill. Some of them have hights reaching to 10-12 metres and were formed through multiple natural processes, as well as the morphological composition of the hill.
The wind, the temperature changes, the water and the gravity – downfalls and landslides – have led to the formation of these cliffs along time, and this is an ongoing process. The locals have named the cliffs in a very inventive way: the Dragon and the Dragoness, the Old Man, the Monks, the Captain, the Soldiers, the Finger, the Sphinx, the Soldiers.
Naturally, such a place has fueled many a legend about its formation. The locals might also mention the second name of the reservation, “Fata Catanii”. Legend has it that a girl fell in love with a soldier and was turned to stone by the curse of the stepmother. Unfortunately, the stone embodying the girl exists no more, having crashed as a result of the floods in 1973. The stone used to look like a girl carrying a basket over her shoulder and appeared to have a soldier beside her.
Something that`s very likely to surprise you in a positive way is the large number of giant rocks you will see at the edge of the reservation. The paths marked throughout the reservation will take at least 3 hours to climb and descend before you can say you’ve seen them all. The stones that have named the park, the Dragon and Dragoness, are the most spectacular, and from the terrace above them, you can glimpse the entire ensemble of the stones.