Retezat holds more than eighty glacial lakes in a single granite range, so many that Romanians call it the land of the blue eyes. They fill cirques scooped by Ice Age glaciers across the Southern Carpathians, one hanging above the next like a staircase of water. Bucura, at roughly nine hectares, is the largest glacial lake in Romania; Zănoaga is the deepest at twenty-nine metres. Above them peaks top 2,500 metres, with Peleaga the highest at 2,509. The range takes its name from the flat-topped Retezat Peak — retezat means cut off. More than a third of Romania's plant species grow here, some ninety of them found nowhere else on Earth.
Wake on the shore of Lake Bucura and the first light turns the granite summits copper while the water lies dead still and doubles them. Trails thread from one lake to the next, cirque to cirque, over screes loud with the whistle of marmots. Chamois pick along the ridgelines at dawn, bears and wolves keep to the beech and spruce forests below, and much of the massif lies beyond any phone signal. Semi-wild horses graze the open pastures in summer and wander loose between the lakes. This is still one of Europe's genuine wildernesses. A strict core around the Gemenele reserve has been closed to ordinary visitors since the park was founded, and campfires are allowed at just one meadow, Poiana Pelegii. Come in summer, when the snow has finally left the high tarns and the meadows flush with gentians and dwarf rhododendron. By October the first storms close the ridges again.