Hortobagy National Park

Sunday 5 June

Daniel and Amanda returned from Miskolc at about 1pm this afternoon and after a quick lunch we hopped into the car and drove south-west for about an hour and half to Hortobagy National Park.

Hortobagy is the largest continuous natural grassland in Europe.  The national park was created in 1973 and is the country's largest protected area of 82,000 hectares.  It was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1999.

One of its aims is to preserve native Hungarian animals which were in danger of extinction.  The tours that it runs for tourists are aimed at educating people about the traditional animals and the work that is being done to preserve the genetic heritage pool so that sustainable numbers of these animals can be achieved.

The tour is for an hour and a half and takes visitors across the grasslands in a cart drawn by two horses.  Our first stop was to look at some Raczka sheep.  These animals are long haired and are either black  or white.  They are kept indoors most of the year as they don't tolerate the heat or the cold.  They lamb in December and the mothers produce one cup of milk per day with which to feed their young.

Our transport

We passed a number of barns, one of which housed the sheep and others were obviously used for storage and, I assume, housing for the shepherds.  Each of the buildings was topped with a lightning rod as the thatch is obviously very flammable and the region often experiences lightning storms.

Barn roof

Thatched barn

After seeing the sheep, we continued on and the next stop was a cart being pulled by four Hungarian Grey steers.  They are quite impressive animals, especially their horns which grow quite long.  The cattle are directed by voice commands only - we think the whip is used only for punctuation.



Hungarian Grey oxen

 Next on the agenda was a riding demonstration by horsemen in traditional Hungarian dress.  The first exhibition was one of the horsemen had three horses harnessed together in the lead, with two more behind where one might expect a chariot.  He stood with one foot on each of the two rear horses and proceeded to ride at speed in a circle around our carriage.


Horseback riding

 They then demonstrated how the horses had been trained to lie down on command and then to sit back on their haunches - something that is not a natural position for horses to be in.

We then trundled on and came across a small herd of the Hungarian Grey cattle.  Quite a few of the steers had bells on so the herd could be heard from far away.   We carried on and next saw a herd of water buffalo who decided not to be at all photogenic.  The water buffalo which are originally from Asia, were brought to Hungary in the 19th century and are kept for their meat, milk and cheese.

Our next stop was to look at a small number of native Hungarian woolly pigs.  The pigs come in 3 colours - black, white and red.  They seemed a tad aggressive and when I asked our guide about their social skills, she said that there was no way she would get into the field with them.




Woolly pig

From there it was back to our starting point and at approx AU$13 per head, we all thought it was really good value. 

It is our last full day in Mariapocs tomorrow so I think it will be a quiet one.