The locals call them “tăuri”, yet few city dwellers know what the word means. The dictionary tells us that a “tău” is in fact “a shallow body of standing water” – or, in everyday speech, “a pond”. You will find the Hoteni Lakes close to the entrance of the village, on the right as you come from Breb: three lakes and a marsh spread over 2.51 ha. Biologists say the lakes are eutrophic, meaning rich in nutrients, while the marsh is oligotrophic, meaning poor in minerals and nutrients. The water is shallow – a little more than twice a man's height, 4 metres to be precise – and beneath the floating layer of peat it shelters a wealth of life forms that are hard to find in other wetlands.
There are carnivorous plants here, for instance – survivors, biologists say, of the ice age – and in the two elongated lakes, whose surface has a distinctive brownish colour given by 150 species of algae, live fish species unique to the area and, hard as it may be to believe, freshwater turtles. In other words, a thousand reasons for the Hoteni Lakes to be declared a reserve of scientific importance.
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