What is really fascinating about the majestic entrance of the Danube into its gorges is the feeling that the unearthly places surrounding you give. The glorious and almost lunar landscape, the water stretches, the clouds playing with the waves, all work together managing to enchant you.
The Baba Caia rock is situated in the area between Coronini and Moldova Noua and it is suggestively named “The lonely Danube Queen”. The rock, with its seven meters above the water mirror, gives the impression of an unusual turret mysteriously arisen in the middle of the riverbed.
Like in similar local odd name cases, “Baba Caia” name originates in Turkish, meaning “The Rock of the Father”. During the Turkish occupation, this rock had a crucial role: heavy chains were tied to it from Golubac Fortress and Saint Ladislau Fortress, as to prevent all boats and ships to enter or exit the gorges untaxed.
But beyond the roughness of this rock, a whole web of legends have been woven around it and are still narrated today.
One of the “Baba Caia” rock legend says that there was a big eternal fight between an old man, the god Saturn, and an old lady, the great goddess Gaia. He said that the grass should be mowed and she insisted that it must be cut with a pair of scissors. Infuriated, the old man threw her into the Danube. From the bottom of the river, the old lady pointed out of the water two fingers shaped as scissors to show him she maintains her opinion on the matter. Those two fingers turned into the Baba Caia rock.
(https://info-herodot.ro/item/cod-2424-stanca-baba-caia-clisura-dunariimoldova-noua)
Recently, the Moldova Noua town mayor, with EU funds, was able to add to the National Tourist Information and Promotion Centre an area of info boards and panels (after the model of the ones in Bohemian Switzerland National Park in Czech Republic) that can lead you to discover the tourist attractions in the area, Baba Caia rock included.