This year we took a short holiday in the Danube's Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
For those of you who consider experiencing it, here are some logistics details: we flew in the Bucharest International Airport a few days before and rented a car (it wasn't easy, the pandemic has disrupted the rental car business and most companies had no car available during the peak holiday season).
We drove from Bucharest to Tulcea, a leisurely four hour drive, part on the Bucharest-Constanta highway and part scenic drive winding around the hills of the old Macin mountains. We crossed the Danube at the Giurgieni-Vadu Oii bridge
Once in Tulcea, we left the car in a guarded car park on the water front and embarked on a 12-seat speedboat as the waterway is the only means to reach Sulina.
We arrived in Sulina and checked in at the "Delta Miraj" hotel. Sulina in particular and more generally the Danube delta are protected sites and thus not developed by the tourist industry. Like almost all places where you can book a room, this is a small hotel owned by a local family
We took quarter and headed for dinner. The local infrastructure is rustic and minimalist, do not expect fancy restaurants. The local staple is fish and you get the best local food at the inhabitants' houses, some of which offer catering.
"Anca and Eugen", a local family, offer a covered patio which can sit about 30. Eugen is a fisherman, his wife Anca cooks for the guests, and the cooking is spectacular. I am not a big fan of fish in general and sweet-water fish are even less appealing to me. But here, I've always eaten the best fish dishes ever. The prices are also very good.
This is a catfish "plachie" with polenta. The picture was taken with my wife's old phone and doesn't do justice but believe me, the taste is divine.
The deep-fried sweet dumplings for desert are delicious and made my girls happy (yes, I know, my wife should get a new phone with a better camera).
After dinner, we took a taxi to the city center and then walked along the Danube waterfront. Sulina has a long and glorious history.
The key historical events which changed the fate of the city happened in the first half of the 19th century more than 600 km upstream, at the Donau gorges ("Cazanele Dunarii"), which we visited in 2018. Before then, the waters of the Donau were too fast for the existing shipping technology, and heavily laden ships were not able to progress against the river. As a consequence, exporting cereals from the Wallachian plains to Central Europe was only possible by crossing the Carpathian mountains on narrow, dangerous roads and could not be done economically in large quantities.
In the first half of the 19th century, the ingenuity of the engineers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire tamed the flow of the Donau at the gorges. This together with advances in ship-building technology, allowed barges loaded with cereals to travel up the Donau and transformed the economy of Central and Eastern Europe. After the Crimean War in 1856, the "European Commission of the Danube" was established to regulate commerce and traffic on the Danube from the source to the three mouths, Chilia (North), Sulina (center), St. George (South). Initially designed to last two years, it actually lasted 82 (eighty two) years !
In the background, the old building of the European Commission of the Danube, dating from the early 20th century.
At its peak, Sulina was a bustling port at the Black Sea and home to about 18000 people. But after the opening of the Danube - Black Sea Canal in the late 20th century, merchant traffic concentrated 200 km to the South in the port of Constanta and the economic importance of Sulina declined.
Today Sulina is a quiet town of less than 3000 focused mostly on tourism and hospitality, although a greatly diminshed merchant traffic remains. We ended the evening with a nice stroll along the waterfront and then took a taxi back to the hotel as Delta Miraj is located at the western-most end of the town and, as a consequence of the rapid decline of the city, at dusk the streets become the empire of tens of stray dogs and cats (which my girls found very cute, but still, one better exercise caution).
A fast-boat day trip through the Delta's channels
For the next day, we booked a fast-boat trip through the channels of the Northern part, between the Sulina and Chilia arms
View of the river from the hotel room in the morning
Enjoying a coffee before the girls wake up
After breakfast, we boarded a "hors-bord" (a small boat seating 8 with a 50 HP engine) and headed North to explore the water maze of the delta between Sulina and Chilia
Lots of wonderful water lilies, both yellow and white.
You can't imagine how relaxing experiencing these pristine places can be.
Progression is at a slow pace to minimize disruption. Of course plucking water lilies is forbidden.
The view of the waterway left behind. It's about half past ten in the morning - from the position of the sun you can tell we are heading N-W.
Beautiful reed-bordered natural canals with clean water and water lilies
The morning calm, still water, majestic reeds and water lilies to anyone's heart content.
Although we are still far from the lakes, the occasional cormoran, looking for fish
Zooming in for a better look
Very old trees
We are finally at the end of the "Barbosu" canal and out of the reed tunnel. We reached the shores of the Letea sand dune, where we are greeted by small herds of wild horses.
A short video as we slowly boat by
There are also roaming cows. These cows belong to a local race, the "steppe cow" which are semi-wild and not particularly well suited for milk nor for meat. They are marked and nominally belong to someone but in practice they are left to roam free for biological diversity.
The semi-wild cows mingle peacefully with the wild horses
We also spotted a beautiful great egret
Not particularly bothered by the presence of a few cows
A "family picture" filmed as a very short video
We stopped at a landing spot in the Letea village and bought some local pastries. From there, round trips are organized by horse-drawn cart to the nearby Letea forest, a famous thousand-year old, beautifully preserved forest which is famous with all Romanians as a classical literary text dedicated to it is a mandatory reading for eight-graders ...
However, our program was too tight to accomodate a detour by the forest, so after enjoying the pastries we boarded the boat again and headed toward the Merhei lake at a fast clip (watch the video to get a feeling of the fun of riding in a fast boat)
The surface of this vast shallow lake is dotted with several flocks of pelicans, feasting on fish
Of course the local fishermen are not particularly thrilled by the competition from cormorans and pelicans. Below a short video for you to get a better feeling of the vastness of this lake
Spot the well-camouflaged blue dragonfly
Out of the Merhei lake and back in the maze of canals
It's almost noon by now and we are exiting the smaller Matita lake toward the Babina lake
Half an hour later, a place where several canals cross which attracts lots of birds of different species
A wider angle
A short video to get a better feeling of this magic place
And its location on the map
The Northern half of the delta is home to a sizeable Russian-speaking minority called "lipoveni". We stopped by and enjoyed their hospitality in a small fishing village called "Mila 23"
After lunch, we headed back , graced by the view of a sollitary pelican
And got again to a water channel crossing, which might have been the same as in the late morning or a different one, as they look really similar.
A quarter past three we entered lake "Trei Iezere"
... where a vast flock of pelicans were feeding, to the dismay of the local fishermen
A few minutes later, we were about to exit Trei Iezere lake toward Bogdaproste lake
The channel linking the two offered the best birdwatching with not only storks and cormorants but no less than three different species of heron watching over us as we passed by: the grey heron, the great blue and the squacco heron.
The "Bogdaproste" ("God have mercy") lake gets its name from being very rich in fish: back in the day, it was said that an unlucky fisherman had only to pass through it on his way back home and God would fill his fishing net with fish. Today with so many hungry (and protected) cormorants and pelicans, that is not the case anymore, according to the locals
Once back on the "Old Danube" channel, we speeded back toward Sulina
We arrived home in the early evening and enjoyed a fresh beer and a friendly chat with the Delta Mirage owners.
If you enjoyed this virtual trip, check out the second part with more stunning views and travel tips