Day 62 - A day in the Delta

My day started at 4.30 this morning when Cornel, my guide for the delta wildlife trip, collected me from my accommodation. By 5am myself and four others were setting off in Cornel's small open boat on the remote St George branch of the Danube. Shortly after, floating silently on the morning-still river, we watched as the sun rose ahead, lighting our ripples as broad indigo ribbons that slid smoothly away in a slow, regular and mesmerising pattern; if I had harboured any doubts about my early start they were dispelled sitting in that boat watching the morning begin as the orange disc of the sun pulled itself up above the horizon and slowly brought warmth and colour to the day.

Cornel clearly knew the waters. We would pick up side channels, still wreathed in morning mist like some Hammer Horror setting, connect to cuts no wider than the boat through the reed beds and break out into the calm flatness of expansive lakes, shallow, bath-warm and wide open to the sky. We saw ibis and sea eagles, terns and grebes and no end and types of egrets, herons and pelicans. For five hours we explored the waters and lakes, past beds of water lilies and banks of reeds and along shaded willow-lined channels.  We made short stops at a small fishing community - getting ready for the morning when the fishing season starts - and a dying village accessible only by water and with the skeletal remains of a sand grading factory and the associated shell of its workers' accommodation, both finished just before the 1989 revolution, never used, and decaying here ever since.

For some reason I expected to see birds in huge flocks, like the films you see of flamingos in Africa, but most seemed solitary in their behaviour. Even many pelicans were alone and away from the larger feeding groups floating together, heads ducking under the water to scoop up fish. Cornel had told us that as the morning heats up, the groups of pelicans will take to the air after feeding, circling together on the rising thermals. It happens every day he said, but he could not say why, and as we headed back we could see the white shapes of the circling birds high above, gracefully riding the thermals and hardly beating a wing.

We also learned a little of past life in the area: of Cornel's youth as a fisherman; his grandfather driving his tractor to town on the winter frozen Danube; of the farming land and tiny communities lost to floods, rising water and a slowly changing landscape; and of readily available fish and drinking water direct from the river. In some ways a lot seems to have changed in the delta and yet, as we motored slowly through its waterscape, it seemed timeless. 

Traditional Danube House in Traditional Colours

We had set out as the only group on the water but as we returned we were going against the flow of other small tourist boats just starting their day. Cornel had said an early start was worth it and the sunrise, the groups of pelicans on the water and these other boats heading out into the late morning heat as we headed back all proved him to be correct. 

Afterwards we agreed to eat together in a restaurant that Cornel knew. I was going to make a quip about it being owned by his brother. I’m glad I didn’t. We dined on catfish soup and fried pike-perch, the latter being particularly delicate white meat. I learned from the German couple that there had been some bad flooding on the Danube in the previous week and afterwards, when I had returned to my accommodation, I looked it up in the news and it is a lot more serious than I had realised: Austria has shut the Danube to shipping and a number of cities I had passed through all those weeks ago including Passau, a favourite of mine, are partially underwater. It seems that despite those (almost forgotten) frustrations with a flooded Loire at the outset of my journey I was lucky with the timing of my trip.