Back to nature in the Danube Delta
Trip Start
Apr 01, 2011
1
47
73
Trip End
Jan 26, 2012
Crişan, Romania
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
After finally getting on the correct train in Bucharest and taking it to the edge of the Danube Delta, we hopped on to a ferry and took a two and a half hour ride down the center channel of the delta to a village named Crisan. Crisan is located on one of those bits of sandy land in the delta, approximately 30 km from the Black Sea, has a population of probably a few hundred people and has one, single lane gravel road running parallel to the water. We set out on the road from the ferry dock toward the guesthouse we were staying at and, after a short walk with a pit stop at the corner store for a couple of cold beers we arrived at our new home for the week. Pension Ovidiu was more like a small resort than a guesthouse. With a swimming pool, bar and restaurant, large yard, lounge chairs and tables with big umbrellas to sit under plus the books we brought with us and opportunities for boat excursions into the delta, we had everything we needed for a week of relaxing.
Much of the week was spent on a lounge chair in the shade, keeping occupied with books and various different podcasts that we had downloaded to our MP3 player. The restaurant at the guesthouse was great and they served mostly traditional Romanian food with fish of course being the most popular. Each evening, we left the decision of what we would eat up to Florin, the waiter/bartender/translator and he never let us down. Each evening I had a wonderful different fish prepared in a unique way and Robin had a different vegetarian dish. For a few days during the middle of our stay, there were not many other people at the guesthouse so we joined Florin and some of the other staff for dinner which was great, it felt like we were a part of the family and got to learn a lot more about life in Romania. We learned that because people in the delta eat so much fish, they need to get creative with how they prepare it or else it will get very boring. My favorite fish was one that I will probably never remember the name of but it was pan fried and served whole with garlic sauce on the side and my second favorite was a pike that had the skin peeled off in one piece and the meat was mixed with seasonings and formed into a coarse sausage like meat that was then stuffed back into the fish skin and cooked.
We wanted to do an excursion into the delta and found out that the price for excursions was per hour for the boat, not per person. With only two of us, it was a little more expensive than we had expected. We asked Florin if he knew of any other guests that wanted to take an excursion and if we could join them and split the cost among more than just the two of us. He checked with his boss and there were no other people going at that time but they were nice enough to offer to take us out on a three hour excursion if we just paid for the gas the boat used! We went out in their smaller fishing boat so it only used about $12 in gas for the three hour excursion and it was awesome! The area of the delta that our guide Nick took us through is a maze of little channels and marshes that link together a few larger lakes. We saw a ton of birds including Cormorants, Pelicans, Ducks, Swans, Egrets, Gulls, Herons, Storks and a number of other birds that I don’t even remember the name of. There were also a lot of scenic plants and trees growing along the banks and in the shallow water. Fish were jumping everywhere and frogs were swimming along the banks and resting on the many lily pads. I took about 150 pictures in the three hours we were out and when we got back and I looked at the pictures I had taken, I realized that there were WAY more bad pictures than good ones. Maybe it was finally time to read the manual for our camera and figure out if there is a “take better pictures” setting that I could turn on. After reading the manual, I was interested in learning more about taking pictures so I downloaded a few articles from the Internet about taking better pictures and spent that evening and most of the next day reading them and fiddling with our camera. I went out after reading the articles and took a few practice pictures to see if I had learned anything. When I got back from taking the practice pictures, I showed Florin the photos I had taken during our delta excursion and also the practice pictures I had taken earlier that evening. While we were looking at the pictures, his boss Ovidiu came over to join us and once I had gone through all of the pictures, the two of them had a quick conversation in Romanian. After the conversation, Florin asked me if I was interested in taking another excursion in the delta in exchange for putting together an album of some pictures I had taken, along with a short description of what it was like staying there and posting it for them on the Internet. They wanted to be able to have something to show people who were thinking of visiting them but didn’t know what there was to see in the Danube Delta. Was I INTERESTED? Heck yeah! I was amazed and flattered that they even thought my pictures were good enough to show potential visitors and I could hardly wait to get back out into the delta to try out the photo tips I had read. We went out again the next morning on the boat and I tried to keep in mind the things I had read about taking photos: Keep the sun behind or beside you, use the rule of thirds when you are composing a shot, use light/dark contrast or opposing colors to highlight the focal point of the picture, get low and zoom in and all that other stuff. Most of it was hard to do from a moving boat but at least I was thinking about it while I was snapping away. We visited different parts of the delta on this trip and we got really close to a flock of Pelicans. Close enough that they almost flew over top of us when they took off and while I was looking up to take pictures, I was not thinking about composition or light contrast, I was thinking about the massive amount of fish a Pelican eats each day and wondering how much they must poop… Luckily we did not find out the answer to that question. After the tour was finished, I sorted through the almost 500 pictures I had of Crisan and the Danube Delta to pick out the ones I thought were the best, grabbed a Romanian folk music track and put together my photo album. I think the album turned out well and Ovidiu and Florin seemed to like it so that was encouraging. I don’t know if travel photographer is a realistic career option for me at this time (ha ha ha) but it was fun to pretend for a day!
