Out where the river gives up, you reserve a seven night birdwatching week in the Danube delta
From $1,520 per person, two sharing a double room, for seven nights between late April and June, or in September. The spread is wide. Water level, wind and the timing of migration decide which of the two weeks below you get, and none of the three is anything the office or the company on the ground can arrange.
Reserve one of these weeksSend the form whenever it suits: it never shuts. Someone here replies inside one working day, and no charge arises at this end.
One week, written out twice
One set of dates, one set of rooms, the same guides and the same $1,520. The variable is the place itself, which answers to nobody here. Both readings appear below because both are real.
At its best
At its best the water is still by half past five and the channels hold the reed upside down for an hour. You are in a flat wooden boat with an outboard cut to idle, moving at walking pace between walls of reed twelve feet high, and the noise is entirely birds. Pelicans work a shallow bay in a line, pushing fish ahead of them. Glossy ibis, purple heron, whiskered tern over the lily pads, and a bittern that you hear for three days before you see it. Afternoons are warm and dry enough to sit outside. The village has sand streets and no through road, so nothing arrives after dark. Mosquitoes in May are present rather than unbearable. Seven nights, two boat outings a day, and a guide who has fished this water since childhood.
At its worst
At its worst the wind gets up on Monday and does not sit down again. Open water goes choppy, the birds move off it into cover, and the shallow bays that make this week worth the flight are unworkable in a low boat. High water after rain upstream floods the reed and scatters everything across four hundred square miles instead of concentrating it. Or the water is low, weed blocks two of the channels, and the route shortens to the same loop three days running. In June the mosquitoes are not a joke. What still stands: the boat goes out twice a day regardless, the guide keeps looking, the food is the same, the bed is the same, the figure is $1,520. You may go home with six species and a sunburn.
The Danube arrives at the Black Sea and stops behaving like a river. It splits into three main arms and then into several hundred smaller ones, and between them lies about sixteen hundred square miles of reed bed, floating root island, willow forest and shallow lake. Most of it is under a few feet of water and the rest is sand. Nothing here stands more than a few feet above the sea, so the whole map redraws itself with the water level: a channel open in April can be a reed bank in August. Villages sit on the old sand ridges, reached by water and nothing else. It is the largest continuous reed bed on earth and it is protected, which is why access runs through licensed local boats and permits.
Days measured in channels and hides
Narrow gap between two walls of tall reed, still water below, morning mist
You are on the water twice a day, out before six and again from four, two to three hours each time, in a flat wooden boat that takes six. Middle of the day is for the village, the sand, a long lunch and sleep, because between eleven and four the light is hard and the birds are down. Two mornings are spent at fixed hides on a lake edge, sitting still for two hours. One day runs longer, out to a forest of oak and liana on an old dune ridge, walking two miles in soft sand. Nothing is strenuous. Bring a hat, binoculars and something to sit on, because a wooden bench and seven hours a day is what this week is physically made of.
Figure, nights and what sits outside
From $1,520 per person, two sharing a double room, holds seven nights in a guesthouse in a delta village, all meals, twelve boat outings with a local guide and boatman, hide access and the protected area permit. Outside the figure: getting to Romania, which is your own booking, since this office arranges no air and no sea travel and holds a contract with no carrier; the road and water transfer from the port town, which the operating company runs and quotes separately; drinks; and travel insurance, which this office neither sells nor advises on. Your invoice comes from the firm that runs the week, under its own name, and this end is paid by that firm afterwards afterwards. No payment and no card details come here.
Nights
7
From
$1,520 per person, two sharing
When it runs
late April to June, then September
Spread between the two versions
Wide
What the figure holds
Rooms for the nights stated, the guided days set out on this page, admissions belonging to those days, and whatever the running company charges for its own part.
What it leaves out
Reaching the country and leaving it again, any meal not listed above, anything personal, and anything agreed later.
Who invoices you
The company that runs the week, in its own name.
Asked before anybody commits
Can you tell me which birds I will see?
No, and a page that did would be lying to you. Species depend on the water level, the wind and the exact week of migration, none of which is known in advance and none of which anyone sells. The office keeps no species list from previous weeks and will not build one, because a list from last May would read as a promise about next May.
Is this a boat week or a walking week?
Mostly boat. You will walk perhaps six miles across the whole seven nights, in sand and on flat paths, so fitness is not the limit here. Patience is. If sitting in a small open boat for three hours before breakfast sounds like an ordeal rather than the point, this is the wrong week and the office would rather say so now.
Do you arrange the flights and the transfer in?
Neither. Reaching the country is yours to arrange, since nothing that flies or floats is handled at this end. The road and water transfer inside the country is run and charged by the operating company, not by this office, and it confirms the meeting point in writing once your dates are held.
Finish the sentence and a week gets reserved
Whatever the hour, what you send lands here and is read by a person, who replies inside one working day. Sending it binds you to nothing, and no sum is ever taken at this end.
