Balkan Coast

We left the boat in Tulcea at the beginning of the Delta. One advantage of being on a boat is all the comforts. A bed, a kitchen, a table to eat at etc. and these need not be packed away every morning. Although we had all the comforts of home, it was not our home and I was glad to get back on the bikes and on with our journey.
Tulcea was partly under mud and water but there was a great museum of the Delta with an extensive aquarium and artistic showcases exhibiting, through varying levels of taxidermical expertese, the fauna of the region. In the aquarium displayed the nativesof the danube and other fish from around the world. Our favourite tank was exclusively for sturgeon and beluga which look very similar and I was just thinking that they have very human and expressive faces when Anja said `look, look,this one looks just like your dad`. Take it as a compliment Pop, they are handsome fish.
A trip through the Delta on a tourist boat is reccomended by all but we could only find a trip on a retired Greek island `Dolphin` high speed hydrophoil, spewing pollutants into both the air and water of the nature reserve. We could not bring ourselves to take part in the hypocrasy so we turned south on the road out of town forgoeing the `Delta` experience.

Or so we thought. Once out of town the traffic all but dissapeared and we had a perfect afternoons cycling and our own private wildlife safari. First came the extraordinary jumping fish. Hundreds of them Picture this; (because I always was a fraction to late with the Photo) Man stands on rock in lake, 2 ft fish jumps out of water, slaps man on bare chest, a mighty thwack, falls back in water in synch with a dozen other athletic pals. Repeat. Repeat again. Bizarre.Japanese carp trapped by a barrage and trying to get home. They can only reproduce, we were told, after they have recieved a cartain injection from the fishfarmer.
Next came a bat not often seen in daylight. She was out a bit early and took refuge on a treetrunk by the road. We were alternating between Delta, marsh and low hills with grassland and grazing shepparded flocks. No `ordinary' birds were to be seen, only Pelicans, storks, white herons, egrets, bee-eaters, golden orioles, strange woodpeckers, hoopoes, eagles, little owls and others we coudn't identify. Eventually in the tops of a tree lined avenue I saw a bunch of crows and was reasured to know that ordinary birds were also out and about on this blue clouded but sunny surreal afternoon. The hundreds of crows however took flight along the road, blown like us by the following wind and for a mile or two we tumbled with the crowstorm as honourary members. I had my black shirt on and felt like one of the lads until at a turn inthe road they went crosscountry to their own unknown dark mischief.
We made our camp at the foot of a rainbow on a sweetwater shore under the earthen ramparts of a long forgotten fortress. Behind us in the reeds the frogs music went from croak, through chorus, to howl. An eerie hollow wail not meant for human ears. Small sticks with eyes poked their heads from the lagoon a few feet infront of us. Watersnakes. Phalanxes of frogs scattered before the uneven footsteps of a prehistoric fisherman as he walked from his lonely boat up our narrow beach. 'sardinellas' said I, pointing at our open tin which was this evening our simple dinner. This brought a chuckle, a hard handshake and an earthy conversation in an ancient latin dialect.
In the early light of morning his previously laid nets yielded a half dozen fish. We rode back past the fort with the fishermans cabin at its foot. No test was needed to know that our mans DNA would be close to that of those who once sought protection inside the slowly slumping defences and who had also fished on this ancient but shifting shore.
This really was the end of the Danube, the southern tip of the delta some 2850km from its source in the Black Forrest not far from France. This source to sea trip was in an unuually wet year and we followed floods almost all the way. Interestingly, in a dry year the young German Danube flows into the North sea!! maybe 60kms from Donaueschingen, holes in the limestone riverbed lead 12kms under the mountains to a lower river shortly before it spills into the Bodensee and hence the Rhein and North. In August the riverbed can be dry.

We soon entered another chapter of the journey. The Black sea coast and all it entails. Sand is like golden oil, it can produce mega-dollars if harvested well though one can sink money in a well that soon dries up or one can get greedy and careless and ruin an otherwise decent coastline so that the big money tourists turn eventually away.
Romania seemed to be struggling. Cheap hotels and resorts more than half empty. The indiginous tourists hit hard by the financial crisis. We didn't meet any foriegners. The Bulgarians have gone for the international Euro with huge concrete resorts planted on otherwise deserted shores. Surely the word 'complex' is better left on the architects blueprints and not transfered to the advertising billboards.
Vama Veche was different and we accidentally arrived in this little settlemant on the Romanian side of the border as a free music festival was getting underway on the beach. Everything was low key and wood was more in use than concrete, glass or plastic. Though the Hipster crowd were alternative and cool we found them less friendly than the normal Romanian family carrying menageries of inflatable plastic from Dacia boot to beach.
We found at last our own private beach by heading over the fields. All broken shells and no damn get everywhere sand. We spent a day there resting a bit before crossing the mountains into Turkey and heading for the great Istanbull where we must search for new tyres.
My back wheel is causing nearly all our mechanical problems. 8 broken spokes and no spare ones left. One hard day on a busy and uninteresting road we had 3 punctures,my back tyre gave up the ghost and three spokes broke. It seemed, as I made repairs for the fourth time and put on our emergency folding tyre sitting next to a surly faced prostitute in a rubbish strewn truckstop, that we would never get down this unpleasant stretch.