Last night we experienced the nice hospitality of the Romanian people. They baked a delicious bream to us, we ate it all quickly.
Yesterday we woke up at Gostinu, on a popular sandy bank of the Danube among fishermen. The weather was cloudy, and it rained a little.
Yesterday we woke up at Gostinu, on a popular sandy bank of the Danube among fishermen. The weather was cloudy, and it rained a little.
Departing from the camping we saw a TV tower in the distance very soon, after circumventing the island. We approached Tutrakan, a Bulgarian town with a population of 12,000, which belonged to Romania as Turtucaia for more than twenty years ago, at the beginning of the last century.
The city that has Roman origins as well was built on the hillside next to the Danube, and it had very nice in red-tiled houses. Then came the socialism and someone decided to build block-houses on the hill. For the settled in working class, to let the live somewhere. Then the socialism collapsed, the inhabitants of the houses that are getting worse condition has no money to complete the renovation. They all are insulating, painting, when they have the opportunity to do it. The result was not very nice.
I do not know whether that actually happened, but this came into my mind, when we paddled in front of the city.
Across Tutrakan Olteniţa (Olténica) is located. As Giurgiu this town is also built away from the coast. Only the harbor, and a few industrial facilities, loading ramps are located here. At Olteniţa we met a pelican again. He peacefully swam in the Danube, so I could take some pictures of him. Later, we addled next to a sand bank, which was crowded with pelicans. We were getting close to the Delta.
The coast there was inaccessible, so we sent Sztoji ahead to look for a camp site around Bogata. The channel estuary has overgrown by bushes, we barely found the tent that was already standing. It turned out that a very nice lady lives next door, who a little later came to us with three freshly baked bream and a fresh green garlic. Meanwhile her friend arrived, and an other guy also appeared with who we talked a bit. When we told them where we came from, they asked us to help them to find a man called Csaba Szilagyi at Odorheiu Secuiesc. Allegedly he has some sort of ranch and farm machineries and he used to come down with them and with their friends to Oltenia to fish. They liked him, but they do not know anything about him for a long time and they would like to know, how he is doing. Followers from Odorheiu Secuiesc, is the name familiar to anyone?
When we got the fried fish, we have already started to make the dinner on the Bake'n'Roll. Seeing this, Ms. Elena turned and appeared with three more fish to cook it on the wire rack. We did so, and our sekler cake oven demonstrated its versatility again.
Of course, we wanted to give this kindness back of our neighbors, so Sztoji made the sekler cake dough, and baked eight cakes with Gáspár. It was enough to Ms Elena, to the angler friends and to us. We also took some with us to the kayak.
In the evening some more guests arrived to Elena. They became so excited that they wanted to be sure to watch the morning when we get on the water. They came to the shore with us, and took a lot of group photos, but unfortunately only with their cameras. We were filming with our camera next to the tent. We will see, how it worked.
After the departure we reached Silistra very soon, the last Bulgarian town. Immediately afterwards the Danube turns to the north, and it is flowing on Romanian territory for a while. Silistra on the Danube was much more consistent than Tutrakan, and we explored a beautiful park on the shore.
Between Silistra and Calarasi two ferries are working, but the Romanian city is farther away from the main branch here as well. But a side branch is here and it is that much a Danube city, that its football team is called Fotbal Club Dunarea .
We paddled straight on, and not much later, my phone’s Here map scared me very much. When I it out took for mapping turns, I did not see the turnoff before Ialomita Island. It totally confused me, I almost wanted to turn back towards Calarasi, but we were able to take a look on Gaspar’s phone, and see the real and known place where we were. Meanwhile, it was also found that when I zoom to the scene very much, it displays the water, but much closer than the other branches.
Because of the length of section, and the accessibility by car, we decided that we are moving on the Borcea branch. At the junction a floating crane was working, tossing giant rocks into the riverbed. I tried to search on the Internet to see what could be the intention, perhaps they want to close this branch from the top, but so far I have not found anything.
After the crane the water fairly swirled. The kayak slipped over it, although it was a little scary. I thought it was over when we faced another, and even larger vortices appeared. Detour is not possible, we passed the ship through them. It was tossing us back and forth a bit, but it passed here again. These vortices were no longer little, but very scary.
We were paddling on a winding branch, into which joins nine kilometers below the Calarasi channel. It seemed to be a popular place, we saw more groups of campers on the beach. And of course, anglers, fishermen, from whom latter today we had to eschew more, because they were moving down on the river with the stretched mesh.
Since yesterday we paddled about ten more miles, we had to push the goal for today. So instead ending up at Feteşti we stopped at Borcea, shortly after the Sun Highway’s (Autostrada Soarelui) Feteşti bridge. It is connecting Bucharest to the Black Sea. The moon is getting bigger, so the light is stronger as well. In the distance the lights of the wind farms could be seen.
New routs on the Endomond:
34. nap: http://app.endomondo.com/workouts/532524958/188839
35. nap: http://app.endomondo.com/workouts/532503003/188839
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