Wild Woman of Nevada: Romania Series: Murighiol and the Danube Delta

We stayed in Murighiol for two nights while we were at the Delta. We did not necessarily like our accommodations there. The rooms were fine and the male owner seemed friendly, but they totally overcharged us and the woman owner was somewhat annoying. With the woman, I couldn't understand what she said, but her body language alone put me off. The volunteers who could, for the most part, understand her were all put off too. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but there was something unsettling about her. As far as being overcharged, I guess it's something you should expect when traveling as an U.S. citizen in another country. However, the volunteers get really agitated about it - not that I blame them. They have lived in the country long enough to know how the pricing works and while they are living there they make fairly low Romanian incomes, so they do not have a lot of spending money and in the end, nobody likes getting ripped off all the time.

Erin and myself in front of the pensiune

The first night at the pensiune we drove down to the Sfantu Gheorghe arm of the Danube Delta where we hung out and enjoyed the sunset. It was an amazing sunset with deep purples, light blues and blazing oranges. I love sunsets and getting to experience them in different parts of the world is majestic. It seems that each place has a signature sunset, which is distinct from any other. Sunsets are created by the refraction of light in the atmosphere. The bright reds, oranges and pinks you see at sunset are formed by the scattering of light which is caused from the dust particles, soot particles, solid aerosols, and liquid aerosols floating around in the Earth's atmosphere. Having more of less of these particles in the atmosphere will change the intensity and colors of the sunset.

Sunset on the Danube Delta

After the hanging out on the River we headed back to the Pensiune where we had a wonderful dinner with scrumptious potatoes and fish.

The next morning we had a small breakfast and then headed out on a boat into the Danube Delta. The Danube is beautiful, it contains 2,200 square miles of rivers, canals, marshes, tree-fringed lakes and reed islands. It provides nesting grounds for 90% of Europe's breeding white pelicans and is a birders paradise. We were there during the off season for birds, but there were still plenty of birds to see. We saw hundreds of white pelicans, it must be an awesome sight to see the numbers during breeding season, a sea of white. The Danube is also home to the dalmatian pelican - a species that is increasing in numbers after years of decline, currently 15o pairs have been documented. In addition to the pelicans, we saw pygmy cormorants - so cute, grey herons, egrets, swallows, turns, and blue fishers, which are similar to our king fishers, only smaller and brighter blue. We saw a few other birds who I didn't know and didn't see well enough to attempt an identification. Along the canal banks are huge willows and cotton woods. I'm not sure why, but it reminded me a little of South Florida, I guess just being back in a wetland setting. I half expected to see an alligator around every corner... of course though, we never did.