The Danube Delta is one of Europe’s largest wildlife refuges, a vast, confusing watery expanse of at least four navigable river channels, a number of lakes, a few small towns and villages. In the Black Sea, hovering near the entrance to the Danube, were scores of freighters no longer able to dock in Ukraine. As a result, river traffic on the channel in front of our small hotel in the village of Crişan was a steady parade of massive freighters. At the mouth of the Danube is the reviving ghost town of Sulina, once a bustling cosmopolitan city with daily newspapers in a dozen languages. (Sulina is recorded as a river port as early as 950 CE.) We wandered through a windy cemetery in Sulina divided into Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic sections, resting place of people from all over the world; and walked the beautiful fine sandy beach on the Black Sea. In Sulina we also were taken in by a local (cousin of our guide!) who fed us a typical fish stew, which we shared with half a dozen women of a certain age vacationing from Bucharest. As vast as the delta is, we saw these women several times. Each morning and late afternoon we went birding and saw amazing birds, few of whom would stand still for a photo.
