Danube 3

The real bird watchers in our group tell me that we saw approximately 55 species of birds over the past few days. I have probably seen half of those, but that is ok with me.
This morning we left earlier to go to the north to visit Latea Forest via the village of Latea, perhaps the most remote village in the Danube Delta. In the whole of the Danube there are approximately 15,000 people but there are only a few towns, maybe 3. ptherwise it s dotted with villages! Some of them quite traditional. In the village of Latea there are approximately 400 people. It is right on the northern most edge of the Delta and close to the Border of the Ukraine, so this village has a lot of people of Ukrainian descent people living in it, but our guide tells us that they are still Romanians and they do speak Romanian. But I think the village sign is written in both western script and Ukrainian script.
You will see in the photos that we had a welcoming committee on the shoreline, a small dog with a bad underbite and a very interesting truck that was our transport to the forest.The village was lovely and I would have quite happily stayed there while everyone else went to the forest, but that was not to be. But you will see some pictures of the houses and other things in the village.
The forest is what they term a primordial forest, one of the oldest oak forests in Europe, approximately 700 years old. There is no water visible, only lots of sand and oak and poplar trees. However, the water is not far away in reality. The forest is a groundwater dependent wetlands. it is a very old sand dune system that has built up over the years, much like Stockton Bight. At the highest point it is 12 meters above sea level and there is a picture of this high point, but in many areas it drops to below sea level and in these locations it hits ground water and this is where the oaks and poplars are growing. Along a path on the forest is a well and you can see this in one of the photos. there is a bucket on a pully and you can pull up water from the well.
We met up with our hotel boat along the old Danube and had a swim in the river before lunch. After lunch we went back out in the small boat to visit the many small lakes between the northern and middle channels. One of the Most interesting things we saw was the Floating reed islands which are huge. They are groups of plants which have grown on a platform of built up rhizomes from many seasons of reeds. In most cases they are sitting on the floor of the wetlands, but they are not really connected by anything. because there is also a lot of air trapped in the base, if the water is high enough they will come loose and float and can even move about. The one we stopped at was about 2.5 metres thick, as demonstrated by Florin shoving a very long stick down into it and then pulling it out and watching the water bubble up.

We saw lots of frogs and dragon flies along the way. Then a storm came out of nowhere. We could see it in the distance and did not think it was anywhere near us, but came around the corner of one of the channels and ran right into it. this caused a bit of excitement, but we arrived back into the main channel to find our hotel boat waiting for us. We enjoyed a beautiful sunset and the plan is to get up very early to be on the closest lake for sunrise at 5.30.