From caves and monasteries it is now time for the beaches of the Black Sea. We choose a rare wild beach, most of them now are maintained and have resorts next to them. But first we have to get there on one of the worst maintained streets we have seen in a while as we pass secluded village after secluded village buying fruits and vegetables along the way.
We are the only car on the road for much of the drive and with the seclusion come the birds. While they are relatively common for Romania it is still fun to see them as we drive around making our way to the seashore.
We find the right access road to the beach which has some abandoned houses along the way and one more red-backed shrike, quite a few of them out today.
The road to the natural preserve is a one lane paved road with high drops on both sides so we are scared what would happen if we meet a car from the other side. Luckily soon we find out that there are pullovers so cars can pass, both tailgating you or incoming.
We know we are in the right spot when the paved road becomes sandy, a packed sand at least. And then we pass a sign saying that we reached the wild beach, where is it though?
The sandy road ends in a parking lot and we can see the sea just over the sand dunes but first we look for any interesting birds. Unfortunately only Wagtails are forthcoming so we move to the beach, maybe we can find some seabirds.
To our surprise there are no beachgoers here even though there are many cars. Most people just walk on the shore or have camped further inland. There are also some gulls close by but they are the quite common Black-headed gulls.
There are other gulls flying around but they can be difficult to distinguish between each other so we trust AI to give us the right answer. Maybe it is the right answer maybe not who knows. What is easy to distinguish are the Barrel Jelly they are quite impressive looking and we remember them from our childhood as being able to sting so we stay a safe distance from them.
And then we notice that the entire seashore is full of jellyfish, maybe that is why no one is even thinking of entering the water. From a natural perspective it is interesting enough though and we also enjoy the many shells on the shore.
Further away is a colony of terns that soon takes flight as another group approaches and scares them. Inland we see starlings flocking around, it is quite fun to see that many birds flying together and quite synchronous.
Returning back to the AirBnB we stop at a typical fish restaurant. It has a surprisingly huge fish list and everything that we ordered was available which is usually a surprise. Even better, the food is exceptional and full we return back to the AirBnB, it is time to go to sleep, tomorrow we change AirBnB as we will enter the Danube Delta proper.
