On Europe's Amazon

The Danube Delta is one of the wildest corners of Europe. A labyrinth of jungle-like waterways bedecked with climbing vines that hide kingfishers, pelicans and floating islands leading into a mystical world of deep forests and rivers. Sadly like any paradise, it is under threat.

- Christian Penning

It’s the extraordinary images that burn into my memory, like in the swashbuckling movie ‘Fitzcarraldo’. At the river bend not 30 meters ahead is a paddle steamer, in the middle of the jungle. I expect to see Klaus Kinski on the bridge, an eccentric, crazy look in his eye, on a mission between genius and madness. The foghorn sounds. Long. Drawn out. Deep. “Get out of here!” Stefan, Simon and I increase our cadence, paddling hard for protection in the scrub along the shore. Just in time! It’s already on us, this monster of a ship. It fills the narrow watercourse almost completely. We stare upwards. No Kinski, no Fitzcarraldo. But the passengers stare at us on deck, as if they had just seen Indians in their dugouts. But we’re not in the Amazon. We’re paddling on the Danube. More precisely, on one of the countless small capillaries in the labyrinth of the Danube Delta.

A minute later, the green wilderness has swallowed the sonorous chugging of the diesel engine. The haunting is over. A kingfisher flutters over from its nest up in the clay banks. High above in a rare glimpse of blue through the canopy, pelicans circle in the sweltering summer air in front of building thunderclouds. This is a dreamscape, sprung from the imagination of nature. Enormous. Opulent. Strange sounds penetrate from the reeds twice as tall as a man. Huge willows stand like guardians on the shore. Connected and entangled by a three-dimensional web of creepers, ivy and lianas. The impenetrable heart of the river.