This kayak day happened on the 5th of July, 2024. After only one night, we left Tutrakan to kayask to Silistra on the final stretch of the Bulgarian Danube shared with Romania. After this, the Danube will flow only through Romania, followed by a quick touch on Moldova and Ukraine before emptying in the Black Sea.

Leaving Tutrakan for Silistra

Our alarm went off at 5:00. I had the greatest trouble getting up as my body craved more sleep to process the previous day’s paddle from Ruse to Tutrakan. We’ve done two paddle days in a row before from Apatin to Erdut and Erdut to Vukovar, and from Smederevo to Ram and Ram to Golubac. But those days were much shorter in distance, although the day to Golubac still counts as The Worst Day in my book.

Anyway, we began getting ready for the day. Most things were already packed, so all we had to do is get dressed, brush teeth, apply sunscreen, and deal with all the stuff outside. We’d left Zucchini inflated overnight, though that’s not how she looked when we walked onto the terrace of our accommodation in Tutrakan. She looked very deflated, of which we unfortunately don’t have a picture. My theory is that the nighttime temperature still drops under 20°C, so her half-deflated state before sunset at 30°C still means she looks rather full. Basically, the air has shrunk. Or one of us didn’t close two valves well. I don’t think that’s the simpler answer.

The sun had already risen. It still gets a bit earlier as we travel eastwards. With a full symphony of mosquitoes, we inflated Zucchini to her normal summer values, which are always a bit underinflated because of the heat. Today it will be at least 34°C. That’s not the hottest we’ve experienced, but it’s a far cry from 39°C. Most importantly, it’s hotter than yesterday. And we’re not looking forward to that as the water levels drop day after day and the current slows down. I think the water has already fallen by one meter since our arrival in Ruse.

We portaged Zucchini with all our stuff on our backs the 200 meters down to the river. We made sure to immediately put her in the water instead of on the slipway. Tutrakan’s landing spot is probably the worst we’ve seen in terms of broken glass. A bit of a shame, really, as the town was otherwise quite nice.

Everything was a little faster because we didn’t have to start from zero. We attached the luggage and began our paddling day away from Tutrakan TV Tower to Silistra at 6:22, which is 14 minutes earlier than yesterday, but still not as early as hoped (before sunrise). That should become easier now the days get shorter again.

A Shortcut Around Kosuy Island at Pozharevo

I intended to take a good look at the river mouth of the Argeș across in Romania, but with the low-hanging sun, all I could do is identify the shapes of the port of Oltenița. It was difficult enough to see which ships and barges were in motion and which were anchored. Lately, we’ve been going by if their radar’s antenna is rotating or not. The coast was clear.

However early we think we rise to be out on the river, there’s always at least a dozen fishermen out and about earlier than us. Some might even get home from a night fishing session. One of them and his friend slowly motored upstream as we paddled down, giving a wave in our direction. I responded with a dobre utro.

Ahead of us was the split around the Bulgarian island of Kosuy. There were some ships in front of the branch, which were anchored gravel ships and a sediment dredger. Not active, yet. As discussed the evening before, we’d go right here, while the shipping lane takes a left. We entered the side quest before 7:00.

The water was perfectly glassy and there were even some clouds passing in front of the morning sun, scattering god rays all over the horizon. The clouds also kept us cool for a long time, alongside the bit of headwind. This side arm was a work of art. There’s another smaller island in the branch, where someone had made their summer fishing camp at the tail of the island. It looked very nice and natural, although I don’t think I could survive as someone who’s always takes the gold of the mosquito bite olympics.

One hour in, we were next to the port of Pozharevo. So it’s possible to go into this branch with semi-big ships, because a sand and gravel supplier is located here. There was another vessel, which might be the smallest dredger ship I’ve ever seen as these ships are usually huge.

The end of the island and this side branch was near. There were a few other small river islands here that I couldn’t find the name of. All of them are protected in the Pozharevo Island protected area.

Navigational Error + Sandwich

After this side branch, we were back on the main Danube. There was a small ship in front of us, which we though was anchored and very stationary. The Danube bends a bit to the left here, so we had the idea to shortcut through the shipping lane a bit and then cut back when the Danube bends right again. We basically wanted to just travel in a line as straight as possible down the river gap we saw in the distance.

We began this maneuver at 7:46 near the village of Dunavec, population 8. But we soon realized that the ship in front of us was actually slowly traveling upstream. Did we just… cut them off? It was too late now and we had to stick to our course. It felt a bit like the ship was waiting for us to safely pass in front of them, as once the coast was clear, their engine started roaring more loudly.

We definitely did not have priority, as the cargo ships are professionals and we’re just a simple pleasure craft.

Jonas gave them a wave and a nod to this small Slovak-flagged gas ship for waiting, if that’s what that was. We shall never know.

But that wasn’t the only poor navigational decision we’d made, as a multi-ship (?) ship chased after us downstream at great speed. We hadn’t seen it at first or thought it was going upstream. Another error. We were now dead in the middle of the Danube, or perhaps even closer to the Romanian shore.

I had a look on my nautical map to see where the shipping lane goes exactly. We made the decision to paddle hard to the Bulgarian shore to correct our error. By the time this ship, that was actually three ships attached to each other plus a barge overtook us. It actually took them longer to get parallel to us than expected, but I was very dissatisfied with our choices.

It was actually quite nice to paddle after them for as long as we could keep up. Even in the distance, it was a bit of a motivation for me to keep paddling.

At 8:24, we were nowhere in particular on the Bulgarian side of the Thalweg, but I knew I wanted a sandwich as we were two hours in. If we’re going to be at the restaurant in Vetren soon, I’d like to be able to muster up an appetite again. We still had two sandwiches from the previous day that we’d tried to keep cool in the hotel room’s fridge. We shared the one with vegetable spread and cheese. Only one sandwich to go.

More than two hours in, we’d paddled a little over 16 kilometers. That’s not actually a bad speed all things considered.

The Second Blunder

I was looking forward to having a proper lunch at a restaurant called Kray Rekata (Край Реката) aka By the River. Per my calculations, we were 13.5 kilometers away. As this is a day that’s 55.5 kilometers in total per my calculations the day before, we’ll hit our midway point of today at 18.5 kilometers and our halfway point at 27.8 kilometers paddled. The restaurant we’re paddling to would be a little over halfway, which is a nice thing.

I tried to keep paddling and get into a rhythm, but the morning sleepiness hit like a train after eating half a sandwich. It was terribly difficult to stay focused. Even with quite a steady stream of cargo ships traveling up and down the Danube.

We passed a quay with a rest area/water pumping station (Малък Преславец) at some point, which had a readable kilometer sign saying 414. We started at 432 today. That means we’re one-third of the way to Silistra. Today we’re going to a number below 400 kilometers to the Black Sea. Something like 377. This was followed up by a triple-wide barge with one pusher boat behind it.

I can’t believe this is our last kayak day fully in Bulgaria. It has really flown by. We only arrived in Vidin on the 9th of June, and here we are preparing to leave Bulgaria on the 8th of July. The entire Bulgarian Danube area from the triple border area near Vrav to the end of Silistra is 463 kilometers. And it’s almost done in one month time. Pretty neat.

Less than five kilometers before our lunch spot, we made a landing on Little Garvan Island, also known as Slavyanin. It’s separated from Big Gavan Island by a narrow channel that dries up with low water levels. We had a break here from 9:29 till 9:44. It was rather muddy, but it was okay and somehow not full of mosquitoes. I took off my leggings as the temperatures were heating up. I didn’t grab my sarong, because for five kilometers, having a little sun exposure to the knees is fine.

When we continued and I mapped the route to the restaurant again, I realized something was off. How could it be that it’s not even 10:00 and we’re almost in Vetren for lunch? Yesterday, we made it to lunch in Ryahovo at 10:26. But today is going slower as I’m literally drowsy kayaking and still feeling physically tired from yesterday. Something is very off.

Jonas also looked on the map, and I realized that I’d been mapping not to the restaurant Kray Rekata in Vetren, but to Hotel Danube Pearl in Popina. Shit. We have to go further.

Seven whole kilometers. Shit. Better keep paddling.

But maybe we should go to the hotel restaurant here instead? Dunavska Perla has a jetty to land at and a restaurant that claims to be open. The pristine kilometer sign says 403. We just would prefer to park Zucchini out of the sun. And though it might have made sense to at least drink a coffee here to wake me up.

But we decided against it, even when we found a beautiful shadowy landing spot just a little downstream from the hotel around here (coordinates: 44.13051380461928, 26.950787939925725) after the widest slipway in the world. However, Jonas wondered why the hell we’re not staying at this hotel? It looks nice enough. The answer is that it would have been too far to paddle in one day from Ruse and too short for one day from Tutrakan.

It Gets WORSE

So at 10:25, we said goodbye to Popina without stopping there. We immediately passed a dredging operation ship in the middle of the river.

Soon after, we spotted another ship coming upstream. We were in an awkward place in the shipping lane, but decided to cross closer to the Romanian side, stick with it and let the ship pass on our right instead of our left. Again, we made such a silly navigational error that made us stress and paddle really hard for it for about 10 minutes. It’s unnecessary.

At 10:50, I looked down at the brand new blue kayak sail I’d installed the way I had it the day before and sailed successfully with it to Tutrakan. What drew my attention wasn’t because there was a sudden tailwind I could exploit. No, I looked at it after it moved a little bit without prompting.

It could be that the elastic band that holds the three small loops together is slipping, in which case it might suddenly deploy. But the more likely explanation is that it has broken. Again. After one day of use. I looked a little closer and saw something pointy where it should be a smooth curve.

GOD MOTHERFCUKING DAMMIT

We stayed in Ruse for 10 days to make sure I had a new kayak sail after the green one broke. We paid extra for expedited Amazon delivery. It was a lot of money and stress involved just so we’d have an advantage while paddling downwind. And it broke after the first use, just like the red kayak sail, which was our first. It’s only the green one that has been used successfully for about seven times in 2024 and about 12 times in 2019. And the green one survived being stored away and going to shit for five years.

My suspicions that the quality of these things is getting worse and worse seems to be right. The stick inside that makes up the loop is of some terrible material that can cause nasty splinters. And I think the thin fibertrash strands that make up the loop aren’t twisted, and therefore can’t evenly distribute the tension when folding up the kayak sail. Perhaps I could fix it with two metal thingies so that it has more places to turn the way it feels like to release tension. Absolutely every part of this is poor design and quality—and I’m sick of the options today being bad or worse.

Jonas didn’t believe me when I told him it’s broken once again and said we’d have to look at it later.

Lunch, Finally

Inside, I was so hurt and disappointed. And still so sleepy. We somehow kept going. A bee had chosen to hitch a ride with us on my red day bag. Luckily, it sat very still.

We only arrived at the fisherman’s base in Vetren after 11:00. As we veered closer to shore, I found a promising spot that had a lot of shadow. But we had to paddle through broken reeds to get there. As we landed, I manage to startle a whole bunch of frogs, of which one definitely jumped on me in the boat for a hot second. I couldn’t find it afterwards.

I slapped the ground with my paddle to let the nearby frogs know I’m gonna get out and that they need to move, temporarily. Hopefully, we won’t return to a Zucchini full of frogs. The bee stayed on the dry bag. I hoped it would have flown off once we’d return from our lunch stop.

This town Vetren is almost 36 kilometers from Tutrakan, which means we’re about 20 kilometers from Silistra. The end is near, though 20 kilometers can still be brutal.

We walked up the embankment. This is where the TID spends a night between Tutrakan and Silistra. As we walked to the restaurant, we managed to trigger some dogs who were ready to kill us until their owner called them to cut the shit. Not a great start.

This restaurant Kray Rekata was a bit simpler than Fisherman’s Meeting from the previous day in Ryahovo. There was only fishy food, meaty food, fries, and Šopska salata. No breaded and fried kashkaval, no pancakes. That’s rather limiting for us, but we ordered cheese fries, my favorite salad in the world, a beer, and a sparkling water. We also got a coffee later, which we shared due to a misunderstanding. Everything was super friendly though and I’d recommend making a stop here on your Danube trip.

I thought the number of dogs meant we wouldn’t meet any cats, but we did meet a bunch. One was a very sweet one-eyed diluted tortie who was okay with pets. As I called her over, another cat, which was a tuxedo, showed up. They were both disappointed by our food and didn’t want a piece of sirene cheese. We didn’t have the cat food on us, unfortunately. Later, she followed Jonas to the kitchen when he asked for coffee. She returned a few minutes later licking her mouth with total satisfaction. We think the owner of Kray Rekata gave her a little piece of fish, as a treat.

Walking back, we triggered the dogs again and saw two more brown tabby cats. None of those were interested in pets. Back at the boat, we deflated Zucchini a bit in anticipation of the intensifying heat. But first, I gave Zucchini a few slaps to wake up the frogs. No frogs were in the boat. But the bee was still there on my dry bag. I tried to move her onto my paddle and onto a plant, but she didn’t cooperate. I think she was at the end of her life. And yes, I still feel bad for leaving her behind. (And will now have a good cry as I edit this post months later)

We continued paddling at 12:32. Onward, to Silistra!

Silistra TV Tower on the Horizon + Pelican Shipwreck

We had to keep left to not get sucked into a side channel around the island known in Romanian as Ostrovul Ciocănești and in Bulgarian as Vetren (confusing, I know). Under Romania, the island is a nature reserve. But its status is disputed between the two countries, as Bulgaria could claim that the thalweg passes on the left, which would form the international border. I doubt this border dispute is very high on the agenda of both countries, and the thalweg might as well change again with the next Danube flood.

Next to this island, the current picked up quite a bit. Soon, we were around the curve and spotted the spire of Silistra TV Tower in the distance. Again, like the TV towers in Ruse and Tutrakan, I doubt this one is visitable by the public.

At 13:06, we were past the middle part of the island and saw a very odd-looking ship slowly coming upstream. I realized it’s transporting a floating dry dock and, heck, some barges. It was very slow and very spectacular. The wheelhouse of the pusher boat couldn’t actually fully look over the structure. I wonder if the Giurgiu–Ruse Bridge will need to be raised for this cargo to pass safely beneath it, but I doubt it reaches 30 meters. Still, fascinating.

I felt a little backwind picking up, but there’s no way to make use of it with our brand-new broken kayak sail. I was getting overheated. No matter how often I dipped my hat in the colder Danube waters, it was starting to get too hot in my noggin.

After the disputed island, the shipping lane stays quite close to the left bank. In the distance, I saw some white structure on the water. I thought they were motor boats at first, but they were too stationary. There was also a dead tree in the water that housed about 20 great cormorants, until they all freaked out because we were too close (40 meters).

The white structure turned out to be an unmapped shipwreck! Cool!

We approached it slowly and saw that two pelicans were fishing from it. They departed way earlier than the great cormorants ever did. The shipwreck was made up of two parts during our water levels. I’m not sure how big it truly is or what kind of ship it was.

Break on Chaika + Silistra’s Truck Ferry to Chiciu

We were beyond the shipwreck at 13:20. I was feeling more and more agitated. Jonas could not agree on what we saw in front of us, which was, from left to right, Little Aydemir Island, Big Aydemir Island, unknown name island, and Chaika. The shipping lane passes between the unnamed island and Chaika. Right behind it begins the port of Silistra.

We had a bit of a fight about how to approach and where the shipping lane goes and I was not in the mood for talking endlessly about it. Just stick to the shipping lane. It’s generally the best choice.

At this point, it was almost 14:00 and we were less than 10 kilometers from Silistra. Time for one last break on land. Though Aydemir, big and small, had beautiful sandy beaches to land on, we were already past them. At the tail of Chaika (Чайка – seagull) island, I spotted a landing that would work. We just had to paddle around a permanent fishing net structure.

It was some of the worst suctioning mud I’ve experienced. But we both made it on land and it was a very beautiful spot, big enough to go camping. Unfortunately, Chaika was also full of mosquitoes. During this nine-minute break, we tried to make up a little. But I was still very overheated, thirsty, and generally not in the mood for shit.

When I looked at the kayak sail again, I saw it’s now broken in two places. TWO PLACES. One spot of excess pressure is understandable, two is neglectful manufacturing. Let’s go to our pre-vetted slipway in Silistra and finish today’s trip so I can shower and nap and maybe gather the courage to look at fixing the kayak sail. I don’t think I have enough metal things to fix it, though.

Next, we encountered a crane on a barge that was very much anchored. It occupied the middle of the shipping lane once again. Something about dredging the navigable channel of the Danube in anticipation of summer droughts. Ahead of us was a white ship that was coming upstream very slowly. Jonas identified it as the truck ferry that lands in Bulgaria some 200 meters from where we were. As we approached the ferry slipway, we saw that there’s another ferry there being loaded up with trucks. So there’s at least two ferries constantly shuttling goods? Pretty cool. I’m not sure if it’s only for trucks or also for private vehicles.

As we crossed their shipping lane, we were safe for a bit. The port of Silistra was to our right, and we saw cranes move to put goods in a barge or take them out of it. There were these huge (grain?) silos close to the embankment at kilometer sign 382. We even saw a pusherboat leave its barge to do something else. The barge it left behind was half-filled up, with more weight to the back than the front, tilting it upward. The crane operator attempted to fix that by adding more goods to the front of the barge.

Arriving in Silistra + Checking into the Hotel

The left turn to Silistra began. I tried to look for a landmark to aim for that’s actually our hotel for the coming three nights. But it was just a guess.

The Danube was quite crowded with traffic here. A kilometer sign appeared on the embankment of the river park: 377 kilometers to the Black Sea. Our planned landing spot is a slipway beyond our hotel (44.12301483693886, 27.262199372236186). The ferry going downstream with trucks was slowly overtaking us. If we’d had a functional kayak sail or more energy, we would have managed to land before it overtook us. But I was so done.

Once we got close to the hotel, things were easy to identify. There was this helipad-quay thing sticking out into the river that caused some weird currents. Beyond it was the hotel’s cruise jetty and behind that our slipway. But in this space between the helipad and the hotel jetty, I spotted concrete stairs leading out of the water straight up to Hotel Drastar. I told Jonas we should try landing there first, since it’s probably kept clean without broken glass.

We landed in Silistra at 15:19. Not a bad time, considering how much I had to push myself?

Jonas checked it out first while I kept Zucchini on a leash. There were a lot of locked fences. But Jonas found someone and led with “We have a reservation at this hotel” who was chill with us breaking down our kayaking setup. When taking off the kayak sail, I saw it had now broken in three fucking places. How the fuck is this possible? I didn’t even touch the thing!

Once Jonas had his shoes on, he first climbed the fence again to check into the room with the blue dry bag. He returned 10 minutes later while I had begun packing up. There was still one sandwich to eat, but this wasn’t the place as there was no shadowy spot to actually enjoy the best sandwich.

Jonas returned with happy news that they didn’t void our reservation because he looks… not the part for a five-star hotel. Someone was gonna come and open up the gate down here so we didn’t have to climb it again.

We packed everything up, but no one came to open the gate. So I climbed it and received the stuff Jonas handed me. And then we walked to our room where the aircon was running and there was a marvelous view of our river, the Danube.

It’s about 376 kilometers to go now. Crazy.

Four Nights in Silistra

We spent our time in Silistra in the following way:

Good read? Consider buying me some kind of electrolyte drink

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