There are few really top notch hotels in Romania; the Marriott and the Hilton in Bucharest, and this one - the Delta Nature resort.

Wonderfully comfortable cabin/apartments with a great view over lake/marshes. The staff are also incredibly friendly. The restaurant serves high quality food, interestingly with a choice of international/romanian and indian dishes (the proprietor is Indian).

Excursions are available on the nearby lake using one of the hotel's fleet of boats or via extremely expensive speedboat deep into the delta itself.

It's all very good. My only frustration was that it was on the far west of the Delta itself and so quite a way away from the heart of the nature reserve

It is quite poor value for money in my view, especially in Romania (the rack rate is per person not per room) but extremely memorable

Want to enjoy a little opulence and do your bit for the local community at the same time? It's no longer an impossible combination, as this extract from a new Lonely Planet book shows

Some 2,860 kilometres from its origins in Germany's Black Forest, the Danube comes to a wild and isolated end. As it approaches Romania's Black Sea coast and the edge of Europe, the river breaks into three main branches to form the continent's second biggest delta (after the Volga), an environment of such variety and richness that Unesco has declared it a Natural World Heritage site.

There are 45 species of fish, 1,150 species of plant and 300 species of bird; plus tropical woods, pastures, sand dunes, subtropical forests and, spreading over almost a quarter of a million hectares, one of the world's largest reed beds. Opened last year, the five-star Delta Nature Resort on Lake Samova has 30 cabins built in the style of the local fishing villages. Rangers, naturalists and botanists will take boat safaris into the delta and there are kayaks and canoes for individual use.

Green highlights

· As a Unesco Natural World Heritage site, the Danube Delta is environmentally policed. Access to sensitive areas is limited and most forms of transport are relatively low impact.

The resort is built with local wood and stone, food is locally sourced, and boat tours are designed not to disturb bird life.

Romania's Danube Delta may be Europe's next great eco-destination. Gisela Williams checks out the luxurious new Delta Nature Resort.
By Gisela Williams

"We have a saying in Romania," my wilderness guide, Catalin Stoinescu, tells me as he rows us along the grassy shoreline of Somova Lake, near the Danube Delta. "In this country anything is possible, yet at the same time everything is impossible." I ponder his words along with my surroundings: to my left, a green hill covered with rows of short, twisted grapevines, and to my right, a vast lake, its smooth surface broken only by golden reed beds and submerged willow trees. There are no sounds except for the dipping of the oars in the water, the sudden splash and flight of a surprised duck and the calls of a cuckoo bird.

So far, on my first full day at the new Delta Nature Resort, everything does seem possible, even after a four-hour, occasionally bumpy drive from Bucharest. Now I'm floating on the edge of the Danube Delta, an almost 2,000-square-mile labyrinth of water, reed beds, sand dunes, trees and hills. I'm here in this remote corner of Romania because the former Communist country is one of Europe's last wild frontiers, an eco-destination of great promise. The delta, a Unesco Biosphere Reserve, is one of the world's most spectacular wetlands. In the Carpathian Mountains of the Transylvania region—another of Romania's unspoiled places—thousands of bears and wolves still roam free. Transylvania, which has one of Europe's largest natural ecosystems as well as an impressive number of medieval fortified villages and churches, is where the fight to protect Romania's wild spaces began four years ago: In a battle over one of those villages, Sighisoara, local and international environmental groups, including one led by Prince Charles, squelched a government-sponsored plan for a Dracula theme park.

Inspired by that success, young British heir Ben Goldsmith—brother of socialite Jemima Khan and son of the late billionaire Sir James Goldsmith—and his partner Michael Radomir, of the Marks & Spencer family, have invested in several sustainability projects in Romania. Next year, in an effort to revitalize the rural community, they're launching a dairy called the Transylvania Nature Product Company, which will make organic mozzarella, yogurt and ice cream with milk from indigenous buffalo; last summer they opened the Delta Nature Resort, my base on the Danube Delta.

Goldsmith and Radomir are hoping tourists who come to the delta and see its astounding beauty will help drum up support for preserving its ecosystem. The delta is home to a remarkable number of plant and animal species—more than 300 bird varieties, 125 species of freshwater fish and 1,600 plant and tree types. From May to October, the area is a breeding ground for migratory birds, from cormorants and storks to the rare Dalmatian pelican. In the fall, endangered red-breasted geese arrive from Siberia. "We're talking about something as powerful as the Florida Everglades, but it's still undeveloped," Radomir tells me.

As Stoinescu slowly rows back to the resort—a 32-acre property with 30 sage-colored bungalows of wood and stone, built on a waterside slope—he fills me in on why the delta needs the attention. The Bystroye Canal, along the delta's border with neighboring Ukraine, has recently been the focus of much environmental concern. In 2004 Ukraine started dredging the canal in order to allow traffic from the Danube River to the Black Sea. International protests have stopped the dredging for now, but if Ukraine resumes its plans, the damage to the entire delta could be massive and irreversible.

We reach the shore and I head to my bungalow to relax and spend some time just staring at the scenery. The bungalow is decorated like a luxury fishing cabin, with wooden floors, chunky polished-wood furniture, hand-woven rugs and framed duck prints; in the living room there's a fireplace and a flat-screen TV. My favorite detail is o