U Minh Ha National Park

Mũi Cà Mau is where land and sea meet. U Minh Hạ is a different kind of meeting, where forest and water blend into each other. Its forest is not mangrove along the coast but tràm, standing in floodwater on a bed of peat, deep in the delta plain. This kind of forest is very much its own, and very few places like it remain in the Mekong Delta.

U Minh Hạ National Park lies in Cà Mau Province. Its address is Vồ Dơi hamlet, in Đá Bạc commune. The total area is 8,527.8 hectares. A buffer zone of 25,000 hectares surrounds it.

The park is divided into three zones. The first protects the tràm forest ecosystem on peat soil and covers 2,593.7 hectares. This is the core, the most strictly protected part. The second zone is for restoring and sustainably using the flooded ecosystem, and it covers 5,190.5 hectares. The third is the services and administration zone, with 743.6 hectares. Forest covers 7,689.95 hectares in all. That is 90.2 percent of the park.

To see why U Minh Hạ matters, start with the peat. Here the layer of peat is between half a meter and a meter and a half thick, and it spreads across 2,654 hectares. Peat forms from plant remains that pile up under water over thousands of years. That layer is a vast store of organic matter. It is also what makes the U Minh forest so sensitive to drought. When the peat dries out in the dry season, the risk of fire becomes very high. Once a fire catches in peat, it spreads deep underground and is very hard to put out.

The tràm tree is the soul of this ecosystem. Alongside it grow mốp, bùi, trâm khế and trâm sẻ, which together make up the canopy that marks a U Minh forest. The park has recorded 176 plant species, in 65 genera and 36 families. The forest is also home to many birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. Many of them have scientific value and are listed in the Red Book of Vietnam.

In 2009, UNESCO recognized the Mũi Cà Mau Biosphere Reserve. A biosphere reserve is a UNESCO-recognized area where nature is protected and the people living there keep working the land. U Minh Hạ is one of its core zones. The recognition is for the relationship between protecting nature and people's livelihoods. It is a model that few places in the Mekong Delta still hold on to.

A boat ride along a channel through the tràm forest is hard to forget. The water is dark with silt and still. The crowns of the trees weave together into a cool green roof. Birdsong carries from deep in the forest, and water murmurs softly under the oar. Moving slowly through all that green, far from the noise of the streets, is one of the most distinctive ways Cà Mau offers to feel the inland nature of the south.

To come to U Minh Hạ is to meet a kind of nature that most of the Mekong Delta no longer has. Then comes the moment people never forget: black water, fragrant tràm, and a sky opening wide overhead as the boat glides out from under the trees.