From Houston to Sydney 2013

Russian Far East - 2014

 

I managed to get almost two hours sleep on my flight to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.  That was not really enough, but fortunately my first day in Kamchatka was program-free, apart from going to my hotel, resting and washing clothes.  As things turned out, given that it rained all day and the temperature never rose above 11 degrees Celsius, it was a sound plan.

My flight landed just a little behind schedule at 9:35am.  However, major runway construction at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky Airport meant that the aircraft parked in an obscure location far away from the terminal building.  When we finally arrived at the terminal building by bus, we found a tiny building with everyone standing outside in the rain.  Despite the weather, passengers are only allowed to enter the luggage delivery room, which is beside the terminal building, once the luggage arrives from the aircraft.

To say it was crowded would be an understatement.  The conveyor belt was designed years ago to handle the tiny aircraft that then served Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and the walls were a tight fit around that conveyor belt.  It was therefore not surprising that even when the doors were opened, not everyone on the almost full Boeing 777 was able to fit in the room – despite the best efforts of everyone to squeeze as many people into the tiny room.  Retrieving the luggage proved to be quite an intimate experience.

I met my local guide, an Armenian girl with excellent English named Maro, and once I had retrieved my luggage, we waited outside for the vintage Ssangyong minibus to arrive to go to my hotel.  The hotel, officially 2-star but in reality a sort of guesthouse, was located near Paratunka, a tiny village about 30 minutes drives from the airport.

I found the guesthouse (called the Solnechnaya Hotel) to be quite basic, although not as basic as some of the accommodation I had experienced earlier in the trip.  It was quite isolated, being located several kilometres from Paratunka village and surrounded by dense bushland – I was warned not to venture outside the hotel grounds because of bears.  Nonetheless, the room was quite large, even if the guests have to make their own beds, there was a television (even though it only showed one channel), and there was hot water and a toilet that flushes.  Needless to say, there was no wifi or internet.

The Solnechnaya did not have a restaurant or any facilities for providing food, but arrangements had been made with another hotel in the same forest clearing for the guests to eat in their restaurant – an interesting challenge as the menu was all in Russian (I’ll be using my Word Lens app quite a bit over the next week and a half, I think).

Having settled in, I proceeded to wash clothes, adjusting my plans to do it in stages over several days when I discovered how few places there were to hang wet clothes.

I managed to get a good four hours of sleep in the afternoon, and at a little after 6:00pm I made my way through the rain to the neighbouring hotels’ little restaurant for dinner.  With a combination of Word Lens and the little Russian I have picked up, I had a simple though very adequate meal of crepes with ham, mushrooms and sour cream, accompanied by a hot dog.

While I was there, a very large and quite drunk Russian man with a glass of vodka in his hand came and sat at my table to engage in friendly conversation.  Unfortunately, his slurred Russian did little to improve my comprehension of what he was trying to say.  However, I understood clearly from him that his wife talks far too much, although the rest of the conversation was more ambiguous - he was either saying that he is bear hunter or that he thinks the world is being unfair to Russia over its stand in Ukraine.

Or maybe he was saying that he was a bear hunter AND that the world is being unfairly hostile towards Russia over Ukraine.  As I said, the conversation was more than a little vague.

Day 13 - Paratunka (Kamchatka)

Sunday

13 July 2014