YEP 7 Exp Kamchatka Day 12
We spent another night in a circle around the fire in the jurt next to the dogs. It was raining all night long and none of us slept through without getting woken up at least once. But the sound of a rain storm out in the nowhere of Kamchatka is one of the better ones you can have accompanying your sleep. In the morning we sat together with the owners of “snow dogs” and had a little meeting. We made plans for a project with the ultimate goal to reintroduce old traditions to the native people and to further push sustainable tourism in Kamchatka. We are planning to do this by setting up a website for their dog sledding eco trips and raising funds to support their organization that helps the native people in the north of Kamchatka. Mike gave us good tips on how to realize an idea, set up a goal and define the necessary steps. It’s a wonderful place and after having breakfast and saying goodbye we had a nice morning trek through the rainy birch forest to get to the paved road.
Arriving in the capital of Kamchatka it felt a little awkward to be back in civilization. The misted window hid the view but there was quite a lot of traffic, lots of old buildings and slushy snow was lying on the streets. After being out in the open for so long, it felt very strange stepping into a shopping mall where the shelves were lined with shiny products and there were people everywhere (and clean people at that…) We all felt a little bewildered by this drastic change of pace and although we appreciated the familiarity of a city I think the others would agree that we were already longing to be back out in the quiet snowy wilderness. Lena, our great cook that has been with us since the beginning of the expedition, made sure we got lunch and we did what you usually do on rainy days: we went to the museum of Petropavlovsk. Our guide was an elderly Russian woman, Lena translated and we heard some interesting facts on Kamchatka. And we had fun trying on the traditional clothes.
In the evening we got the opportunity to go and soak in hot springs again! It’s been a week since we were last in the water and we were all really excited and screaming as we went down the slide in a long chain face forward holding each other’s feet. Great fun!