October 29th

G- Reporting

This will be the last Blog Post as I’m afraid Bridget has had to return to Canada due to a family illness and so I will now be taking the quickest route back to London via Poland and Germany.

I’d like to thank all the people who have joined us our trip via the blog and hope you have all enjoyed it and we haven’t bored you too much!

Thanks and Safe travels.

October 28th

G - Reporting

A short hop today into Odessa arriving just after lunch, we texted the apartment owner who we where renting from and he arrived and showed us around and gave us the keys.

With all our stuff dumped in the apartment we hit the town 1st heading to the famous Potemkin steps followed by a walk out along the jetty into the harbor which was a little like the one in Vancouver in that they both had huge hotels on them.

After we headed back though the centre and wandered into the opera house to check out ticket prices and shows, to cut a long story short a very nice man who spoke perfect English did the all the talking for us and we walked out with 2 tickets for Sunday’s performance of the “Barber of Seville” for $25 cheap at twice the price, so we celebrated our good fortune with a quick drink.

Potemkin Steps

October 27th

G - Reporting

Driving day today as Odessa is 550Km from Sevastopol we decided split the journey in the town of Mykolaiv, the drive was uneventful though a fairly plain landscape.

Mykolaiv turned out to be a pleasant town for an evening stroll with a wide main street which was closed to traffic and was lined with cafes and bars that still had people using the outside tables; they are a hardy bunch the Ukrainians

October 26th

G - Reporting

A nice easy start today as we pottered around the apartment having coffee, checking emails and making breakfast finally emerging at around 10:30 to check out Sevastopol.

What we found was a very pretty city with great buildings surrounded by water, after a good wander we hit the black sea fleet museum for a look round.

 For a late lunch we found a café and had stuffed French bread sandwiches followed by a trip across and back of the harbor on the local commuter ferry and a look round the local market then back to the apartment for another relaxing evening in.

October 25th

G - Reporting

Sevastopol today but a few stop along the way 1st up the Swallows nest as seen on many a postcard of Yalta (assuming you have ever been sent a post card from Yalta!)a folly of a castle built at the top of a cliff in person so to speak it wasn’t all that so we pressed on.

The main reason for not hanging around was one of the highlights of the trip for me the Ex-soviet Sub base at Balaclava opened in the 50s and finial decommissioned in the early 90s and now a Museum.

The whole thing was built in a series of sea caves that where expanded to allow subs to based under the cliffs it was all very cool and looked like something out a James Bond movie.

After a couple of hours in there just soaking up the places and taking lots of pictures we made our way to Sevastopol and an apartment we rented there, and enjoyed in a very boring manner a nice night in the 1st in over 4 months :)

October 24th

G - Reporting

 We were planning to leave today but Yalta was so nice we booked for another day.

The day was taken up with lots of wandering around stops for coffee and dinner at a seafood restaurant in the evening where I had my 1st Caviar, it was really good!

Mmm Caviar!

October 23rd

G - Reporting

Getting up before dawn we packed and made our way to the ferry terminal for our trip to the Ukraine and a sad farewell from Russia.

The process went rather smoothly once we realized they needed to measure the truck length before they would sell us a ticket, after that it was an easy check out of Russia and a quick sail over to the Ukraine made quicker by a pleasant chat with Vladimir a translator fro Odessa.

Arriving in Ukraine was easy apart from a bit of a wait there was just one simple form to fill in and we were in.

The 250Km to Yalta was a surprise we had no idea what to expect from the Crimea but what we got was stunning coast line with a rocky hills behind and vineyards and every flat bit of land in-between all very nice.

Arriving in Yalta we picked a hotel out of the Guide book that was overlooking the sea and close to the centre all for $41 result! the day was rounded off with a sea front stroll and dinner in a local Pub.

The road to Yalta

October 22nd

G - Reporting

Today all we needed to do was to just to get to the ferry terminal check out the departure times and then find a nearby hotel for the night.

Part 1 was fairly easy with only 1 wrong turn and a very grumpy cop at a check point spoiling our perfect run, the hotel was another mater the night before we had found loads near the terminal on the internet what the internet didn’t tell us was they were all closed for the winter!

So in the end we had to back track 60Km to the nearest big town before we found a hotel but as a consolation it was very nice, cheap and had wifi in the lobby so all in all not bad.

On the road to the ferry

October 21st

G - Reporting

The plan today was to get as close to the ferry Terminal that would take us the Ukraine as possible but we stupidly forgot one thing Russia is huge (you think we would have got the hang of it by now) so we managed about half way and ended up in Rostov-on-Don a city of over 1.1 million and till that morning I’d never heard of.

Arriving in the centre we wandered in to the 1st hotel we saw and then wandered straight out again as it was $145 a night!

So grabbing some wifi in a strangely familiar restaurant that seemed to sell mainly burgers ;-) we found a much cheaper place just outside the centre and so plugged that into the GPS and made haste forthwith.

The Hotel Don was great very new and it was quite easy to tell that Rostov-on-Don had a Swedish furniture store!

Our Volgograd Motel

War memorial

Hmm looks Familiar!

October 20th

B - reporting

Another cold day, but it was also quite sunny. I quite see why the Russians wear those enormous fur hats.

We went to the War Memorial today, which the Russians do very well. So solemn, and desperately sad.

Picked randomly from the menu at chosen restaurant for dinner, and both had delicious salmon dinners!

October 19th

G - Reporting

Nice easy start as the truck wouldn’t be ready till 10 and was only a short walk away, we arrived in the end at about 10:30 to find the truck still on the lift and the mechanics having problems starting it, not a good start, but it turned out just to be a forgotten plug on the fuel tank and soon the truck roared to life, then it was time to pay, 7000 Rubles ($230) not bad consider the amount of work involved at how long it took, so after thanking them and taking a few pictures we headed to the Toyota dealer to get the rest of the suspension checked out and an oil change.

The dealership was huge and very modern and after a short wait we were introduced to the Service manager Constantine who spoke great English and took me though the whole process which ended up lasting the rest of the day, in the end they replaced 6 different things on the suspension and also found a missing bolt on one of the shock absorbers, it all came to a fair amount more than the back street garage at 23000 Rubles but it was worth it to know the car was safe as we would be driving on fast modern highways for the rest of trip.

swiss being welded back together

The welders!

At toyota

October 18th

B - reporting

Goal for today: find the Toyota Dealership and get poor old Swiss Tony fixed! Damn those Kazak roads...what's the point of having all that Oil & Gas money if your populace has to drive over the surface of the @#%! moon? Oh right, the Oil & Gas  people travel around in private jets...

With the help of the internet (how did we ever manage without it?) we found the Toyota dealership...which was a lot less flash than we were expecting. G explained (largely in mime) the problem - suspension.

'Kazakhstan' he said, frowning.

'Ah, Kazakhstan,' they said, nodding, unsurprised that our suspension was broken.

After G had driven Swiss over the pit and many, many smoking Russian men all had a look, we were given cappucinos and a bar of chocolate by Alexandr, who phoned Misha, who apparently said 'OK' and we followed Alexandr across Volgograd to another garage, where more smoking Russians (in an even less flash garage) examined poor Swiss.

I ate the chocolate and kept out of the way, as due to the number of cigarettes and random men appearing, this all took ages. But, they will fix Swiss, and send us a text when ready.

So G and I went a-touristing. We wondered round Volgagrad, a really lovely city whose Luftwaffe-destroyed buildings have been restored beautifully.

We went to the Stalingrad Museum, which was sad and moving, as war museums should be.

Then headed back to our hotel, to wait for the call from the garage. G cut & pasted some cyrillic script into an SMS and we finally heard that Swiss will be ready at 10am tomorrow! Yay! We had sarnies and beer in our room, to celebrate.

The only remaining building from the siege,

war memorial

B at the Volga

G at the Volga

Defense of Stalingrad museum

October 17th

G - Reporting

1st order of the day internet so we could find a hotel in Volgograd so we could spend a few days sightseeing and getting what we thought was a saggy or broken rear suspension spring changed on the truck, found a café really quickly and with coffee drunk and hotel booked we set off for Volgograd.

About 20Km outside of Astrakhan we came to a road side rest area that has a car inspection ramp in it (most do in Russia) so we drove the truck up onto it just to check how bad the broken saggy spring was, what we found was totally different the entire spring mounting had ripped off the chassis and was resting against the floor of the truck which was now taking the weight of the driver’s side rear of the car!

So armed with the knowledge that it had probably survived nearly 600Km like this since I 1st noticed the slight sag and the that the roads where very smooth in Russia we set of at a careful 60Kph for Volgograd arriving finally at 7pm checking into our super cheap ($31) but very nice motel and crashing after a long long days driving.

October 16th

B - reporting

Border Day! Always a bit stressful...and will our late registrations be OK?

We wanted to use up our Kazak money, so fannied around until the big supermarket opened at 9:30. We are now in Europe - it was kind of sad to be leaving Asia, but also the start of a new adventure: a new adventure with hopefully much better roads.

We then headed for the Russian border. We were soon back in the desert, with the small scrubby bushes and today, lots of flying sand as it was quite windy. And more camels - they seem like such  supercilious creatures. Who knows, perhaps they are as friendly as donkeys.

After an exciting stop for a cappuccino in a brand new cafe (like, about a week old! the landlady was delighted) we had a rather stressful drive over crappy roads, wincing at every bump and new noise from Swiss. He is clearly not at all well, but there won't be a proper garage until Russia.

We reached the enormous queue at the border at about 3:45, though it seemed a lot later as the sky was dark with rainclouds. We've been so lucky with the weather till now, having no rain to speak of for all the dirt roads we've covered.

I had to walk to the passenger passport control, while G drove. But other than queueing, it was a very easy crossing. We then entered Russia! We lined up behind a busload of Kazakhs, and I noticed a small ginger cat sitting interestedly under the passport control window, his tail wrapped neatly round his paws, entirely unfazed by the milling! He was clearly a well-loved pet of all the gun-carrying Russian army guys.

Then we were in Russia! The roads are so smoooooth! We headed towards Astakhan, over an exciting pontoon bridge over the Volga, arriving after dark but with our trusty GPS we found the Gold Djinn hotel and  settled in for the night. We have lost an hour with the time zone change, but frankly were so confused anyway that it hardly makes any difference. We are just delighted to have proper working showers and a warm bed!

Camels

Brand new cafe

October 15th

G - Reporting

Today we were meant to be heading to the border but we were a little worried that our visas are not registered (some ridiculous and pointless Kazak Regulation) so just to be safe we headed to the poice station 1^st thing to make sure all is well, arriving as it open we go in and show our Visas “problem” comes the reply, we are then show into an office where we are ignored for a good half hour by the staff on the other side of the window!

Finial the window opens and a cell phone is shoved into Bridget’s had the women on the other end in English explains we are not registered and also to late to register without a fine plus all the paper work must be done in Russian but she will come down and help us for a small fee.

With no other option we take up her offer and about 20 minutes later a young women arrives and proceeds to wade through all the ridiculous paperwork involved on our behalf including a signed statement by us both as to why we where late, to cut a long story short it cost us both $100 plus $30 for the translation help, all in all it seemed a waste of every ones time and a really really bad way to treat tourists who are bring money to your county!

With that done it was too late to leave for the border so we made the most of it and had a look round town, a nice lunch in a coffee house followed in the evening by a return to O’Neil’s Pub for beers and a pub dinner Club Sandwich and fries in my case and Fish & Chips for B

Around town (Europe side)

Around Town (Asia Side)

Mosque that looked a lot like it was made of Lego!

Down the Pub

Also down the pub

October 14th

B - reporting

We woke unfeasibly early on what we are devoutly hoping is our last night of camping. We hit the road as soon as it was light enough - 8:15 (though our watch could be wrong. Guess what - we are confused.) Regardless, we drove off over the bomb site that was the road, veering off onto one of the numerous dirt tracks whenever we could. These tracks were only slightly better than driving on the 'road'. We were worried about poor Swiss, who was making more and more ominous clanking noises at every rut.

It was very windy today, clouds whizzing above and sand whipped into our faces whenever we had to get out of Swiss. We lunched on Pot Noodles and coffee, and continued north west.

We stopped for petrol at Dosser (yes, Dosser!) and then, mirablile dictu, we found a lovely smooth tarmaced road! I now know why the last Pope used to get down and kiss tarmac. We wafted on towards Atryau, amazingly found the hotel easily, and even more amazingly they had a room for us!

Atyrau is on the border between Asia and Europe - the border river, the Ural, winds its way through the town. Exciting, but not as exciting as the Irish pub, O'Neills, we found! We had a beer there, surrounded by what seemed like a million ex-pats, all speaking English, working in the Oil and Gas industry.

October 13th

G - reporting

The day the roads got bad real bad, the day started well enough after breaking camp we arrived in the city of Aktobe around 10:30 parking outside the Football Stadium (as seen in the long way round!)and found a café almost immediately very close with wifi so emails done a coffee and muffins enjoyed we hit the road again.

The road got bad but not really bad as soon as we left the city but then as the day progressed they got worse and worse until it wasn’t actually possible to drive on them even in a 4x4 they really looked like they had been cluster bombed with 2m wide potholes, so taking to the dirt track next to the road which weren’t much better until about 6 when we gave up and camped. 

Moon Rise

Sun Rise

October 12th

B - reporting

Woke early enough to see the Big Dipper, looking like a Big Question Mark in the pre-dawn starlight. We had coffee, then porridge, waiting for the sun to rise. The roads are too crappy to drive on until it's properly light. Also, it was quite exciting to see the sun actually rise...I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times I've seen it rise up till now!

Nothing eventful happened on the horribly bumpy road to Aral. We saw several herds of camels, some with the most magnificent neck beards.

We stocked up on essentials (yes, it was beer) in the bazaar in Aral, then after a quick look at the old harbour with its marooned ship and unemployed cranes we carried on driving through the VERY flat desert. It's just so huge, and largely featureless. The most exciting things are scrubby, ankle-high bushes.

The sky is lovely, though. Tonight we saw Jupiter chasing the Moon as it rose, and Orion swaggering up over to the westish.

What a harbor looks like with no water

we sure will just as soon as you fix the roads!

October 11th

G - Reporting

Another driving day across the desert landscape of western Kazakhstan but today with the added excitement of visiting Baikonor the Russian space center.

But alas the excitement was short lived as when we arrived we already knew you cant go to the actual space centre but there is a town with all sorts of monuments and rockets on plinths etc. but when we got there we found that is out of bounds as well and we were turned away at the entrance to the town, so after that we just hit the road again and carried on west before camping for the night.

Baikonur! (well the bit we could see!)

The Birds!

Camping.

October 10th

B - Reporting

We woke early, as we ususally do when in a new place...only to find the sun high in the sky and the realisation that we are now an hour ahead! So did we wake v early, or quite late? Who knows...

After breakfast and a successful search for a supermarket (though we failed to find Peanut Butter, which is now our equivalent of the Holy Grail) we headed out of town. Confusion at a junction enbaled a Kazak cop to insist we must pay a 'protocol' which G managed to bargain down...no paperwork was filled out, strangely!

It was a long drive to Turkistan, the holiest city in Kazakhstan, with one of Kazakhstan's most beautiful buldings. We know this only from the guide book, because the building in question was completely covered in scaffolding when we got there. UNESCO scaffolding, but still! We did see a very nice camel in the rose garden, though.

Then a lot more driving, which will be the theme till we cross into Russia. Kazakhstan is huge! And the roads, mainly, awful.

We found an old gravel pit close to the road by about 6pm. Gravel pits are great for this sort of camping: close to the road, yet out of sight of traffic; smooth flat ground; no bushes or grass for spiders to lurk in! It was pretty windy, but we were cozy in dear old Swiss. Very cold as soon as the sun set, though the moon, nearly full, was almost bright enough to read by!

Scaffolding obscuring the famous dome

Beer in the sand pit!

October 9th

G - Reporting

So today was leaving day from Uzbekistan but 1st we  need gas for the truck and for some reason which I never found out there is a shortage of fuel so unless you're willing to line up at 3am - I wasn’t - its black market time, so Odil the B&B owner helpfully offered to come with me, so we drove across town until we came to street where half the houses had what looked like coke bottles full of gas standing outside, we stopped Odil did the talking and 2 20L jerry cans appeared I paid the money 3000som a liter as opposed to 1800 liter normal (72c V $1.20)and I was good to go.

The drive again was easy again just lots of police check points, then the border was a ok passport checks were quick the car search was not too bad but just as I was about to leave they stopped me again and started asking about heroin! I just kept saying no and finally they let me leave.

The kazak side was better 2 customs guys helped us with all the forms one even asked if Wayne Gretsky was still alive there was one bit of confusion, when all the paper work was done we thought they were asking for a “fee” for helping but it turns out they just wanted a souvenir so we gave them some Vancouver bookmarks and postcards and they seemed well chuffed.

After that it was just a 200km drive to Shymkent and we checked into a cheap hotel as we really didn’t feel like camping.

October 8th

B - reporting

Our first goal today was to get rid of our Tajik money. We'll go to a Currency Exchange in a posh hotel, we thought, where it will all be official. But no - we were encouraged to bargain over the exchange rates even in the "official" bureaux!

We then wondered round, inadvertently entering a tiny museum which we had to pay for, then walking MILES (at least a hundred) to find Plov - only to be told the plov was all gone! We consoled ourselves with delicious kebabs and beer.

After more uneventful wondering around, we had fantastic Korean food for dinner and packed up

October 7th

G – Reporting

Big old tourist day today 1st the old Observatory which dated back to the early 15th century, then the avenue of mausoleums with their stunning turquoise tile work, and after lunch the registon which is the main attraction in town the 3 building are stunning in their setting around a square but inside every square inch is full of stalls selling tourist gifts and all of them staffed by incredibly pushy staff which really spoilt the place for me and I couldn’t wait to get out.