My People and Places Portfolio and Blog
I recently returned from a fairly unique trip amongst my friends certainly, I went to the Russian far east, to Kamchatka, ‘Land of Ice and Fire’. I first saw these remote area of Russia on the TV Show ‘Wild Russia’ and have wanted to go ever since although better known in most of the western world as a port on the boardgame ‘Risk’. Kamchatka is a penninsula that juts south of Siberia (Chukotka) in the North and looks south towards Japan.
The Capital is called Petropavlovsk- Kamchatsky and was founded in 174o by the explorer Vitus Bering and named after his two ships, who were in turn named after St Peter, and Saint Paul. A few years later in 1779 the British explorer Charles Clerke was heading towards Kamchatka after his predecessor James Cook was killed in Hawaii, he died close to reaching Petropavlovsk and is now buried there. In 1854 during the time of the Crimean war Anglo-French troops attempted to invade Petropavlovsk unsuccessfully despite superior numbers. The three key historical events are commemorated in the city with multiple memorials. Shortly after this date in 1867 when the US bought Alaska from Russia Kamchatka was also for sale, but the American’s decided they did not want it. Once again in 1920 a cash-strapped Lenin offered it for private sale to a rich American – on condition it remained communist, agin this offer was refused.
During the latter half of the 20th century Petropavlovsk was better known as the home of the Soviet Union’s nuclear submarines, and for much of this time the whole peninsula was considered to be a ‘forbidden zone’.
When we booked the trip we thought we would be ‘resourceful’ and book it with an agent local to Kamchatka and save ourselves some money, we selected ‘Vision of Kamchatka’ who said we had to pay nothing in advance, but could pay cash when we got there. A couple of months later we flew into Petropavlovsk airport and we could see many helicopters, (presumably) old military jets, and a tiny building that was apparently the airport building, but were not to go in there until the end of our trip. We were directed towards the gates out of the airport to the side of the main building past what looked like a large shed-like building, when we got out of the gates our guide Irina was there to meet us as promised and directed us to the shed, to collect our luggage. On the way out a man checked our bags against the barcode stubs that are usually stuck to the back of your boarding card, so if you make the trip, probably best you keep them handy.
A trip to the city by minibus and we arrived at the hotel, you will see from the first photo below it looked a tiny bit tired on the outside to say the least, our guide quickly told us is way much better inside. She was right, it was, but again the rooms were tiny, dated, and tatty; this was also where the company appeared to have their offices too. So we shrugged a little and thought ‘You are in Russia, and not Moscow’ – this was to become our motto, although most of the others added ‘what can you expect?’ to the end of that phrase.
We changed, and showered and went out with Irina to the city for a small tour to stretch our legs after the flight, we got a chance to speak to some of the other people we would be on the tour with over the next few weeks – two Italian ladies, a Russian family and a single Russian guy (but by the end not so single, more on that in later posts).
The tour was interesting and key parts included the bay, the market, a huge Statue of Lenin, and a guy beating oput a tune on Church Bells on his own with some elaborate mechanism of strings. It was also pretty tiring after our long flight so we appreciated it after about 5 hrs when we got back to the hotel for a bit of rest, and after dinner we were grateful for any bed for the night.
The next morning at Breakfast we saw more of our ‘tour-mates’ had joined us and we went off to the boat tour around Avacha Bay and down to Starichkov Island, across the bay we could, for almost all the trip see Vilyuchinskaya Volcano in the distance through the haze. The boat ride was great and enough to find out from the others that some we be with us for all our trip, and some were part of a shorter trip and were leaving us partway through. On the boat trip we saw some amazing landscapes but the choppy seas and the relative distances from the landscapes meant that I ended up using the telephoto lens to get in closer, and in doing so ‘compression’ occurred int he final shots, or they were not sharp enough. We did however see an abundance of Gulls, Guillemots, Cormorants, Puffins, and even the occasional seal, especially when we got to go out in the small power dingy to get up close to the nest rocks and cliffs of Starichkov Island.
All in all a good way to get to speak to some of the people that were to become our companions for the next 2 weeks, I was now ready for the climbs up the volcanoes, but more about that in the next post, click on the images below to see the full image.
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