My People and Places Portfolio and Blog
We arrived at the supposedly fantastic hotel with thermal baths, Helios Hotel in Paratunka, another highly innacurate description by our guide from the Vision of Kamchatka team, where we said goodbye to some of our group who were returning home. We arrived to find the jovial manager of the hotel barking at us and pushing us towards ‘hotel rooms’, we then found that each ‘hotel room’ was actually two bedrooms with a shared bathroom and we to be split between them, not exactly what we paid for but it turned out ok for us this time as wedidn’t have to share with anyone. It was however a problem that the room was dirty, the light in the bathroom didn’t work, and the ‘double room’ didn’t even have room for our luggage.
Anyway, we decided to go and check out the hot swimming pools to help us clean off after the camping for the previous couple of nights, we got out to the to discover a pair of concrete pools with extensive major cracks in the concrete around the edge, but we were grateful to clean off properly. We arrived to dinner about 10 minutes late to find little food left and we were treated to more food with meat in for me, and after mentioning this once again, Lou got a plate of plain rice, we did share a few ‘screwdriver’ drinks with others in the group along with a beer or two and then retired to bed.
Luckily the next day we were going to the Valley of the Geysers, but the ones who did not go (as they had gone when they arrived into Kamchatka a day early) were left hanging as to what they would be doing as they were lead to believe that they would be able to relax around the pools at the hotel for the day, it turns out they ended up going to the beach instead.
We arrived at the heliport at Yelizovo and met up with a new member of our group to go on the trip to the Valley of the Geysers, this would be the first trip on a helicopter for both Lou and I so that in itself was pretty exciting. After waiting around for a long time we finally boarded the helicopter, one of the M18s that is in use all over Kamchatka as a primary means of transportation to remote areas. It was an odd sensation as we took off but we got used to it in the end, but I didn’t think there was any way we would open the windows to take photos as we had been told about by our tourmates who had already done the tour.
After being in the helcopter for a while heading north the tour lady at the front of the helicopter held up a sign for Karymsky Volcano, this is a strato volcano, and one of the most active in Kamchatka, it sits in a 5km wide Caldera formed about 8500 yrs ago, with the volcano starting to grow 6100 years ago. Until 500 yrs ago the volcano had remained relatively dormant for 2300 yrs, but since then the volcano has been active and continues up to the present. In the shadow of the volcano you can also see the remain of Dvor Volcano, the formation of Karymsky cut into the top of Dvor causing it to collapse, also you will a huge acid crater lake by the main volcano in a lake caldera, this lake used to be a fresh water lake, but since its last major eruption it has become an acid lake.
Seeing this amazing volcano and the landscape around it at such close quarters with the aerial viewpoint was amazing, and then something happened that to me was unexpected, the volcano erupted, only a small eruption but it was fascinating to see the plumes of gas and ash push out from the top of the volcano. I turned out this volcano had thes small eruptions every few hours, but the memory of it is still stuck in my mind.
From here we flew around the nearby Maly Semyachik Volcano, 3 stratovolcanos formed at 20000, 11000, and 8000 yrs ago, and the last major eruption took place 400 yrs ago and resulted in the formation of the main crater you can see today. The lake inside the crater was discovered after minor eruptions around 1946, the lake is a hot acid lake that is up 150m deep.
After flying low around this volcano we proceeded to the Uzon Caldera, and landed which once again was an odd sensation but the area inside the caldera looked fascinating. The Uzon volcano formed 300000 years ago, and the caldera formed around 40000 years ago after a series of eruptions resulted in the magma chamber below being drained and the the earth collapsed in leaving only half the volcano and the Uzon caldera. The last huge activity here was around 8500 yrs ago and resulted in the formation of Lake Dalneye. Walking around the trail around the Caldera it is clear that there is a huge amount of heat below the ground despite the area being classified as ‘extinct’, some of the lakes in the crater bubble, there are mud pots of varying sizes bubbling away, and constant plumes of steam and gas in the area. Unfortuantely we were not lucky enough to see a bear in the Caldera they are quite common here and we saw many footprints in both the wet and dry mud.
After a wander around on the wooden walkway around parts of the Caldera with fantastic guides that are stationed there we made the short hop in the helicopter to the Valley of the Geysers. This was a valley discovered in 1941 around the river Geyzernaya (flowing into the River Shumnaya) and is a large area of geothermal activity resulting in geysers of varying sizes from tiny ones to huge plumes. However after a huge landslide in 2007 much of the valley was damaged as the river was dammed by the landslide and resulted in the formation of a lake that buried many of the geysers including the largest and most beautiful ones. A lot of the geysers here now are relatively small, and even the larger ones are unpredictable in how high they spurt, in our case the larger of them barely bubbled over the surface with a lot of steam coming from it despite us waiting patiently for it. Thea whole are does look stunning though, and the great weather meant the colours were fantastic, there are other smallish geysers that make loud noises, and large mud pools. All in all, although the Valley was beautiful, it wasn’t that impressive, but the level of water in the lake is dropping each year and with this more of the buried geysers are likely to become active once again, so it might be worth another visit in a few years. The trip back to the heliport was broken up by a stop at a ‘resort’ (a few huts with a small enclosed thermal dipping trough), with the worst hole in the ground toilets so far, but the food we had there was great and it was a nice place to wind down before the trip north to Tolbachik on the 6WD.
As always with the photogallery below, click the thumbnails to show full photograph.
Related posts:
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
Digg
Flickr
YouTube
