Christmas 2010

So, my dear reader, it has been some time since something adequately interesting occurred that was worthy of a blog post. So here we are:

I finished my first term/quarter/funny semester at Caltech. It was an adventure in a way - a constant balancing act between the competing forces of knowledge acquisition and sleep. Also thrown in the mix were some light teaching duties, which was not without its challenges. All in all I managed, I think, a reasonable balance. Okay, I didn't fail anything!

Back to the main game! I met a local girl in the last month or so, who is in the process of finishing a PhD in applied maths. Well that's how I spell it. Anyway, she invited me to meet her family, and, passing that not inconsiderable hurdle, I was also invited to spend Christmas with some family friends in Boston. Tickets were bought, arrangements were made, and not without a little trepidation! 

Meanwhile it had been raining a lot in southern California - some places getting 3 years rainfall in a week or less, and lots of flooding everywhere. Of course noone knows what to do with this funny wet stuff on the road, so they carry on at 130km/h until something breaks! We got up at 4am and jumped in a cab which took us to LAX, and after minimal carnage were flying (separately) to Boston. On the flight I met a nice older man whos son was a physicist at MIT, amongst other places, working in plasma or something. On arrival at Boston I chilled off and took a cab back to the house, and after watching the US cut of 'the boat that rocked', called 'pirate radio', went to sleep.

At 2:30 the next day I woke up, organised a piano tuner to tune the piano in my room (apparently in desperate need), and then over the next few days hit the streets, checking out MIT, Harvard, and the city. The people we stayed with were also physicists and faculty at Harvard, so my female friend was the odd one out - being a 'mere' applied mathematician. A particular highlight was throwing snowballs at the frozen Charles river to puncture the ice.

Christmas came and went with the distribution of an obscene number of presents - the definite winner being our host, who scored a macbook air! I also made off with a scarf and a Harvard jacket - perfect for schtoinking free food in disguise. And possibly also keeping warm. Snow fell and melted. We saw Tron, which was pretty intense. I thoroughly forgot about my lactose avoidance regimen. All too soon our time was up, 45 episodes of arrested development later, and mother and daughter returned to the airport to return to California.

I, however, had other plans. Soon after I was dropped at the Boston bus terminal, bought a ticket, and wandered off to find my departure bay. The place was FULL, mainly with Hawkeye lookalikes - I stood in line for an hour and very nearly missed the bus I was aiming for. However I just made it. The driver was a jolly fella who sang us a few songs as we motored off north through Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. After a few hours we got there, I was met at the bus station outside the historic Huber's store, and we returned home.

I had not long to rest, however, as it was Christmas party night, for some old friends. And I mean old! I was the youngest person there, then a 36, 41, 63?, 69, 70, and 90 year olds! The party was crazy, so I sponged for the most part, and just soaked up a seemingly limitless supply of food (mostly Maine seafood!). By 10:30 the festivities had wound up, so I crawled into my loft bed underneath a steadily increasing blizzard, watched scrubs, and passed out.

Next morning I was awoken early by the sound of pleasant chatter down below, emerged unscathed, and enjoyed a healthy breakfast, then put on my spacesuit and ventured out into the snowy wastes. About 8 inches had fallen over night, and I tramped around the house in gumboots and jeans, snow shovel in hand, looking for a nice dense wind-blown drift from which to carve my masterpiece. In the end I found some snow which was solid enough to be shoveled out in a brick and placed, although only barely. Some measure of compression continued throughout the day, and many a fractured brick had to be reconstructed by hand. Also requirements on thickness etc saved time by meaning blocks fitted together, but lost time in the number of extra rows to build.

After about 90 minutes I'd built most of the cone, and broke for lunch. Stepping inside I instantly felt warm (tingly toes) and tired, and could barely lift a bowl of soup to my mouth. After lunch I checked in for my flight the following day, then, modifying my apparel, stepped outside once more. The feeling of the iced up snow shovel in my hands reinvigorated me and I put the last 6 blocks in place, sealing the dome. I pulled out my compass, found south, and starting digging and entrance. Within a quarter of an hour, my igloo was all but complete. Inside there was room to stand while hunched, and probably room to seat 4 close friends. It was a fun exercise to build, as I have, over the years, honed my skills, though never had time to finish one properly. Inside was a strange blue light, and later that evening I put some torches inside and the whole thing became a big blue thingo - it was pretty awesome (if I don't say so myself.)

One final point - it had been my ambition to break some ice out of the pond and set it in the side as a window, however it was not to be - the ponds' ice was covered by a four inch layer of slush that I did not fancy messing around with. What a fail!

After one final shovel of all the paths around the place, I retired indoors, ate dinner, chatted about political developments across the world and what might happen next, about Obama and his and our hopes for the future, then retired for the night. This time I read some papers on advanced partial differential equation solvers, but quickly passed out.

Next morning I woke up, ate breakfast, packed, and drove out to wait for the bus. And wait we did. Some light comic relief was provided meanwhile by a retinue of firemen, policemen, and local news crews - Huber's store had been broken into and torched overnight. People really are desperate. After waiting for 90 minutes and seeing the full bus drive by, I was driven to Portland, where I bought a ticket and joined a line so long it snaked all the way back to where it started and back again. I still had some time up my sleeve, having opted for a later direct flight from Boston, so didn't panic excessively. After only 30 minutes or so two buses turned up and I managed to get on the second. Off we barreled down the highway - this time my travelling companion was on her way to a meditation retreat in western Massachusetts. About 2 metres after the New Hampshire - Mass. border our bus broke down, but fortunately some relief was on its way, and before long I was on my way again. I made it to the airport, somewhat stressed, and cleared security. I even had time to use the bathroom before the plane boarded.

Virgin America is something else - mood lighting on entry, food ordering on screen, and free wifi during the holiday period. Finally, I was begged to swap seats with someone on the plane so they could sit next to their girlfriend, and forcing me to accept an upgrade to premium economy, with an exit row, leg room, free food/drink, and earphones. What a deal - where I now write. Hopefully I will soon be back on the ground in Los Angeles and home in sunny, friendly Caltech. An interesting winter break.

UPDATE: The flight ended with minimal drama, aside from a 40 minute wait on the tarmac due to a cancelled flight catchup clusterfuck (tm) at the terminal. A quick return from the airport was followed by a righteous Thai dinner and a screening of 'wizard people, dear reader', which was appropriately hilarious. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPVhmZodaLA

Belated update

Dear valued reader,

Apologies for not writing anything here for a while. Principle reason: Nothing interesting has happened. 

Well, that's not entirely true. I took lots of photos, but most are up on facebook - no time to upload to picasa. If you're on facebook, you know where to find them. They're okay, but they're not exactly erupting volcanoes!

Work proceeds apace. I'm sure I'm exaggerating, but it seems I have about 6 hours a week in which to actually chill, and that's with an optimistic average of 6 hours of sleep per 24 hour block. I also get a fair few zeds in each class, as is my custom!

Every now and then I do something exciting on the weekend. About a month ago I climbed Mt San "Baldy" Antonio with a group of fellow students to a height of 10056ft (or 3250m). It was the highest I've walked (I think) and I could definitely feel the altitude!

More recently, many of the choirs I'm in have done various performances, most of which were successful! A few weeks ago it was the olive harvest on campus, which I think was won by Ricketts Hovse (motivated by free food, I believe!)

Yesterday I noticed a baby turtle in one of the ponds on my way to class - it was maybe half the size of my hand. Awwww!

Two weekends ago I had the combined fun of grading question 2 of the Physics 12a mid-term paper (all 68 copies). It was the first time I've graded anything on this side of the pacific. It took quite some time to meticulously dissect every answer with my fluorescent orange pen of doom, and yet more time to fend off and avoid students finding me to ask for more marks! Fortunately I got grading/marking done in time to go flying on Sunday. I've been attending the odd class on civil aviation theory. I don't think I'll make it this time around, but there's plenty of time left in this PhD to get a private pilot's license! Speaking of licenses my efforts to get a Californian driver's license have been quite amusing. I hired a car (with my Australian license, which remains valid for a week or so more) and practised driving around on the wrong side of the road, without any difficulty. However the department of motor vehicles (or DMV) is the latest and greatest thing. I arrived last Friday 2 minutes after opening (at 8am after a 1 hour walk to get there) only to find that the queue already encircled the building. 3 hours later I made it to a desk and got processed, and by 5 hours into the exercise I'd passed my theory exam and got a learner's permit. Sadly no practical driving tests can be booked until well after my Aussie license expires (FAIL), so I'll have to hire an instructor sooner or later to drive me there and back! (And maybe teach me how to drive on the freeways here...).

No earthquakes of perceptible magnitude so far - I'm tremendously disappointed! Indonesia, I notice, has been getting more than it's fair share of geological activity, with three volcanoes (Merapi, Sinabung, and Anak Krakatoa) all erupting seriously in the last month. This most recent weekend I took off with a dozen or so fellow rock-acapellarians (the Fluid Dynamics) to a hire house in another part of LA for a retreat, which involved a lot of singing (mostly in tune), food, and watching movies. Rocky Horror (with commentary) and Rent were the order of the day. Probably the most amusing thing was that within 2 minutes of the end of a singing rehearsal EVERYONE had at least one laptop open and plugged into any available wall socket to do either homework or write some program. One girl was writing something in assembly - I was impressed! I nearly didn't even take mine along. There were a few moments of held breaths as we tried to figure out the wireless password. Fortunately we got it in the end!

In the meantime I approached a research group doing interesting work to try and suss out a research topic. Currently I've been given a review article to read and see what I think. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1010/1010.5260v1.pdf It's all about merging binary black holes, which manages to be both an extremely elegant problem and an extremely difficult problem all at once. There's also a real possibility someone will detect the gravitational wave signature from one of these in the next few years, so it's an exciting time to be in the field. People have been trying to calculate this sort of thing since the 1960s - apparently it's quite tricky!

A few weeks back was the mid-term election here, which was interesting in the sense of almost palpable apathy, and really impressively poor journalism. In the end the democrats lost the house but clung onto the senate - an impressive feat. Meanwhile most politicians continue to fiddle while Rome burnt. I read the other day that there is a greater degree of income inequality in the US than in almost any other country - much more than in the traditional caribbean or central american plutocracies. Probably the best article I read about it putting a positive spin on it is this one: http://www.slate.com/id/2273708/, which points out that the point of power is to use it, rather than to cling onto it. It only remains to be seen if Obama can unbreak his heart enough to either fight congress back to tax, education, energy, and immigration reform, (and possibly a second term) or if he'd rather play the nice guy all along and hope the winds of hate blow themselves out. Fortunately either way the US has not yet gone the way of most other developed nations and drastically cut research funding, so there's some hope we'll science our way out. Interesting times we live in, yes!

One particularly happy note is that Amazon does free delivery here! It's actually easier and cheaper to buy books from the internet and have them delivered just after you've forgotten about them (awesome surprise) than to walk to the library, borrow the third last edition, lose it, pay fines, and eventually steal it out of spite. At this rate my room will be seismically damped by enormous looming piles of books by the time the next major earthquake strikes.

And that's the news to this minute. Come and visit me!

More videos

Here's a few videos we made in Yakutsk with some couch surfers as a promotion for a local internet company.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLNddIQB__E

Also, we got in trouble for wanton destruction of the environment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZtoGXGBBqA

Enjoy!

Videos are up

I cut together and uploaded some video from the Russia trip:

In chronological order:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgTfBNhfAWs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYVq2qzMkFk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIsPRcz2uoo

Also a video of me playing a piano in Magadan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0cmOHZEF6E

Enjoy!

Florida trip

Last weekend I took the opportunity to catch up with my friend and expert zoologist Vladimir in Florida before he leaves to other, less exciting places! The weather was just turning in downtown Pasadena as I took the metro to union station, and in light rain the flyaway shuttle to LAX airport. I had already checked in on line and received an electronic boarding pass on my phone, which I used to pass through security to proceed to the xray.

I wound up in a queue that led to one of the few backscatter xray scanners. For several reasons (privacy and ionizing radiation being at the top of the list) I opted to get frisked instead of zapped, although the guards were pretty annoyed about it, going so far as to suggest that opting for a frisk was an admission of guilt, which I thought was a bit over the top. As several people have demonstrated fooling x-ray machines is not particularly difficult and the so-called privacy safeguards are a complete joke.

Eg: http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1ASUT_enUS398US398&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=airport+scanner+privacy+breach

http://xkcd.com/779/

This refers to microwave scanners, but is similar in principle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBfHMCiatK0&p=1AA6C5D94197406A&playnext=1&index=81

In summary, I find someone whose face I can see frisking me far less invasive than electronic measures, which I feel have been hastily rolled out with no real evaluation of the long term risks.

Killed time at the airport waiting for the flight (fortunately I was early), and noticed next to the boarding gate was a room entitled 'American Airlines rebooking office', which made me nervous. Not to worry, my electronic boarding pass had me on faster than anyone could actually check it!

I arrived in Florida, and after a short delay, drove with Vladimir back to a neighbourhood near the university, parked the car, then walked across a golf course to his office. Once there we talked Russia, travel, volcanoes, animals, science, teaching, academic careers, and so on for several hours. Having eaten about one decent meal in the last few days I was a bit hungry, but managed to eventually warm up some corn and Vienna sausage, which was a nice relief! Eventually, we retired to the floor of the office and slept, as Vladimir has moved out of his apartment.

The following day we battled blinding sunlight and drove to the Everglades. On the way we discussed the stories of several scientists who managed to defect from the Soviet Union, including a coral researcher (Slava Kurilov) who was prevented from leaving the country, but took a Russian based cruise that went 'close' to the Philippines. At the crucial moment he put on a wetsuit and jumped overboard - four days later he found land! Many years later he formed his own sea-based religion, and subsequently died by drowning in the bath.

Vladimir also told me about the state of universities in Russia. His alma mater is now best known for its UFO research, in which one self appointed expert built a flying saucer landing site with a few million tonnes of concrete, but is still waiting for the first landing.

At length we arrived in the Everglades, and took several walking paths around looking for interesting animals and plants. We saw many snakes, frogs (one was transparent under torch light), toads, alligators, baby alligators, herons, and lots of water. It had rained a lot in the past few days and the Everglades, which is essentially a very broad, shallow sheet of water flowing slowly to the ocean, had filled up a bit. Closer to the sea we saw several vultures and crocodiles, and many fish in the water. Later we checked out a few 'hammocks', or islands of rainforest that originate with crocodile pool digging and eventually evolve into Gaussian humps of hurricane resistant tree growth. Each hammock has its own subspecies of tree shells - shells that climb trees and hang there. Fireflies also blinked. By far the greatest feature was mosquitos, which became fierce in the evening as Venus and Jupiter came up. Apparently in the 50s a cyclist broke his chain at the end of a not particularly long path, and was actually killed by mosquito bites walking the bike the two miles back to the road.

On the drive back I saw a particularly excellent sign, advertising "BT's gentlemen's club - parking and entrance in rear". By now it was about 11pm and we were keen to eat something, so keeping an eye out we saw a Mexican restaurant, ordered ENORMOUS meals, and sat back as an old man with a saxophone played happy birthday in a very jazzy, pitch approximate way.

At length we returned to the office, looked at pictures of Russia, volcanoes, and watched Tim Minchin singing questionable songs. Vladimir told me about Mathias Rust, a man who used to fly people out of the Soviet Union on the one day a year that he knew the border guards were drunk. In 1987 during glasnost, he got the head of security sacked by landing his small plane on red square! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust

Next morning we drove to the beach for a swim. Vladimir explained that the beach with the pretty girls was 200 miles to the south - which I thought was TERRIBLE planning. Such is life. I didn't fully understand previously either, but there's a road which connects nearly all the keys, which is pretty cool. The water at the beach was very warm, so I was able to swim for nearly five minutes before I got tired and drowned. Well, not quite - I can touch the bottom! But despite living in the US for a few weeks I'm yet to undergo a positive shift in density, which is probably a good sign.

Next we visited the Miami Seaquarium, where I managed to catch a few shows and check out many animals. Lots of dolphins, seals, and manatees. I had never seen a manatee in person before - they really are huge sacks of fat with extremely fluid movements that float around eating stuff. Pretty cool really. Saw nurse sharks being fed a few fish, with the odd piranha floating around - they are quite spectacular fish. I saw a sea lion show, which was pretty clever, but also pretty corny - thoroughly aimed at young teenagers or little kids. Still, it was pretty cool seeing what they could do. A key different to the sea shows done at the Manly Aquarium that I remember (as it was explained to us) is that in Sydney the trainers deliberately make their gestures subtle, flexible, and constantly shifting to ensure the seals pay attention. At Miami, it was pretty obvious what the trainers were doing, and that the sea lions weren't really paying attention. Meanwhile a heron managed to steal a few fish, which I think was probably part of the show. Another part of the show is getting splashed, which was pretty funny.

One hour later I went to the dolphin/killer whale show, in which Miami's killer whale (Lolita, her mate Hugo died a few years ago) and 5 pacific white sided dolphins did all sorts of clever stuff. The dolphins were really fast, and able to jump 5m out of the water. It reminded me of a paper on animal creativity I read a while ago, in which dolphins were trained to improvise moves. It took them a few weeks to catch on, but then they went nuts to the point that the trainers could no longer deduce any structure to the moves. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence#Creative_behavior)

The killer whale was also pretty cool, carrying the trainer around, jumping, making big waves, and splashing everyone - not bad for a whale that's longer than the radius of the tank it's kept in! The ethics of keeping whales in tanks is an ongoing question - there's many excellent resources on the web if you're interested. It reminded me of a story I saw in one of Australia's many excellent whaling museums. In Eden (on the southern NSW coast) there used to be a killer whale called Tom who would tow the whaling boats out into the bay, then help his pod herd other whale species close to the shore, where the humans would spear them. Tom and his family would eat the lips and tongue of the killed whales. His skeleton in the museum shows dental wear where he held the rope, although its age at death is much smaller than the duration of this behaviour, suggesting that perhaps Tom's grandfather began helping the hunters. Aboriginal Australians also have stories of killer whales helping them hunt whales from canoes!

Soon it was time to drive to the airport, where I discovered that I'd somehow managed to book my return flight on the wrong day (in fact 3 days previously, well before I'd even left LA). I'm not sure how this took place, as I'm usually pretty careful. Perhaps the online booking system shunted me towards a cheaper fare on a different date without making it obvious, but in any case, after a 2 hour foray into the depths of stupidity and terrible customer service, I forked out another $300 cash (as the previous transaction had got my card blocked by my bank - apparently budget airlines are common recipients of credit card fraud) and made the plane with at least 60 seconds to spare. Budget airline indeed!

On the flight back I spent most of the time up the back in the galley chatting to one of the air hosts - with no inflight food service, they have time on their hands. As a former member of the navy, he had an interesting take on the current administration's attempt to repeal 'don't ask, don't tell' - apparently when he was in the service a gay man outed himself to obtain a discharge, but being annoyed with the process, attempted to out several other men in the unit. Of course even insisting you're straight is grounds for dismissal, so it was just a pain. In essence, the presence of this rule gave people who were belligerent or didn't want to follow orders a way to do so without suffering direct consequences. He also confirmed my suspicion that most gay members of the armed forces are usually the most competent fighters in a unit. The other half of the conversation was about the horrors of the job as a flight attendant. Apparently a few months before an attendant (Steven Slater) flipped off a passenger, stole some alcohol and excited the aeroplane (while it was taxiing) by the escape slide. Style!

On another occasion he delivered a baby, though I never found out if it was named after him. What excitement.

In due course I arrived at LAX, then found a taxi driver who had missed his fare, who drove me swiftly to Pasadena for a very reasonable price and some excellent conversation about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism amongst expat communities before and since 9/11. He was a Lebanese (christian) immigrant, and had heard about the race riots in Australia a few years before. I'm still not sure what the upshot is, but the process of integration is never helped by nationalism, which in my mind is one of the four great evils of the last century (and probably more generally, together with racism, sexism, and religious extremism).

All in all, a very interesting weekend, well worth the huge set-back in terms of homework!

Moving to the US

Before I went to Russia I had largely finished packing for the move, so when I arrived in Los Angeles, toting 7 cases on a trolley, and unpacked in my allocated room, I was surprised just how many enormous books I had brought. I guess there had to be some reason for there being 160kg of luggage!

I soon met my house/apartment mates, who are pretty cool, and explored the local area, though I have yet to sample the Pad See Iew of every Thai restaurant in town.

Last week was orientation week, which consisted in equal measure of procedural lectures (sleeping opportunities) and a series of quite excellent parties with themes like western, hawaiian, etc etc. On Friday I joined a group and climbed part of the San Gabriel mountains for a great view of LA. Photos may be updated shortly. So far it has been sunny every day, the last few days were very very hot as well - easily in the 40s.

Most other administrative boredom has been organised, I have a telephone number, a bank account, and so on. Tomorrow classes begin - I have 10 timetabled, but solid assurances that more than five will result in severe singeing and probably premature death. So I'll see what the tone is this week!

For those who are interested, an excellent website on earthquakes is http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqscanv/. The server is just down the road.

Almost time to begin work for the year! I auditioned for a piano part in a chamber ensemble - I'm pleased to report the resulting train wreck was entirely fitting given my abilities...

Vladivostok and last post

The airbus made a hard landing in Vladivostok, and after the requisite period waiting for luggage and fending off the taxi drivers with particularly pointy teeth. I got a lift into the city (with a 30% discount on the excessive ripoff, meaning I only paid about twice as much as I should have...). After about an hour we arrived at a hotel I thought I could stay at. The woman at the front desk stated with a perfectly straight face that no single rooms were available, but I could take a triple room (for three times the price). I must have looked particularly stupid! After about 10 minutes, however, she 'remembered' that there was a single fare option available, with the possibility of sharing a room.

In the end, I did share a room, but in the morning the fellow (Maxim) insisted I share breakfast with him, which saved me the trouble of shopping for my own! I spent the next two days walking around finding the places I had seen on my previous trip in December 2006 and buying gifts for friends. I usually put of buying heavy stuff until the last stop before home, but there it is time to cut loose!

One particular highlight was the weather, which after 4 weeks of chasing autumn, finally turned to summer again for two days. On the first of September all school children return to school dressed up and with flowers. I visited the museum and was particularly impressed by the exhibition on early sea explorers, including La Perouse. I took advantage of my knee returning to normal to meet with a local couchsurfer Alyona and climb a nearby hill, look at the view, and also to visit the lighthouse at the harbour entrance, accessed by an eroded tidal isthmus. Vladivostok is currently having two new bridges built, partially in preparation for the APEC summit. Even though Moscow is paying for the construction, there are concerns that the city will not be able to afford maintenance!

All too soon it was time to leave. I woke up at 4:15am on the second of September, took a cab to the airport, and took a flight to Beijing. There I was in transit basically all day. I spent some time looking at a 3D TV screen display, which was pretty cool, and compiling statistics of my travel, most of which I have already published here. At length we boarded a flight for Sydney via Shanghai. As we cleared immigration in Shanghai I met Matias Hyde, an Argentinian man who is starting a bike ride from Australia to Spain. His website is www.matiashydetravels.com - it looks a lot nicer than my one!

In Sydney quaranteen asked me to open my bag - there was apparently food buried right at the bottom. When I unpacked it, though, all we could find was a balled up wadd of thermal underwear. Probably not consumable by anyone. Luckily, dad met me at the airport. Now I am safe at home, worried only that my unpacked stuff will cover my bed and prevent me from sleeping!

Photos! Kamchatka photos are now finished (8 shots from the last day added), and photos from Vladivostok and the flight home are up as well. They can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com.au/CaseyHandmer/Vladivostok?feat=directlink

All the photos can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com.au/CaseyHandmer

Overall, I think it was a pretty crazy trip, and I've been surprised and thrilled at how well most of it went. The trip lasted for 77 days, and in nearly every one I tried to do something which I thought would probably fail, but I succeeded just often enough to keep on trying.

In 10 days I will move to California to start a PhD at Caltech in theoretical physics (think Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory). I do not anticipate regular updates on the thrilling sequence of events that will be the next five years of my life, but I may occasionally find time for a photo or two of the lovely Pasadena.

Last days in Kamchatka

The day before yesterday I was awoken at 7:53am by a frantic text message 'wake up, be at the hotel as soon as possible' - presumably there was some chance a helicopter would fly before 3pm (or not at all!). Within 15 minutes I was at the bus stop, and soon enough found myself at the hotel (on the other side of town), where I handed over a frightful amount of money, signed some paperwork, and then headed for the airport.

 

This time there were about 22 people, mostly Russians, taking the helicopter to the hopelessly remote 'valley of the geysers', the second largest geyser field in the world (after Yellowstone). The only other way of getting there is walking, and it takes about 2 weeks. Our guide gave us the safety chat, and insisted we wear set-belts, probably to prevent everyone changing sides to look at stuff as we zoomed past. The helicopter went through its 5 minute preflight warmup, then the engines strained to life and we leapt from the ground as daintily as a frightened elephant.

 

The flight took us north past the home volcanoes Koryaksky and Avacha (at that moment being climbed by about 1500 people as part of a volcano festival), Jeponova, and into the Kronotsky Nature Reserve. At this point large, steep, angry looking cone appeared on the horizon - Karimsky Volcano, so active it is a perfect cone within an older caldera, smoke and ash billowing from the top. Not far away the volcano Maly Semyachik with a large lake in the crater. Once deep blue, the lake is now a white colour, and has always been acidic. Soon we banked to the left and entered a steep-sided canyon with vegetation reminiscent of the cliffs in the Altai.

 

The upper parts of the valley are filled with steam, and we landed quite close to the central building and ranger lodge. Here we could see the results of the landslide that occured in the winter of 2007, apparently without being noticed by anyone until after enormous boulders had stopped about half a metre from the lodge. The landslide also blocked the valley, forming a lake and drowning about a third of the geysers.

 

Discovered in 1941, the geyser field is caused as water seeps down fault lines to hot magma about 1700m beneath the surface (associated with a nearby volcano). This water then bubbles to the surface, forming an intermittent spring, as well as many mud pots, hot pools, and other cool stuff. The plumbing of a geyser can be modelled as a very long vertical straw. Due to the geometry, heat flow by convection (or radiation) is essentially negligible, and so heat is transported by conduction, as well as phase changes. Under intense pressure, steam can form. Bubbles rise through the system until their heat is absorbed by colder water above and the bubbles collapse. I have no idea what the mean distance they travel is, but I suspect not far. Heat continues to be transported upwards, as well as outwards through surrounding rocks, and bubbles form and absorb in a manner analogous to a binary counter. When the counter overflows, so does the geyser, discharging a good quantity of water and resetting the system. It is for this reason that some geysers erupt with very regular periods. Another cool thing is that you can make a geyser erupt by pouring in soap - it affects the viscosity and surface tension of the geyser, releasing the pressure which is building up!

 

While we were there we saw many geysers erupt, including 'grot' (ie 'cave'), which apparently only erupts every few years, and discharged thousands of litres of boiling water about 10m into the air. We also took the opportunity to check out many other steaming holes in the ground, pools of boiling mud, and other awesome stuff.

 

Next we flew in the helicopter to the Uzon caldera, not far away, which are the remnants of a volcano that was most active about 300,000 years ago. The magma chamber emptied and the ground collapsed, forming a large ring of hills about 11km in diameter. In the middle are a series of hot lakes which contain sodium, potassium, sulfer, and aluminium (amongst other minerals). Apparently bears like one of the lakes in particular as the water helps to treat their paws, which can get itchy in summer. We saw enough bear tracks in the area that it seemed likely.

 

Next we flew back over the ranges (sadly without a view of Krashennikov or Kronotsky volcanoes, or the more distant Kluchevskoi group) to the Jeponova river, which was full of salmon in retirement after their spawning activities. We ate a lovely lunch of different varieties of salmon fish, bread, tea, juice, etc. I skimmed some stones and flew a kite. As we were leaving, two other helicopters landed - it was pretty awesome. Above the river (on which some people do rafting fishing trips) was the volcano towering into the clouds.

 

Too soon we had to fly back, arriving at Yelizovo heliport, receiving certificates to mark the occasion (I don't know why...), and of course waiting almost an hour for the airport transfer shuttle. Lost World Tours (the group through whom the agents I booked through booked, who in turn booked through the heli tours group, who leased helicopters from the airport...) seems to struggle a bit with timing...

 

I headed back to the flat, arriving exactly in time with Nina, Denis' mother, who was making a surprise visit and helping the electricity people check the meter. We managed to communicate what time my flight was leaving the following day, and make arrangements to hand over the key.

 

I walked to Tanya and the Australians (Kent and Olya)'s place with a bag full of Russian sweets, we ate dinner and had a 3 hour comedy session, in which we realised the potential of the Russian word for 'shield'. The other highlight was comparing idiom in which the word kitten (or kotyonok) is used. In English 'she was so happy, she was having kittens' seemed to be the most common. In Russian, the equivalent phrase was 'my boss was so happy, he must have run over a kitten'.

 

As I walked back I noticed fog building up near the coast, and the next morning, the entire city was again shrouded. I had been lucky to get the three day window in which I helicoptered and climbed Mutnovsky! With the traffic stopped I wasn't tempted to go shopping, so instead backed my bag and cleaned the flat to within an inch of it's life, and ate all the leftover food. Mmmm.

 

At 3pm Alexsei, Denis' father, arrived. We had tea, I unplugged the electronics, and then he insisted on driving me to the airport. He also insisted that my Russian, which is good enough for most things, was utterly incomprehensible when I said I was happy to take the bus!

 

Airports are boring, but after about 4 hours, I had cleared security (I beeped lots, so was waved through), and boarded the plane. The flight out, in the evening, was one long sunset, but the definite highlight was just after taking off, we punched through the fog, and instantly every volcano in southern kamchatka was visible, including Gorely, which was still erupting. =D. Only Avacha bay was filled with fog, which spilt through passes of mountains ringing the bay and into surrounding valleys. Some time later an airliner passed us going in the other direction at quite close range - but it only took 3 seconds. We were really moving.

 

The airbus made a hard landing in Vladivostok, and I had arrived. Kamchatka was 12 crazy crazy days of volcanoes, in a land that, being at the edge of the world, was never quite finished. I think I will certainly return, though timing is everything!

 

In the meantime I've uploaded photos from Kamchatka except for the flight out, so enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.ru/CaseyHandmer/Kamchatka?feat=directlink

 

The weather improved

The weather finally improved a bit. I borrowed a bike and attempted to ride to the pacific ocean (maybe 12km), but ultimately failed, primarily due to my own incompetence. I saw a road on a map (old trick) and followed it, though it was rather muddy. I saw a barking dog on a chain (no problem), who was then joined by about 7 unleashed dogs who did not like me much at all. I decided to ride another way. I rode around the bottom of the bay until I had a great view of the southern part of the city and a bunch of sunken and semi-sunken ships, as well as Vilyuchinsky volcano, and saw the road curve in a huge arc below me down to the turn-off to the road which would go (via another route) to the ocean. Remembering that I had to ride back (and my knee wasn't real good for walking, though riding was okay), I decided to stop at the top, next to a small army base, and take lots of photos. Fortunately my clothes are now worse than my Russian, so I'm the definition of harmless. Also, Putin left the day before, so probably all the security personnel are still unconscious! I rode back, cooked a hearty dinner of some packaged something boiled or whatever (my memory is not clear - it was not an overwhelmingly amazing dinner), went through the usual routine of exchanging text messages with the travel agent, uploading photos, reading about Australian politics, and sleeping.

The next day I got up early, got a lift to the hotel, waited around for a few hours, got a lift to the heliport. There there were a number of mammoth MI-8 Russian helis sitting on the tarmac, but due to the delays from weather, they were all pretty booked out. I realised at that point that the group I had booked through didn't exactly have priority, and in the end I took a helicopter to Kurilskoye Ozero instead. The preflight safety talk was rapid, in Russian, and can be summarized thus 'the exit is the door you came in through, and you can open the window to take photos'. Which was pretty cool. Soon enough the jet spooled up (best noise in the world) and, incredibly, 7 tonnes of Russian aluminium and steel became airborn and rapidly zoomed south through a series of narrow wooded valleys and past literally hundreds of volcanoes! At some point we popped through a hole in the cloud and then were in sun, the tops of the tallest peaks poking up through the sea of white below. The lake appeared on the horizon and with a shudder and a clatter, the helicopter began to descend, flying low over an island (disturbing hundreds of birds), and landing next to the lodge. Our guides were two interesting local girls with reasonable English, and we soon stumped off down a path accompanied by a ranger with a flare and a big gun to the bear observation platform. Sadly, no bears appeared here that day, so after a rather mediocre lunch (that was rather heavy on packaging) we flew to the lake's (current) outlet to try our luck at the salmon counting station there. Salmon, I hear you ask? Kurilskoye Lake is the world's largest salmon spawning ground. The lake formed 8400 years ago with a rather large volcanic explosion, and is actually much deeper than the surrounding ocean. Once deeper still, the ancient outflow to the pacific was blocked by the formation of a number of new volcanoes around the crater rim (now well over 2000m high!), and a new outlet to the sea of Okhost formed, causing the lake level to drop more than 40m. 

At the salmon counting station we walked through the camp to a bridge built across the river with a net designed to direct the salmon through narrow gates where they can be counted every hour or so. Salmon waiting for the opening scudded back and forth creating a serious surface disturbance. By far the most excitement, however, was a dozen Kamchatka bears swimming in the river catching the salmon and carefully eating the salmon eggs, then other parts before discarding the head. The bear uses the back of its non dominant arm as a platform to hold the unlucky fish on! Of the bears, 4 of them were cubs of various ages, and the bears quite frequently swum, splashed, stood up, fought, and basically did everything else their contract required of them. I melted a set of batteries taking photos, but was probably the least photo-ey person there. Half our group were middle-aged Korean tourists, all of whom had cameras which were either obscenely enormous or absolutely minuscule. Mine has got to the point where I have to squeeze the bottom if I want the zoom to work, etc etc! After a while we had to vacate so the counters could do their counting, so we reboarded the helicopter, watching the pilots go through some intricate choreography involving flicking switches, and then feel the five bladed rotor's collective thump into position and once again we were airborne. These helicopters can easily carry a (small) car, so if I can somehow raise the $25000/day running costs, I might move into one permanently! Also they're kinda loud...

We flew to the base of a nearby volcano where there was a lake that steamed with water at 43C. The clouds had lifted to the point where nearby volcanoes were visible to about half way up, creating the impression that we were surrounded by steeply sloping columns covered in trees or tundra. Soon, however, we had to get moving again as the weather was not improving. As we flew back towards Gorely volcano (which has recently become much more angry) the clouds parted and the impossible landscape of twisting gorges, glaciers, pinnacles, layers of ash and ejecta, and the superposition of maybe 40 generations of volcanic activity was illuminated by streaks of light which seemed to rotate in real time as we cruised by at 260km/h. Too soon we circled the heliport and made a rolling landing on the short airstrip. Russian helicopters are built with wheels rather than skids. We eventually drove back to the hotel where I ordered a 3 course meal, then ate the other tour groups 3 course meal as well (they had spare). Back to the flat and sleep.

Today I woke up, again, absurdly early (maybe 5:40am), and took a cab across town to the hotel where I was met by our tour guide for today. A four hour drive in a Mitsubishi Delica (a 4wd people mover) took us via the museum of natural disasters (an extensive rocky/ashy plain) to the base of Mutnovsky volcano. The path winds inwards towards the caldera up a steep-sided slot canyon, revealing bit by bit what you came for! The path largely was composed of a thin layer of mud over glacial ice that filled the base of the gorge (even in summer). Quite frequently one is surprised to find a glacier hiding beneath layers of exposed moraine, even quite far from a mountain or apparent source.

Mutnovsky is composed of three large craters. The first, largest, and oldest is cut by a deep river valley, and the opposite face is covered in a tumbling glacier, with enormous rocks perched above, vanishing in and out of mist composed part of cloud, part of boiling brimstone. The smell was... sublime. We left the glacier and climbed to a lookout, surrounded by fumaroles spewing out steam at temperatures between 150 and 300C, some sulfur subliming to form insane and quickly changing formations of bright yellow and almost green. With our sleeves over our mouth and nose we walked through a wall of steam (two distinct smells, one of sulfur, one like burning matches) into the more remote parts of the caldera. The stream flowed swiftly to our left, dotted with geysers and chunks of ice amidst a mozaic of rocks of all different colours. Above us the opposite side stretched steeply to the exposed edge of an ancient glacier with one particularly large rock teetering on top. The second caldera was filled by a glacier than nearly did a figure of 8 to reach it. The opposite wall was steep sided with several large water falls, the glacier was riven with crevasses that stretched lengthways, and periodically the area was filled with the sound of falling rocks as the volcano continued its rather fast journey to flatness. Volcanoes tend to erode very quickly as they are composed of unconsolidated rock (mostly). At this point the sun came out, and the glacier glittered white, while water pools in the bottom of the crater glowed deep blue. We risked a short walk on a precarious mud/dirt track to the third, and most active crater. This crater had a major eruption in 1970 and a smaller one in 1993, but today was largely obscured by huge clouds of sulfur crystals blown upwards by rising heat. In short spaces we saw the bottom - a deep hole filled with fumaroles and mud!

We turned around and made our way down to the floor of the second crater, walking on the glacier. I of course skimmed a few rocks on the lake between the ice, and then we headed back down the valley. As we emerged from the other end of the canyon, we had a terrific view across the plateau towards Gorely volcano. Composed of 11 major craters (from 3 intersecting volcanoes) the central one was continuing to blow large amounts of steam from its newly formed vent. Volcanoes in Kamchatka are more than capable of dumping cubic kilometres of dirt into the stratosphere, so it remains to be seen if Gorely's activity will continue to intensify, however at its current state it could (hypothetically) be approached with little danger. We drove down the slope to a rocky promontory, from which we had an excellent view of a waterfall. The canyon continues down the mountain, and beyond the end of the glacier, drops about 30 or 40 metres into a very deep canyon surrounded by steep rocky scree slopes - falls are not infrequent, according to our guide. The canyon cut the side of the slope, revealing many layers (each about 4 metres deep) of the volcanoes eruptive history; ash ejection followed by lava flow, and vice versa.

Back in the car and the drivers took a 'short cut' across a field of substantial boulders to the main road (built to service the geo-thermal power plant nearby), from where a 3 hour drive returned us to the hotel. This time I opted for pancakes only and headed back to the main road to catch a bus south to my flat before they stopped for the night. After about 5 minutes waiting, who should drive by but two people I met from the tour (and with whom I posed in front of Vilyuchinsky volcano in a handstand), who offered me a lift all the way to CRV, a drive of about 20 or 30 minutes. Thankyou!

Once here I had a quick shower, and contended once more with a towel which exceeds the size of the bathroom in every dimension. When using it many hands are required to keep the corners from the bath, floor, sink, and toilet bowl!

Tomorrow, with any luck, I will take another helicopter (at this rate I have spent about as much in 3 days as I did in the previous 3 months - which was kinda the point of hitchhiking!) to the valley of the Geysers, Karimsky, Maly-Semyachik, Kronotsky, Krashennikov, and Uzon volcanoes, etc etc.

In the meantime I uploaded photos from Magadan and Khabarovsk - now all that is required are photos of Kamchatka (of which there are a few) and photos of Vladivostok, which I haven't taken yet.

http://picasaweb.google.ru/CaseyHandmer/MagadanKhabarovskAndAeroplanes?feat=directlink

Biking

Heli to lake

Mutnovsky

Magadan photos

Fog, rain, snow, wind.

In Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the weather has continued to be miserable, and helicopters are not working. Just my luck that I can't blow my life's savings on a 3 hour flight to some glorified conical pile of rocks! In the meantime I've visited places of interest, eaten pancakes, and walked around a bit. I managed to get iliotibial band friction, I'm not sure how (probably sitting badly on a bus), which has limited my walking range. Fortunately there are buses in the city, which I've taken around the place. Visited the music college and played their piano, but it was no comparison to the one in Magadan. Also yesterday visited the institute for volcanology, and used my lack of Russian to fail to understand 'no, the museum is closed' until they let me in. :) 

In the meantime have continued to upload photos - the album covering the Kolyma highway is now complete! Yay! It can be viewed here: http://picasaweb.google.ru/CaseyHandmer/KolymaHighway#

I also had some friends over at different times for dinner, which I improvised given available ingredients and which turned out quite well. 

With any luck helicopters will fly today or tomorrow, and my leg will be good enough to climb Gorely (which is currently erupting whee!!) and Mutnovsky (which has waterfalls, glaciers, sulfur flowers, fumaroles, and hasn't erupted in 17 years).

More photos and not much else

Today I got up early for the helicopter ride, but was informed in the nick of time that it was delayed until 2pm. I uploaded a bunch of photos, and then was told that because Putin arrived in town today (contrary to earlier reports), airspace is closed until further notice, in case he wants to take a helicopter to see the attractions I paid about 1000 bucks to see last week, but had bad weather, etc etc etc. So yay - I get a taste of the Russia that people who live here deal with on a daily basis. I guess it's only fair.

Instead, I cut my losses, met Julia (a couchsurfer and linguist) at the music school, managed to con/charm my way into a music practise room, where as soon as I touched the keys, all doubt was erased. The secretary then went from querulous suspicion to curiousity. I played some music and discussed musical theory and notation with Julia. After a few hours, I gave my splintered nails a break (this piano was not quite the Ferrari I had at my disposal in Magadan), and returned home.

At home I met Roman, a friend of the man who's flat I'm borrowing, and cooked dinner with what I could find in the fridge. It was rice boiled in juice, chopped tomato and egg fried on the stove, and sliced cucumber with salt - a winning combination. He showed me some photos from Mutnovsky - which may be as close as I can get if the current environment of tour paralysis continues, and then departed. I uploaded yet more photos, and have completed the section from Baikal to Yakutsk via the BAM. The next section will cover the trip from Yakutsk to Magadan via the Road of Bones. Be afraid, be very afraid. All these photos is one upshot of enforced idleness through a combination of uncertainty over tours, bad weather, and a sore knee (from cramped buses, funnily enough!).

http://picasaweb.google.ru/CaseyHandmer/BaikalTheBAMAndYakutsk?feat=directlink

Yay photos!

Some photos from Russia up

http://picasaweb.google.ru/CaseyHandmer/RussianAltaiAndSiberia#

Some space issues being resolved now. This takes us to the shores of Lake Baikal. Enjoy!

Casey Handmer

Hot mud and rain

Yesterday the tour agent informed me that due to bad weather, helicopter flights had been cancelled. This was a shame, but they suggested I meet with their friends to go to a remote hot spring and so on, for the day. I was given a time and a place, but no names or numbers. After making the rendezvous point I wandered around shivering slightly for about 10 minutes, wondering just how this was going to work. After a while I saw a man in camo water proof clothing (pretty common in Russia, actually) say the words 'Australian' and 'red hair' in Russian, and so all was sorted. We jumped in a series of buses and taxis, then walked about 4km. Along the way the man (Nikolai) carried an empty plastic bag, which he proceeded to fill with an astounding variety of leaves which he spotted, then bounded off the track to collect. In the meantime, he whistled a bit to warn the bears we were coming. There were 7 of us in total. The track steadily degraded, and passing a half submerged car, degenerated into a loamy, peaty track next to a swiftly flowing stream. At last the scenery opened out to reveal a rather makeshift looking hut next to an ancient, mineral encrusted well-head, presumably sunk into underlying strata. Hot water bubbled up, and ducted through several insulated pipes to heat the hut, filled a series of mud-lined dams before flooding a section of ground filled with dead Birch trees. Several decaying slabs of reinforced cement completed the picture, and combined with the smell of sulfur, it was really quite something.

We dumped our food on the table, stripped to our underwear, and took off down the track towards the river. The river ran between muddy banks (not the usual stones), and was freezing. I decided it was now or never and had a dip, which was actually not nearly as painful as I thought it might be. We returned to the pools and gradually immersed ourself in water that was pretty hot. Rolling around in the mud and clay (a deep blue colour) we soaked and steamed until we were bright red and puffy, and there was nothing for it but to run back to the river and jump in. Putting your head under stimulates the mammalian diving reflex (in a BIG way), which is probably why the experience wasn't fatal! After a while we scraped off most of the mud, dressed, and ate most of the food we'd brought. Nikolai poured his leaves into a cauldron and cooked up an amazing tea. We left in quite a hurry to meet the taxi driver, and sadly I forgot my wet underwear, which I'd left on one of the pipes to dry.

About a 40 minute walk back (no sign of bears), then a series of 3 buses taking about 2 hours (one of which was full of men from the navy), and I was home. I cooked about 60 ANZAC biscuits (though some went missing in action...), then walked across town to meet another couch surfer (Tanya), her family, and two couchsurfers from Australia. They are the first Australian tourists I've seen the WHOLE trip (there were 3 others, geologists and mining engineers in various places), and to my delight I discovered I had not forgotten how to speak the lingo. We chatted for the rest of the evening. My knee had got a bit sore (from the bus ride after climbing the volcano, crammed into a tiny seat!), but Olya, who is a physio, confirmed that it was nothing too serious. I put my raincoat back on and struggled through wind and driving rain (which looked amazing under yellow street lights) to my flat, where I took a shower (win!), closed the door (win!), and slept on a bed with sheets (win!!!). 

Today the weather is awful, so I slept in, then ate food and uploaded photos. They are visible here:

http://picasaweb.google.ru/CaseyHandmer/MongoliaTheFarWest?feat=directlink

This album completes Mongolia, meaning I'm only 46 days behind now.

Kamchatka rocks my world

I'm sure I can work a geology joke from the title... - stay tuned.

Last post left me just arrived and already found some nice people to spend time with. One cool thing was Vasily's prospectus for studying in Australia. The photos for Sydney Uni were of the St Paul's College quad, and the harbour bridge from Milson's Point, which is a ferry wharf, not a uni. UNSW same story. Kudos to Macquarie for actually having a photo of their campus!

In other news, I was also published. Some honours work from last year finally matured to the point of being accepted by Optics Letters, so yay! Here's a link: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?URI=ol-35-17-2846

If you actually click it, and then read the abstract, and don't want to pay 35 dollars for further confusion, and your curiousity has not been quashed by the limpid prose and completely oblique subject matter, send me an email - I have a copy!

I heard some Russian jokes which I thought were funny. Probably after I tell them here they'll be eviscerated from the national memory (at the least), but here they are!

The Russians say that east of European Russia, there are no roads, only directions. *cue laugh!* This is actually not so far from the truth.

In response to one of my maps a friend stated "We have no maps of Magadan, except for one that Russian spies stole from the CIA - which must be that one!" Think about it!

Back to the narrative. Yesterday I got in touch with four local couchsurfers (and friends), and hung out for the day. The first problem was that none of the tour agencies I had researched on the web seemed to be in business anymore - the ghost web. Fortunately, the first Cser (Anna) works for a hotel which does tours, so I went there and signed over my life's savings for a helicopter ride (in a Mi-8!!!!!) to some valley with geysers or something. The important thing is that I nearly melted the ATM paying for it. 

The next couchsurfer I found was a 20 year old linguistics student called Julia, who spoke better English than I did. I knew nothing about her prior to our meeting except her telephone number, and was somewhat surprised to see such a young Cser, even with braids and stuff. Not to worry, Julia told me about her solo travel experiences in Japan last month, which was pretty impressive. Also, at long last, I found someone willing to swap swear words in the 10 or so languages I know them in! You would have thought any of the 15 truck drivers in Magadan could have taught me one each, but they were too bashful. Nevermind - the school girls know them all! (And most of the English ones too). It reminded me of a time in Japan a few years back when I conversed painfully with a girl in French (those of you who have heard me speak French will understand the pain), but who was very enthusiastic when it came to swapping dirty language. 

It wasn't all fun and games, however. We also discussed physics, atheism, stone skimming, dance styles, travel styles, and a few hundred other things! At some point we saw a police Uaz jeep in hot pursuit of something. That something is safe, however. Uazes have many virtues, and speed is not one of them! That evening we met some more people and climbed the central hill (again) to watch the sunset. Following this I went home and cooked an excellent dinner, then stayed up WAY too late using the internet.

Doing what, you may ask! Since no more photos have yet appeared. I did a backup yesterday. There are about 5000. I'm less than keen to start climbing that mountain! However, I was watching science revu ee videos on youtube. They've shot some really funny advertisements, (but for some reason they're not on youtube... =P). Still, the ones that are can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/user/sciencerevue

Other cool stuff in town is Vladimir Putin, who arrived yesterday (maybe). He will shortly be joined by Medvedev (the president) and the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. They're opening a new church in town, and probably closing the airspace on the one clear day I have to fly around. But in any case, it's nice they could make it here for me!

4:30am the next morning I woke and took a cab to the rendezvous point for the climbing tour. We piled into minibuses and departed at 6am. The bus drove to the edge of the city then wound up a ashed filled creek, with plenty of bumps to test if 10 days had really mended my back post crash. No problems, and after the van navigated impossible potholes and washouts, we arrived at basecamp, where the advantage of paying became evident - free (sort of) food! After we took about 4 million photos of Avachinsky and Koryaksky volcano we set off. At this point I discovered on our tour was a translator from Moscow, who also spoke better English than me, so we had a great chat (while everyone else was huffing and puffing) about linguistics, case structure in Latin (and the untimely demise of the instrumental in said great language), walking style, volcanoes, helicopter maintenance techniques, and so on. Our guide insisted on maintaining a 10cm per step pace, which I (probably alone) found rather frustrating. I'm a great believer in minimising the number of steps by taking huge ones, but since the climb took about 6 hours over all, some degree of pacing wasn't a bad idea. Early on a few people flaked out - later on a few more people who should have flaked out opted instead to slow the group down, meaning that by the time we got to the summit we had a great view of the inside of a cloud. However, all was not lost - during a few moments on the ascent (sliding on 40 degree scree slopes with permafrost above terrifying glaciers, etc etc etc - think Mount Doom only with less hobbits) and on the summit the clouds cleared, affording an excellent view to more distant clouds covering the ground and surrounding volcanoes. Over the course of the day no fewer than 7 other major volcanoes were visible, the closest being (of course) Koryaksky, which is about twice as steep and also erupted last year.

Disapointingly, no eruption occurred today, so the climb was uneventful in that respect. A steam/ash plume from Gorely was visible in the distance. At the top the wind was very strong, the smell of sulfur pleasant (in my mind!), and the mountain steep. The summit is at 2714m, which is high enough to feel the effects of a thinner atmosphere. When climbing the more active volcanoes altitude sickness kicks in earlier and harder due to CO2 inhalation! SO2 forms sulfurous acid in your lungs, and thus climbing volcanoes is something which probably shouldn't be done every day!

The climb down could have taken about 15 minutes, but our guide decided instead to not opt for a 15% fatality rate and picked a speed that I would have liked going up! Even so, once the tricky permafrost section had been negotiated, thick gravel on a very steep slope made for a quick and soft descent. Often climbing down mountains is as hard as up, due to the constant jarring motion. In this case it was more of a semi controlled slide. I opted at the beginning not to take walking sticks (bipedalism is confusing enough for me!) and to everyone's surprise managed not to fall over, despite about 100 close calls! We dropped down 3 or 4 steep slopes in quick succession, filling our shoes with gravel and our hair with mist. At the bottom we piled into the almost sliflingly warm kitchen and were served salad and potato soup (the Russian staple) with an option for tea, biscuits, etc. Due to a series of complicated events I had been carrying food for someone who gave up very early on, so I had plenty to eat the whole day. Happiness!

We swapped email addresses, got back in the vans, and bounced back to the city. I returned to my (Denis') flat, had a wonderful hot shower (hot water works again in Russia after a month of repairs in summer = yay!), bought ingredients for anzac biscuits, but forgot to buy pasta (no matter, I'll live on biscuits for a week!), and made some plans for tomorrow.

In the meantime, I need to catch up on some sleep. I have photos, I have internet, if I have boredom, you will have photos. In the meantime, sit tight! (I uploaded five from the first day to facebook, if you're desperate!).

Magadan - Khabarovsk - Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky

I wound up my wonderful week in Magadan with a private performance at the music school and a session repairing the guitar hero drum kit of my couch surfing host. To my relief the repair went perfectly and we spent many fine hours playing the best of western pop!

Next morning I went through the familiar ritual of packing and saying goodbye to people I have bonded with and will probably never see again. But one can hope. Took a bus to the airport, where security was pretty interesting. Luggage was thrown into the truck by hand, then driven through heavy rain to the plane, where it was also loaded by hand. Wall was decorated with stamped metal sheets commemorating events and locations in Russia. Several planes of defunct airlines were parked on the grass nearby, their rear engines and drooping wings (in the Soviet style) looking both sad and menacing at the same time. In the departure lounge I met another Australian (the third for this trip!), a geophysicist who was doing work at Cupol, where apparently the ore grade is as good as 28g/T in places, meaning the extraction cost is about $340/ounce, and the market price is around $1200/ounce. Like a gold mine! Apparently their capacity of 1000T a day of ore is unspectacular - some other mines manage as much as 20000T/day. Hooray.

The flight had a great view of the tops of clouds, some coast lines, secret military installations, the enormous Amur river (joined by the Ussuri river at Khabarovsk), and about 20 uniformed and face-masked troops sitting at the back of the plane.

In Khabarovsk I found a Cser with 2 very cute kittens, chatted, walked around the city, and slept the night. The next morning after a brief walk, more talking, and farewells I had to depart - one of my quickest couch surfs ever (mainly because of difficulties in getting plane tickets). Back at the airport things went much more smoothly. I had a lunch of chocolate and apple juice (probably a little high on sugar), and passed security without a blip. This was regarded as suspicious (I had even removed my belt buckle), so I was frisked by one very lucky Olga! Back to the plane, which also had excellent food (kudos Vladivostok Air!), more secret military installations, and a flight to Kamchatka over Sakhalin Island, which I've heard is very beautiful, but looked green and flat from way up high. I've heard the main hobby of people on the island is to make home-made gliders and test them by being dragged behind jeeps. Frequent crashes and broken bones!

The plane cruised over Kamchatka. Kamchatka resembles a flint spear point thrust into the Pacific Ocean, and is quite young (only 4 million years). Somewhat similar geographically to New Zealand, it has the highest density of active volcanoes of almost anywhere on the planet. Which is why I'm here! The plane cruised past two biggies, Koryaksky and Avachinsky, landed at the airport, and we disembarked (by bus, of course). Waited for luggage and just watched these two mountains. Only 30kms or so from the city, both are active. Koryaksky is currently in an eruptive phase, and Avachinsky erupts about once every 10 years, last in 2001. One can hope :). Avachinsky is about 2700m, Koryaksky 3456m, but both their summets were hidden by layers of clouds, as their flanks were covered in forest stripes with lava flows. This place is as close as one can get to heaven. One might even say the edge of the world, where some bits are still in pieces!

Took a bus into the city to Avacha hotel, a place with 5 star prices and 3 star standards, but a cheap dinner, clean room, comfortable bed, 47 channels on TV (one in English - Russia Today, but basically propaganda), and two Caterpillar reps from South Africa, with whom I had a good chat. Shower, food, clean clothes! Hooray. Also waiting for me at Avacha hotel (which was an enormous pain to organise) was a postal ballot for the Australian federal election, which I duly completed (voting below the line for the senate, of course!), enveloped, and posted the following morning. I read (at 8pm, when I recieved the delivery), that the outgoing envelope must be post marked on or before the 18th of August, which was the same day. Obviously this was impossible, but I pointed out in my letter (in which I had to explain why no Australian could witness the procedure) that I was unfairly close to the wrong side of the international date line and that this would be posted while it was still the 18th on more than half of the world. If Russian post even works at all. Hypothetically, I could have chartered a plane to Anchorage... ;P.

Next morning I woke early, ate breakfast (included in the $150/night bill), posted the letter, and tried to get in touch with a couch surfer's father. Said Cser, Denis, is out of the city but promised to lend me his flat. Neither he nor his father (who had the key) spoke English, so it was an adventure. But in time for the checkout it was all organised (with the help of a friend who speaks English, admittedly - though I would like to think my Russian contributed only 50% of the difficulty - the remainder being the fact that my phone's speaker is less than functional...) and I have the run of a flat for 2 weeks, free of charge. I was pretty embarassed by this generousity and good fortune, but then Denis' mother Nina handed me two shopping bags full of groceries and insisted I was too skinny. Now it's nearly midnight and I look forward to eating something, but am too busy completing a blog update!

In the meantime I met an English speaker randomly on the street who offered to show me the best places in the city (and saved me a big walk up the central hill), for an awesome view of the entire city nestled between extinct cinder cones and the distant peaks of Koryaksky and Avachinsky, the bay, the river delta, the port, the closed city and volcano of Vilyunchinsky across the bay, and on the horizon Mutnovsky, yet another volcano famed for unique sulfer formations in the crater.

In the evening Denis' friend Roman and I walked around the square and 'lover's hill', skimmed some rocks, and watched an awe-inspiring sunset before returning to the flat for tea. This place is unreal! I thought maybe I saved Kamchatka for last for financial reasons (helicopters are not cheap), but now realise I saved the best for last. I often thought Scarborough (north of Wollongong) or Sydney's northern beaches could be improved by the addition of a few stratovolcanoes, and here's a place that offers a pretty good idea of what that would be like. So, people, start digging!

Magadan adventures

Since arriving in Magadan, I spent a few days recuperating in the hotel, chatting with miners as previously mentioned, and compiling a list of Russian swear words. Many other Russians had declined to teach me any, saying I would learn more than enough in Magadan, but until the crash I had heard none. The crash afforded an excellent opportunity to hear them used in context and with the correct inflection. 

I got on the couchsurfing horn and found a few locals to hang out with. One couple (Anna and husband) were very keen to show me around, and drove me to the beach, the Mask of Sorrow, and many other places. Anna's mother is part of Rotary, and they have often had American exchange students, which explains why Anna's English is so good! At one point Anna's cousin drove us to a local beach. As we passed the police post we saw dozens of cars with illegally tinted windows waiting for one to make the sacrifice and cop a $20 'straf' or fine, so the others could then herd past. We swapped drivers, because the cousin didn't have his license. I thought maybe it would be a problem, because Anna's husband is a police officer, but quite the opposite. Russia! Also, Anna's cousin described several intrusions by bears at their dacha! The beach was framed between steep rocks and cliffs and leaden autumnal skies and was suitably spectacular!

Speaking of bears, the Russian word is Medved (as in the president). Medved, I discovered today, comes from the word myod (meaning honey) and an old word for 'to know', 'vedit' (as in the Sanskrit). Cool huh?

Anna's husband also followed up some details of the crash, finding that the car was a 1996-1998 model Hilux (but new looking!) that had recently been sold. This is pretty much a dead end as far as getting an official police report and insurance, but fortunately my costs were very low. 

I investigated visiting the Magadan Zapovednik, or nature reserve a few 10s of km from Magadan, most easily accessible by boat. This nature reserve is mainly a marine reserve centered around some stupendous rock stacks (similar in a way to the 12 (7.5?) apostles in Victoria) with bajillions of nesting sea birds and so on. I heard today that recently an unlicensed Brazilian scientist was found adrift out there missing socks, so I think the chance of hitchhiking out there tomorrow is pretty slim. If I come back next decade in a helicopter, I'll visit the Zapovednik, Jack London Lake, and the Pole of Cold, amongst other interesting things I know of hidden in the Taiga.

This evening, following a stupendous lunch celebrating Anna's grandmother's 85th birthday, we visited a local banya, which was inspirational. In the meantime I organised a home stay with another couchsurfer, Elena and her boyfriend Sergei, who just got back from a 25 day trip to Turkey and Scandinavia, and have just the right amount of jetlag to stay up all night playing games on their xbox or playstation. They also have a large number of very nerdy friends who visit to play guitar hero (though encouragingly, not very well), oggle pictures of a cleanroom I worked in a few years ago, and provide interesting conversation. One tennet of the conversation is the similarities between Magadan and Australia, as both started life essentially as very remote prisons of a colonial power. In Magadan's case, however, it was built by intellectual exiles. Many millions died in camps in Kolyma, but enough survived to give the city interesting architecture (some of it built by Japanese POWs) and flavour. In many ways the most remote power here is Moscow - China, Japan, Australia, US are all closer. Later this evening 4 guys joined Elena, Sergei, and I to watch Japanese anime, but had to spend about 25 minutes (longer than the anime itself) syncing the Russian subtitles on a transparent window on a remote screen - transcendent nerdiness the hard way! I have never felt more at home.

I've also been steadily patching holes in my jeans (about half as fast as they appear), and spending an hour or two each day at the music college attempting to bring Godowsky's transcription of Chopin's revolutionary etude under control. Words cannot describe how relieved I was to find my piano abilities (already and perpetually at dangerously low ebb) undiminished by the crash! Another peculiarity of Magadan is that although the local airport (only 50kms away) services most local airports, including Anchorage from time to time, the cheapest flights are to Moscow, due to competition.

I was dismayed to realise I'd left one small detail out of my description of the crash. As I started in the front passenger seat and finished upside down (with respect to the car) in the opposite side back seat, I performed personally the coordinate inversion (x,y,z)->(-x,-y,-z), thus underscoring the validity of Hamiltonian Dynamics in this particular instance.

Finally, two days ago I walked to the base of the TV tower at the top of the hill and the end of Lenina Ulitsa. There is a view down the road maybe 5km, however the road continues unbroken nearly 1700km past the port of Khandyga to the bank of the Aldan River, making it probably the longest main street of any town in the world!

Magadan!

For those who are interested, here's some stats on the trip.

2025km, 26 vehicles, 12 days, one crash, $250 net expenditure. Of that all but food (maybe $30) was discretionary - that is, I paid for a night in a hotel when I could have camped, had I been sufficiently stingy.

 

In Magadan I explored the city on foot (albeit slowly!). I found the music college, at which I had a contact from Ust-Nera, and played the piano well enough to get an invitation to see the regional museum with a guide (in Russian...) and free of charge. Aran, the head of the music school, plays the piano accordion!

 

At the hotel, a steady stream of foreign and English speaking mining people made their way through. I spent last night in the bar chatting to two guys who between them had enough stories and interesting goss to fill a book. One worked in a not-so-near nuclear power station, but said that a visit would be impossible due to tight security, which he then outlined in excruciating detail. The other specialises in deep hard-rock mining and provided heaps of information I was curious about - like how do the Russians remediate oil-spills on the site? Covering with more dirt, apparently! Magic!

 

In the meantime I also saw the sea, which is quite amazing. 53 days travelling overland, and finally have seen the sea (and it's not frozen over, which is a bonus). The seagulls like it too. :) I continue to live it up in the hotel (where my habit of photographing everything translated to a free dinner).

 

One problem continues to bug me - internet cafes are in short supply. I have heaps of time - as soon as I find one which can do USB I'll upload 1000 photos from Mongolia and Russia. Until then, try and imagine the awesome.

 

Corrections, etc

Hello peoples! A short post to say that Vladimir Dinets' websites are actually:

http://dinets.travel.ru and

http://vdinets.livejournal.com so click through and make google happy!

 

Also, it goes without saying (almost) that all the text I've punched out on crappy keyboards in mudbrick internet cafes are mine, also the photos that my ancient camera somehow saved in JPEG format (rather than bass-relief) are copywrite. If you want to use some text or photos or retell my stories as your own, that's fine, just ask me first. I'll probably say yes. If you want to plagiarise my pulitzer worthy prose and (I don't know) very good photos, then don't. Save a few thousand bucks and go hitch-hiking yourself! Just don't flip a hilux on a dirt road... Also you'll have some difficulty stealing my photos as I haven't been able to upload very many of them. Shucks.

 

More stuff - I want to thank my brother Marcus who came to the rescue when internet proved elusive along the way, extracting data from google and who knows where and providing useful information, like which towns were abandoned (interesting, but no hotels), and the straight line distance from Ust-Nera to Tomtor (150kms).

The Kolyma Highway, or, In Soviet Russia, luck pushes YOU!

I left Yagodnoye with half a plan to visit Jack London lake, a picturesque lake amongst the mountains about 50km to the south. I hitched quickly to the junction, and to my surprise, found the bridge in perfect condition. Realising that a 60km walk (and 60km back) through bear infested territory was not such a good idea (I only had 2 days of food with me), I decided to walk anyway. About 1km, to the first pass to get a good look down the valley. After a quick chat to some guys who were there in their UAZ to pick berries, and a lift back to the highway, I skimmed stones in puddles, ate biscuits, and considered the problem of a mud-water boundary layer (which supports very slowly propagating waves).

 

Not long after, a man in a van gave me a lift 100km down the road to Debin, a town that was once the administrative center of the Kolyma gulag, at the junction of the road from Magadan and the river itself. According to Solzhenitsyn's interviews, in winter the place was an array of tents surrounded on 3 sides with frozen bodies piled 6 deep, as the snow was too deep to attempt burial. Today, there are a handful of inhabitants, an abandoned TB sanatorium, and a newish single lane bridge over the river. Soon a passing UAZ ute gave me a lift down the road towards Orotukan. First, however, we had to stop at a gold mine and refuel two graders, which circled the tiny truck like barracuda before each parking about 2mm away on either side and pumping diesel from some cans in the back. When I attempted to jump out to photograph the process I found BOTH the inside and outside door latches of my door were not functional, but that a well aimed blow could open the door. Later, we picked up 4 workers in the back, and their door wouldn't latch shut, in some kind of odd symmetry.

 

In Orotukan I bought some juice and snacks and waited about 40 minutes for a lift. A guy drove out of the town in a nearly new Toyota Hilux. I thought - wow! Best car of the trip. The driver knew it too, and slowed to 20km/h in muddy sections to avoid getting mud down the sides too. Just after Orotukan we passed a memorial for 7 people killed in a crash 2 weeks before. Trucks throw up enormous dust clouds, and somehow 2 of the four cars which see the road each hour managed a head-on in one of these dust clouds. My driver seemed quite upset by this - as you can imagine, very few people live in the region, and he almost certainly knew some of them. They were in a minivan doing a run from Yakutsk to Magadan - more or less how I would have travelled had I paid. Not long after we picked up another hitchhiker - a Russian who has travelled quite widely and hoped to travel to Canada. We paused in Atka, a village with about 200 people left in between the usual windowless empty apartment blocks, for a quick snack, and then continued on. The road wound pleasantly through valley after valley, high mountains on either side, larch alternating with tundra as very Mambo clouds hung in the sky. We made good time and I anticipated being in Magadan late in the evening. To pass the time I counted the cars and trucks I'd got lifts in since Yakutsk - arrived at a total of 25!

 

About 33km after Atka the road crested a pass and began a winding descent into a valley. I pulled out my passport to show the other hitchhiker some visas. At that moment we rounded a corner and the back of the car began to slide. In seconds we had spun 180 degrees and slid into the curve. The car struck a low earth embankment, shearing off a tyre, then flipped into the ditch, coming to rest after one and a quarter rotations. I had previously been sitting in the front passenger seat, and now found myself on the opposite side, in the back, my back against the door (which was facing the ground), with my head in the foot-well, passport still in hand. I transfered the passport to my mouth, grabbed the nearest head restraints, pulled myself upright, and made my exit through the smashed windshield. I figure I must have been thrown into the ceiling and slid along it for a bit.

 

Fortunately, noone had been hurt seriously. My back and shoulders were pretty sore, and the driver and other hitch-hiker seemed to have escaped without a scratch. Debris was scattered widely, but I soon found my camera and dictionary, replaced my passport, and pulled my bag through the smashed window. I also found the drivers coat, which contained maybe 50-100,000 roubles (2-4000 bucks), and returned it to him. None of us would make it to Magadan that day, and he without his car. I'm not sure why we lost control - perhaps older cars have proven their reliability? Also possible is that the shop-supplied tyres are no good. We were not speeding given the conditions, but it's possible the ABS system freaked on a dusty dirt road.

 

Soon enough a passing truck stopped and we flipped the Hilux back upright. Some of the doors still worked, so we got the rest of the stuff out we needed, then me and the other hitchhiker got in passing trucks going the right direction. At about 3am I made it to central Magadan, where I located the best hotel in town and checked in. Even better, because I checked in so late, the first night was effectively free.

 

Next morning I got an Xray at the polyklinika which said nothing was broken. This is excellent news. My adventures in Magadan will have to wait for another post.

The Kolyma Highway, or, if you fear rejection, hitchhiking is not for you (part 2)

Last post had me sleeping the night with a bunch of salvors in the abandoned settlement of Kyubyume. As I cooked dinner, the sun poked through a distant hole in the clouds and gave everything a rather nice colour. Little did I know this would be the last sun I would see for some time!

Next morning, I woke, packed, and walked back to the road, via a frigid stream and some frightful mozzies. Walking a few ks down the road towards Ust Nera, I saw a functional petrol station, and a family of friendly dogs. After a while, 3 Uaz vans loaded with people appeared FROM Tomtor, going to Yakutsk. I decided to take the next car regardless of destination (Tomtor or Ust Nera), and wound up crammed in a Mitsubishi van heading to Ust Nera. The five hour trip was uneventful, save for the chance meeting of a hitchhiker going the other way and the road climbing two mountain ranges with the appropriately spectacular cliffs, mountains, valleys, trees, and holes in the guard rail with skid marks between.

I spent 3 nights in Ust Nera, staying with Natella and her boyfriend Zhenya, both of whom were wonderful hosts and had lots of interesting friends to hang out with. We ate well, swapped stories, and generally carried on. The wind picked up from the north, bringing icy rain and 5-10 degree weather. Colder in the peak of summer than Sydney in the middle of winter. I went for a walk in the mountains to the south of the town, but didn't see any bears. The area is mainly a gold mine, and spoil piles are frequently visible. I pondered chartering a helicopter to visit the Indigirka gorge, but the weather and cloud was too terrible to be worthwhile. About 150km further upstream the coldest ever temperature in the Northern Hemisphere was recorded -71.6C in the 1950s. It has been warmer in recent years - only -65. Also in Ust Nera I visited the museum, the music school, and a few other places, but Ust Nera has no public internet facilities, so soon it was time to leave!

I waited for two hours at the petrol station at the edge of town, to the point where I was able to recognise local traffic. Eventually a chance conversation with two men from Ingushetia led to a lift 150km down the road to the rather miserable (state) border town of Artyk, where I chilled with 6 guards, an AK47, and some tea doing show and tell with my photo cards until another truck came past. This was an empty petrol tanker and it practically flew the 170km to Kadykchan, over some interesting hills, between wide valleys, some with trees, some without, and of course, plenty of gold mining.

In Kadykchan I got out and walked up the road to the city. This city had a population of 15000, but in 1995, the heating system broke down in winter and the mine yield fell substantially. Very quickly, the entire city was abandoned. Now there are about 50 large concrete buildings, mostly everything inside broken, but occasionally you can find an untouched flat, some books, furniture, cutlery, etc. Most buildings are still standing. I explored widely and found restaurants, a cinema, shops, the school, another school, a factory, a sports hall, the main administration building, etc. The school in particular was fascinating - it could have accomodated easily 1200 students, had science labs, a library, gym, sports hall, auditorium, staff room, lecture theatres, and an accessible roof. Certain store rooms also contained piles of slides, books, etc etc. Lenin's statue in the town square looks like a cyborg as half the concrete has broken off. In the evening I pitched my hammock-tent on the main street between two trees and had a lovely night's sleep.

The next morning, I woke up and walked back to the road. I found the junction with the old road leading to Tomtor, but was not tempted to walk the 250km! Instead I walked about 15km to Myaundzha, a city founded in the 1940s and envisioned as a worker's paradise with wide avenues, uranium processing, and barracks for 10000 prisoners. Now home to about 1200, the main employer is the coal power station, which supplies power to most towns in the region (including Ust-Nera). I wandered about, discretely photographing excellent graffiti and other cool stuff, and eventually found the school, painted in many bright colours! A bit of searching found the English teacher, also the school principal, a physics teacher, and an energetic student who was hanging around (there was some summer camp going on recently). I chatted for so long that hiking back to the highway and hitching to Susuman seemed unlikely, so Natalya (the English teacher) offered for me to stay the night, which I gladly accepted. Amongst many other things (excellent food, for example), the shower was without parallel this entire trip. Hot, fast, and apparently time unlimited! Next morning I was shown the dacha (vegetable patch and summer house), which was a couple of giant greenhouses, a banya, etc. The plants were grown inside in raised boxes and preposterously large. I was also shown her husband's hobby, in their other flat. Flats are about $4000 each, so owning two is not too hard! His hobby is making and repairing shoes! And he is rather good at it. The workshop was extraordinary, and well decorated with all sorts of jokes and posters. He is originally from Moldova, and Natalya is from the Caucasus. They both moved to Myaundzha in their early 20s, met, married, and settled. 30 years ago must have been a trilling time in the far east as there was a major colonization drive of young people. Now, the next generation has all left and in another generation, there might be almost noone left.

We had a lunch of chicken wings on the barbeque, then I got a lift out to the highway, where I waited in the freezing rain for 80 minutes until a truck stopped and I continued on. In the meantime, several extraordinary things happened. First, I skipped a stone through three consecutive puddles. Second, I managed to avoid being sprayed with mud by passing cars. Third, a car stopped (going the other way) and chatted, then offered me food, money (!) (I could not accept either!), and finally some sweets, which I accepted. It was pretty good. Lastly, I was standing under a raised security post (OMOH) out of the rain and a family of squirrel type things (with no ears and a small tail) lived in a nearby stack of concrete slabs. They screamed at me for a bit, then one came out and started running between my legs and climbing on my bag and generally having a grand ol' time. I managed to get some photos, so maybe I'll be able to upload (next year?).

I got a lift to Susuman about 100kms down the road, where I stayed in a cheap hotel. The room was okay - the bed flat, the TV reception functional, the lights worked. The toilet facilities were shared, but seriously basic, even before 20 years of complete neglect and no maintenance. Bizarrely, the only tap in the whole hotel that delivered hot water (in one of the hand basins) could not be turned off, but even that was not surprising. I walked around the town, but the only thing that really stands out was a building which housed a model aeroplanes youth club, and had the front of a (commercial jet) plane stuck to a window on the second floor. I was shown around by a resident landscape artist and found the variety and quality of the planes (mostly control line petrol planes) very impressive. Also in the town were several recent (and cheapish) monuments and signs saying '65 years of freedom', celebrating the end of the second world war. I thought the use of the word freedom, rather than peace, and 65 years being not that special (of all the numbers between 0 and 100), was rather interesting.

Next morning I woke, packed, checked out, and walked down the highway to the first junction I could see. I waited here for 45 seconds before a man called Alexsei picked me up and drove me 4kms down the highway to the actual last junction. I thanked him and walked on to a spot with better visibility, and as I did so a large truck came around the corner. I stuck my hand out and it skidded to a halt. Fastest ever hitching! This ride was unusual for many reasons. It was my first in a truck that wasn't a Kamaz. This was a Man, owned by a gold company. It was quiet in the cab, so lots of talking (I learned several new words). The driver stopped in a few places to help me take photos, and even collected some pine cones to demonstrate how to eat the nuts, showned me Yagoda berries, and a video he took on his phone of a bear sniffing around the truck not long ago. Also, he slowed almost to a crawl to drive over puddles, but fortunately there weren't too many. The road for the most part is passable by a standard 2wd car - just don't take your own.

I arrived in Yagodnoe, checked into a (the) hotel (the first with a locking door, a bed, AND a bathroom with a hot shower this entire trip!). Yagodnoe has about 4000 people, and I walked around the town, then down to the river. I had a couple of epic stone skimming sessions. The river is rather full on account of recent rains (which seem to be clearing - the weather is lovely today), and I worry that access to Jack London Lake (which is only 50km away) might be difficult if not impossible. In the evening I climbed a hill behind the town for an awesome view of the village, valley, sun, and so on. Recent forest fires had scarred some hillsides, but from the top it was possible to see several consecutive ranges of mountains - really quite stunning. Also in the town was some interesting soviet era banners, signs, and some architecture. I visited the cinema, which bizarrely had a aviary full of budgerigars, and was also the first non-closed cinema I've seen since Yakutsk (12 days and 15 lifts ago...). Though I spent the previous day cutting up socks to patch my jeans, they grew three new tears during the epic stone skimming sessions, so I don't know if I'm going to win this battle!

Today I'm going to attempt to access Jack London lake, and if unsuccessful, hitch another 500km to Magadan! This trip gets stranger and stranger, but I've enjoyed having a few days up my sleeve and exploring options as I come to them. I know almost nothing about the area, so I have to explore as I go along.

In other news, I recieved proofs of a paper that will be published rather soon, hopefully!