Kamchatka. At the edge of the world.

After an 8-hour-flight above Russia we landed in Kamchatka. Hey there!

Kamchatka.
"... only by plane can you get to this faraway land."
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky made a mixed impression on me. This city is quite small in comparison with the regional towns in central Russia. And it seems to be stuck in the 1990s. There are no supermarkets, no shopping and entertainment centres here, but you can find a drama theatre, a university, a museum and, of course, a large cargo port.

Interestingly enough, there is no transport service to Kamchatka by sea for passengers. And it is impossible to get there by land transport due to the lack of a road, so the plane is really the only type of regular linking with the "mainland". 180.000 people out of the 300.000 residents of the entire Kamchatka live in its capital. The buildings are mostly of old construction and have few storeys. Among them only the yellow glass "high-rise" of the VTB Bank's office stands out.

The weather is fine and the local youth are hanging out in the city centre at the embankment. Taking a seat on a freshly painted white wooden bench, I observed the surroundings. Right in front of me there was a bay with a pebble beach, onto which the sea has thrown some seaweed and people have thrown empty bottles, cigarette butts and plastic bags.

In front of the beach there is a path along which lovers and friends tend to walk. Mothers with baby strollers carefully go around the pits with curved paving stones, and on the benches there are sitting the maked-up girls in short skirts and stockings in a mesh sit, with their legs crossed and smoking thin cigarettes. On the opposite side of the bay a mountain range with white stripes of snow in the hollows stretched. On the right I see the port, on the left – a green mountain (or a big hill) with an observation deck, projecting into the bay. If taking a look behind, there is a granite monument to Lenin, who clutches a cap in his hand. And the Gasprom's office takes place on the background. Next to the beer and shawarma stall I noticed a company of bikers from a local motorbike club together with their Japanese-made "iron horses". They were discussing the latest news.

Besides the monument to the leader of the world proletariat, there are also monuments to other famous personalities, which are Bering and Lapérouse. However, not all of them are well-preserved.

And as for the government building of Kamchatka administration, it looks quite good, reflecting sunshine with the coat of arms and the golden letters on the facade.
Every third or fourth car here is a SUV with right—hand drive, winch, large wheels and upgraded suspension. Snowy winters and the quality of local "motorways" justify such a choice. Gasoline is not cheap in this area: number 95 costs 43 roubles per litre and the diesel one is 45 roubles.

Primarily, Kamchatka can be described as the ocean and the mountains. Rocky shores, slopes covered with dense forest and majestic snow-white cones of volcanoes amaze with their beauty. For four days we had been sailing on a small but quite comfortable boat made in Japan in 1992. We entered the bays at night and went out into the ocean with the first rays of the sun.

On the very first day I was lucky to see a small flock of killer whales. This time the sea hunters were in no hurry, showing their black backs with huge fins. They were just few meters from our ship. Suddenly, far away a hump and a huge tail appeared out of the water. This humpback whale greeted us and went further to the deep ocean. Sea lions warmed their fat bodies on large rocks and, while the huge father and his multiple wives were sunbathing, the youngsters were playing not far from the shore, chasing each other under the water in a graceful manner.

A flock of white gulls and black cormorants were sitting on a small rocky island and some funny birds with big orange beaks, called hatchets, we're swimming singly, waddling from side to side on a low wave. Several times we went ashore to swim in the crystal clear cold water of the mountain waterfalls running through crevices from snow-capped peaks. And each time the captain of our ship took a gun with him. To our question why he needed it here, he pointed to a fresh pile of shit and traces of huge bear paws. Kamchatka brown bear is a severe beast. It is cunning, insidious and ... well, it's better not to encounter with it.

Diving in Kamchatka is a very interesting and peculiar activity.

The water temperature of the ocean varies from +3°C at a depth of 30 m to +12°C at a depth of 10 m in bays. Visibility also fluctuates from 3 to 15 m far. There are some interesting spots with an unusual bottom terrain in the form of huge boulders and steep rock walls going to 50…70 m deep. And we registered a wide variety of wildlife as well.

There live sea bass, flounder, crabs, huge jellyfish, soft corals of bright colors, kelp algae thickets. Sometimes it seemed to me that I was floating somewhere in the Red Sea. What a beauty!

But the most incredible dive was a dive with sea lions. At a shallow depth of 6 m a flock of two dozen young animals approached us and began their performance! The things they were doing cannot be expressed in words, it was an amazing sight! On the shore these bumpers barely drag their fat bellies over the rocks, but in the water they simply fly, making trucks and dead loops. Sea lions are quite curious and playful animals. Pushing each other aside, they swam up to us. One of them, moving his long white mustache, stared straight at my mask, examining me with his black bulging eyes. Another, sneaking up from behind, began to grab the diving equipment with his teeth and the third one tried to drag me by the flipper. It didn’t hurt at all, although their teeth are bigger than the teeth of the biggest dog and sea lions themselves are not small: they weigh probably 150-200 kg. It's good that the “father” did not come. There already exists some data about them, which says that the weight of some species may reach a ton and even more! This incredible show lasted for half an hour. Scuba diving has been my passion for 13 years but this dive was one of the most fantastic together with a manta ray night show in Hawaii, white shark and whale dives in South Africa, shark feeding at the The Great Barrier Reef in Australia and a dive, during which we met with a huge 14-meter-long shark in the Galápagos islands.

Fishing in Kamchatka is not exciting. No need trying to bait some fish and then keep watching the float for hours, waiting for a bite, changing the bait, guessing what fish will be better caught today, etc. You just have to stretch a piece of meat on a hook, throw it overboard and then a heavy sinker would wind the fishing line from the reel and fall to the bottom. You make a few movements with the rod up and down and pull it up. That's it.

На крючке обязательно будет морской окунь на килограмм или треска на два, а может и палтус с камбалой, на худой конец вытащишь какого-нибудь «морского чёрта» с огромной пастью и веерами-плавниками.
On the first day of our sea voyage, we bought a bucket of red caviar from fishermen, which we tasted in various approaches all the following days: we ate it by spoons, spread on bread, added to soup and mixed with pasta. On the fourth day, the proposal like: “Would you like some caviar?” already sounded like a mockery.

To get to Kamchatka and not to visit the Valley of Geysers would be an unforgivable mistake. It took us an hour to get from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to it by MI-8. While we were flying, the gorgeous mountain landscapes kept floating slowly behind the porthole.

What a difference the mountains of Kamchatka have between each other! Some of them are covered with dense greenery like velvet and others expose their bald backs of bare stone to the sun. The cones of the volcanoes rise majestically, blending in their background.

The first of them is Karymsky, which is about 1500 m high, almost perfectly round and has a smoking crater. Its black slopes of cooled lava are stunning! Fifteen minutes later I saw the top of another volcano. That is the Maly Semyachik. In its huge crater there is a steaming turquoise lake shining with small ripples. The slopes of some volcanoes are covered with snow.

An hour later the helicopter landed in the final destination of our trip today — the Valley of Geysers.

This is a very unusual place. You can visit this national reserve only being accompanied by an armed guard and proceeding along special boardwalks.

And it has reasons. Judging by the fresh traces, bears can be encountered frequently here. And the soil in some places is a hydrogen sulfide swamp, having fallen into which you would be boiled at once.
Geysers are very diverse and each has its own name. The geyser "Gates of Hell" consists of two smoking caves, from which some muffled thunderclaps are heard as if from the underworld. There are geysers that are called "cauldrons". These pits are filled with a liquid clay substance through which gases outlet, gurgling and scattering hot pieces all around.

 

The soil, clay, rocks and cliffs in the valley are of different colours: green, brown, blue… Some of the geysers just smoke, others occasionally emit jets of boiling water and clouds of steam to a height of several meters. That's a fascinating sight!

For what sake? Why are we climbing to this damn mountain?

"Haven't I seen enough mountains in life?"— such thoughts were swarming in my head while I was resting on a rock out of breath and looking at the steep slope of the Avachinsky volcano..

Somewhere behind the clouds there is a peak and we have to get to it. But do we? Shall we turn back? It was only half way and I already felt like dying. No, stop it. I have to go. If I give it up, I will never respect myself anymore. Suddenly a man walked down and said, smiling:
"Have a nice ascent!"
"Thank you!" I replied. But that moment it seemed to me like he was taking the mickey out of me!

I was following our guide, a slim young girl in her twenties. For her this ascent is just a walk with another group of dummy tourists. And as for me, my pulse was probably over 200 beats per minute! My body was pouring with sweat and my legs got wadded. A narrow path led us to the edge of the cliff and right ahead we realised that we have to make the descent along the vertical wall. Clinging to the ledges of stones, we crawled over a bottomless abyss while pieces of stones were flying down... We felt no fear, since we were so tired that didn't care about anything anymore.

We passed a section of a snowy slope. Despite the height is just 2000 m above sea level, there is a lot of snow, since it has little time to melt within the summer, which is quite surprising because the temperature here is about +15°C.

And now the peak is already visible forehead. But we still have to overcome 700 meters along a vertical steep slope. It was hard to step on the slag: our feet would fall through and slide down the scree, our boots were full of stones and every ten meters I wanted to give up everything. The last few hundred metres were the most difficult, as we ran out of water supply and my mouth was dry…

A little more effort and I could already see the saving rope that leaded to the final goal.

I seized it, made the last steps and reached the top! Here it is! Three of my friends were already lying completely exhausted there and I fell next to them. Five minutes later my back started getting hot. The stone was hot, it was foggy and smelled sulfur because of the hydrogen sulfide emissions. As for the view, it was certainly awesome!

Below and above the clouds there rose the snow-white cone of another volcano. That was Koryaksky, which is almost 1000 km higher than Avachinsky. Ten meters away from us there was a vast field of frozen black lava. The huge green-brown stones once had been thrown out of the underworld by a powerful explosion and then were scattered all around...

Vladimir Vysotsky was actually right writing the part of the lyrics that sound like: "If had not been there you’d be not aware of strains you would be able to bear, in spite that in dales you set on fire the Thames. At down-a-hill you cannot reveal one tenth of that fantastic zeal, nor sights beyond of any fairy tales."
Nevertheless, I made a conclusion that I would never become a climber. Besides the wonders of the mountains, one can also find enough beautiful phenomena and adrenaline charge both on the plain and under the water.

Очередное приключение на Камчатке — сплав по реке Быстрая. Three days, three boats, four crew members and eleven tourists together made a hundred kilometer long trip along the river. It was great!

The Bystraya river turned out to be quite calm. We rarely ran upon any rapids and rifts and most of the time we were just slowly gliding along the water surface, contemplating the mountains, rocky shores and foraging for food. We caught some fish with a spinner, enjoying this fascinating and simple deal very much.

There were such fish as char, coho, grayling, mountain trout and we took only big species, whose weight started from 500 grammes. In the late afternoon we approached the shore, set up a tent campsite and the chef Svetlana cooked a wonderful fish soup and other delicious fish dishes on the campfire. This dinner and the time around the campfire in the forest was unforgettable! We were far from the villages and only bears might roam nearby. By the way, there are a lot of them here! And they are really dangerous animals! Every year these cute Teddies kill more than a dozen people, so everyone here takes a gun with them when going to the nature. Even a need to go to the toilet (i.e. to go to the bushes 20 m away from the camp) may result in a risk. Once such an uninvited guest in appearance of a bear came up to us during the lunch and only gun shots forced him to leave. It was interesting to watch the bears wandering along the shore and fishing in the river, while we were rafting. And they were really close to our boat!

There are thousands of rivers and springs in Kamchatka. All of them source in the mountains, where snow lies all year round. The water in them is cold and crystal clear, so you can drink a little by scooping it up by your hand. Indeed, there are not so many places in the world untouched and unconquered by a mankind. Kamchatka is one of them. And it is worth seeing for sure!

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