Today is a beautiful day - what a shame to leave Vladivostok on such a gorgeous day. But it is time to head on and make our way to Kamchatka for some trekking. After getting up and having some fruit for breakfast, we finish our packing and getting ready to leave. Checking is surprisingly straight forward - they do not even give our room the careful inspection before we leave. After leaving a couple of bags in the left luggage, we load our bags into the private taxi that is waiting for us.
It is almost an hour out to the airport - about 35 km. A bit surprised that it is so far out, but then again, it is pretty hilly around the city, so they may have had trouble finding a suitable spot. Maybe the military took the only suitable spot near the city. The traffic is quite heavy for the first bit of the drive. Hate to think what the traffic is going to be like when they get a bit more wealthy and can afford more cars. What a mess it will be and they do not have too much land to spread out into given the water on three sides.
Once outside the city, we pick up speed and move right along. Near the airport, our driver pulls into a gas station to fill up with petrol, but gives up after a while. Lots of cars are waiting and there do not seem to be any attendants. We get to the airport slightly after noon. Nice, small, but run-down place. As soon as we walk in the door, we are pulled over by the police. Guess we have tourist written all over us. They want to see our tickets and passports and then start asking us for our voucher. Not really sure what he means. We were told that once you were in Russia and had a visa, you could pretty much travel where ever you wanted to. In the end, we dug out the letter of invitation that we had got to arrange the visa and he read through it. He noted when he got to the part that mentioned Kamchatka and seemed happy. Guess he wanted to check that was where we really were supposed to go.
Checking in was not too bad. It is a bit like a booth. You step inside with your luggage and you put it on a huge scale with a big round dial. If you are a bit overweight, they send you off to pay the fee. We had left a fair bit of luggage back at the hotel, so we were fine. After they put a luggage tag on your bag which does not say where it is going (we hope they do), you then have to carry your own bags to the back room and put them through an x-ray machine. The baggage handlers take it from there. Back in the booth, they carefully check your passport and ticket and then give you a boarding pass. The boarding pass has a sticker on it with your seat number, but that is all.
As we are sitting around, we notice a number of people with tags on their hand carry, so we go ask for two. No problem getting them at this time. After trying to find out how to get to the gate, we ask a policeman. Well, before he can tell us were to go, he asks for our tickets, passport, boarding pass and voucher. Guess he wants to make sure we are allowed to go where we want to. Only then does he show us the way.
Now begins the hassles. After a lady behind a big, brown desk checks out passports and boarding passes and tickets (she seemed to have a hard time marching up the names), we had to weigh our hand carry. You should have seen her expression and the torrent of words that came out of her mouth. Then she was on the phone yelling at someone on the other end. A lady showed up and she wanted to check one of our hand carry. Guess we were over weight. Good thing we had checked our tickets and it said that a laptop was allowed on top of your free allowance - we pointed it out to her and she did not know what to say. So, we took out our water, food and laptop and a few other items and gave her the near empty bag to check. We went back to the check-in booth and she checked our tickets once more. She noted that we had not fully utilised our luggage allowance and after some heated discussion with her colleague, she let us on my way without having to check the near empty bag. Our guess is that they wanted to try to charge us excess luggage fees, but we were still within our overall allowance.
Then it is through security and the x-ray machine. Their machines do seem modern and efficient - that is a good sign. Security is a priority. We hang around in the small lounge for a while. While there, we meet a fellow traveler from Australia, who is also going to Kamchatka and will be on the same trek as us with Lost World. Soon it is time to board. We all crowd upon a couple of buses, with the lady attendants herding us in. We head off to the plane and once there, get ready to mount the stairs up to the cabin door. But it seems they are not ready and they tell us to wait. Many people go and stand in the shade under the wing to avoid the hot sun. While we are out there, the plane's three jet engines start up. It is a good thing they are at the tail of the plane and not under the wings. Finally we can board and it is a bit of a mad rush up the stairs.
The interior of the plane is very basic. What is most amazing are the overhead racks. They are not bins, but are rather shelves like those you would find in a bus. No wonder they were controlling hand luggage so carefully. We find our seats in the Tupolov TU-154 and settle in it. It is three seats by three with one aisle. The seats are very thin and we can feel the metal supports. Once on the plane, we have to sit there for some time in the rising heat. It gets so hot. The air con just does not seem to work. We finally take off and it is only when we are at altitude that we begin to cool off. The must rely on the cooler external air to cool the interior of the plane.
The flight is pretty straight forward - it is three hours (and the clocks are put forward another further two hours). The flight attendants are helpful, but they know who his in charge. They serve plenty of water during the flight, hand out sweets (with many passengers that a couple of hand fulls), have a "cocktail service" and then a meal service. The meal is simple, but edible. We notice how everyone seems to be stuffing whatever they do not eat into their bags. The lady across the aisle from us even puts the whole main course meal, in its tin tray, into her plastic bags. Guess she is not hungry right now!!! The flight is non-smoking, but everyone goes back to the toilets to smoke - and these are right next to the large room labeled "oxygen"! They do not have overhead oxygen masks, rather it seems oxygen bottles placed in a few spots around the plane. As we begin to descend, the plane starts to warm up as the exterior air temperature rises. The pilot makes the usual landing announcement and tells us all the ground temperature - 28°C. All the passengers gasp in what appears to be amazement at this. It seems to be unseasonably warm.
We touch down pretty much on time after a very high speed descent and landing. The pilot really has to slam on the breaks and put the thrusters into full reverse to stop us in time. As we taxi, a number of passengers get up and start to collect their bags, with our neighbor trying to walk forward. Boy, do the flight attendants give them a telling off - just like a drill sergeant. Once we pull up on the tarmac, everyone is up and ready to go. But no one goes anywhere. They seem to have some problems with the truck driven stairs. After a few minutes we see the truck with the stairs being pushed back away from the fuselage by four men. Then we wait and wait. The temperature continues to rise. Finally, another truck pulls up with a set of stairs. But disembarkation is slowed down by a soldier checking everyone documents. We were not sure at that time what they were looking for, but we are told later that it has to do with enhanced anti-terrorist screening measures. Sounds good to us. When it comes to our turn, we are brusquely told to "sit" in the nearest seat. Only after checking all the other passengers, does he go off some where with our passports, returning five minutes later with them. We are cleared to disembark.
Once down on the tarmac, an overcrowded bus is wait for us. But just as we approach, it drives off. We have to wait for it to return. Just as well, it was so crowded and when it returns, we are the only passengers. The set-up here is a bit strange. We are not taken to the terminal, but rather to a gate the leads to the parking lot. Once there, we wait outside the luggage shed for our bags to arrive. Must be awful when it rains or snows. Once the bags begin to arrive, everyone races into this long, metal shed. Down the length of the center of the shed is a conveyer belt. The bags travel along this until the end where, if no one has claimed it, it is dumped on the floor. Everyone is jostling for position around the belt trying to grab there bags in the hot room. When you leave with your bag, a guard matches up the tag on the bag with your claim tag - important as anyone can get access to the luggage shed.
We have been met by representatives of Lost World and we load up the car and head into town to our home stay. For the first night we are staying in someone's home, before we transfer to the hotel tomorrow. Our hostess for the night is Sveta, and she is wonderful. She welcomes us into her home and after we have dropped off our bags, she offers us dinner that she has prepared. It is a very good plov (she told us her mother learned how to cook it when they were based in Tajikistan. We have a cup of tea and she then heads off. She has vacated her house for us.
We spend the rest of the evening relaxing and working on our journals before heading off to bed.