Kamchatka is a wonderful place: full of volcanoes and bears - though the two aren't necessarily related.
If you can't place Kamchatka think of the board game
Risk (gateway to North America)
or where the
Russian mini-sub went down in August 2005.
The trip was organised by a
Arcturus,
with whom I've been to Greenland with, in partnership with
Lost World
a tour company based in Kamchatka.
For more information on Kamchatka a good place to start is its
Wikipedia entry.
And you can get also finds of info about the
Kamchatkan volcanoes at Wikipedia too...
We flew from Heathrow to Moscow, where we had about a 16 hour stop over - enabling a quick site seeing
trip into Moscow itself. We then flew a domestic Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Petropavlovsk, the
main city in Kamchatka. It's not often a domestic flight covers 9 time zones and takes over 9 hours...
Once in Kamchatka we followed an itinerary: taking in the various tourist hotspots the
peninsula has to offer - mainly centred round bears and volcanoes. Our accommodation was
various, from a starred hotel in Petropavlovsk
to little cabins in someone's back garden, from purpose built huts to tents. We travelled
around by helicopter or in an ex-military Ural truck. We were accompanied by a Russian driver,
guide, translator and cook who where unfailingly friendly and helpful.
One of the places we visited was the Valley of the Geysers, which subsequently suffered a landslip which
devastated the valley. The
Russian Federation Institute of Volcanology and Seismology has
some detailed information about the landslip.
The food was great - no chance of us starving. Russian chocolate was particularly good I discovered.
Most evenings the vodka came out and it would have been rude have refused to not partake. The vodka was
amazingly varied (a supermarket we went to had about 60ft of shelving dedicated
to the stuff) my favourite was one flavoured with cedar cones. I haven't found anything
comparable in this country.
The points marked on the map as follows:
- Petropavlovsk - main city in Kamchatka
- Kurilskoye lake - bears and salmon
- Valley of the Geysers
- Tolbachik volcano
- Ichinsky volcano