This is another one of those trips where you can’t quite figure out what time it is relative to home or anywhere else. I think I have figured that the final of the World Cup played at 6 pm Moscow time on Sunday the 15th will be played at 3AM Monday morning here in Petropavlovsk.
Wednesday, July 11 Norfolk to Atlanta to Seoul Korea. Gordon, our super son in law (one of two), got up at 5:30 to give us a ride to the airport. No hitches to Atlanta and then to Seoul, other than it was a really long flight without much sleep (14 hours more or less). Same story as the trip to India- I watched Murder on the Orient Express (1974 version with Albert Finney and an ensemble cast of greats including Ingrid Bergman and John Gielgud); Annie Hall; and the one with the blue people who live on Pandora on it (now that I’m not jet lagged/ sleep deprived I remember it is Avatar). And still had about 7 hours to go.
So I don’t know where Thursday went- sort of “poof” due to the dateline. What I do know is that we were supposed to go to the Grand Hyatt at the Seoul airport and I asked where to find the bus to take us there and we ended up on a bus for an hour and a half to go to the Grand Hyatt in downtown Seoul. We got off and immediately rode an hour and a half back to the correct Hyatt at the airport but our short stay at the hotel amounted to a shower and an hour of sleep before going 5 minutes back to the airport for a 2 am flight to Vladivostok and then a three hour flight to PetroP.
I think we got here Friday the 13th. The next little glitch was the long narrow baggage claim area (a Quonset hut) crowded with arrivals from a Vlad flight and a Moscow flight at the same time, many of whom were trying to get luggage carts thru the crowd.
The photo of the legs and heels is of the girl who butted in front of us in line in Vlad getting her boarding pass for PetroP and then when we saw her again in PetroP. She obviously was dressed to kill, and my bet is that she was coming here for the weekend to see her boyfriend in the military, if she doesn’t fall off the heels and break her leg.
As I was waiting in the thick of the crowd for our bags to come off, a Russki police man came up to me and asked for my passport. We walked back to my backpack and Connie and I showed it to him. Then a buddy of his came up and they both started quizzing me in Russian. The only word Connie understood was “blanket”. After a couple of minutes another uniformed official came up and explained in English that the airplane crew reported that they did not find both blankets that they had given us on the plane. We were basically being accused of taking the Aeroflot blanket. It was a nice blanket but not worth taking. The official was understanding and said he was pretty sure we did not fly from the US to PetroP to steal a blanket. However the consequence was that everyone in the arrival area had to put their bags thru a screening on the way out!! I am not sure how a screening could identify a cloth blanket.
I learned from Bobby, who came in the next day on the same flight, that the crew made an announcement to the passengers that the blankets were the property of the airline and that they were not to be taken off the plane. Thin margins for air carriers.
We were picked up after all that by Yelena and Vasily and taken to the hotel Avacha (named after the bay here and one of the volcanoes). The weather was sunny and mid 60s. We went to dinner (see the photo of me being served a burger (with mystery meat) that one is supposed to eat with gloves), and finally got some sleep.
Saturday, July 14- On to the boat, unpacking, finding our way around, picking up our arctic jackets, tagging my boots, and dinner with Bobby and Marilyn. Then another solid sleep which hopefully will get us set in this time zone.
The SilverSea Explorer holds about 150 passengers. We are said to be “sold out” but I think that means there wasn’t time to get Russian visas for anymore passengers so they called it sold out. Anyway there are about 100 passengers on board including about 40 who held over from the previous cruise up Sakhalin and the Kurils.
Having now experienced this ship, I feel like the Lindblad fleet is closer to camping out. This ship and our cabin (415) are very, very nice. We have plenty of room for our clothes and gear and a 4 foot by 6 foot porthole which makes looking out the window easy. This ship also has the gyroscopic stabilizer system so the boat motion is moderated significantly.
Why Kamchatka someone might ask? We heard that there were such trips from Kathleen and Stuart whom we met on the ‘Stans trip. Connie and I were both intrigued, probably for the same reason Bobby immediately signed up to join us when he heard we were going- we had all played Risk as kids, the board game in which Kamchatka is the key to conquering the Americas and the key access to Asia from the Americas. I learned last night that, while there are 30 cruises per week visiting Antarctica, there are 3 cruises per season coming to the Russian Far East!! This is probably one of the last really remote places on the globe.
Sunday, July 15- PetroPavlovsk
Today’s activity was a tour of PetroP, starting at the small but pretty good local museum. All the display explanations were in Russian and the guide didn’t have great English skills, but there were some Mammoth bones, a lot about the ancient peoples who lived here, the early Russian explorers (Bering et al) and then a good display about the more recent indigenous people called the Koryaks.
We then went to some monuments including one to the Crimean War from 1854 between France and England vs Russia. The allies tried to divert Russia’s attention by mounting a raid on PetroP which the Russians, although out manned and out gunned managed to win (the British commander was so embarrassed he committed suicide). You might say though that this was a strategic victory for the US since the expense of defending Kamchatka is one of the reasons as well as the British threat from Canada to Russian Alaska that the Russians sold Alaska to the US. We visited Alexander Nevsky wooden Orthodox Church- only about 15 years old but built without a nail being used. The other monument we visited was in memory of the Russian war against the Japanese in WWII. I found this interesting because I had always heard that the Russkis only declared war on Japan after Germany surrendered to have a place at the victors’ table and to participate in what went on on the Pacific side. Here we learned that the Japanese had held the Kuril Islands since the Russo- Japanese War and Russia invaded to take them back (long disputed ownership). That is what brought them into the war against the Japanese late in the game. It seems wars never really end.
We made a brief stop by the local market to check out the variety of fish for sale and to taste the salmon eggs.
Next was a visit to Holy Trinity Church, also about 15 years old, followed by lunch at the Kolosseum which was right in front of our Hotel Avacha where we stayed a couple of nights ago (I think I saw that Avacha is the name of the big volcano we saw as we came into town and which has since been covered in mist). (While I am on volcanoes, note that the Kamchatka region or Krai has over 300 volcanoes, 30 of which are active and had a big blow from one in 2008- its first in 3500 years.)
The entertainment at lunch was dances by a group of Koryaks who grew up on the settlement for them and are trying to preserve the local culture. The dances in which Connie and I participated included a lot of imitation of the local animals, one dance which when performed for real can last 18 hours, some that included a lot of suggestive grunting from the males and moaning from the females, some throat singing, and beating on reindeer skin tambourines. Bobby, Marilyn and I got to wear some wolverine and fox skins and stomp around and then Connie took part in the tambourine exercise.
On the way back to the ship we 4 got off the bus and visited the statue to Peter and Paul (not only the apostles but also the names of Bering’s ships) and Lenin’s statue. The plaza with Lenin was also the place to watch a jumbo TV for the FIFA World Cup.
In the evening we met the “expedition team”- history types, a bird woman, a fishery guy, a plant guy, a geologist. We also learned that the passenger list is pretty international- the largest group of 24 is Thai, then the US with 19, then Aussie, New Zealand, Russia, Ukraine, Italy, Canada, UK, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, China and maybe more.
Monday, July 16- The mouth of the Zhupanova River about 100 nautical miles from PetroP. This is the river I have been talking to the Montana fishing guys about trying for a week for huge rainbows. It is about 100 miles long and so the part we saw here did not look like a trout stream.
The salmon should be here now but they have not arrived. Kamchatka has 6 species of salmon that run the rivers- red, pink, dog, silver, king and char (really sea run brook trout?). This year they are late, the fish processing plant here at the mouth is supposed to be open and isn’t, and the birds and bears are all waiting. Our guide Robin, who is from Boston and took biology from both Stephen Jay Gould (the late evolutionary biologist that Connie and I met at W&L years ago) and E.O. Wilson (wasp expert, Bama fan) told us that there is a “bubble” of hot water in the ocean working its way north that is thought to be the cause of the last two years’ poor salmon harvest. She also mentioned another odd event in the salmon world- this year a net around the farm raised Atlantic salmon in the Pacific broke and released 300,000 Atlantic salmon into the Pacific. They are trying to round them up but that seems pretty hard to do, and who knows what effect that will have on the Pacific salmon. Another factoid I hadn’t focused on- Pacific salmon breed once and die while Atlantic salmon breed 5 or 6 times.
After all that introduction, the activity of the day was a zodiac cruise up the river looking for brown bears (saw 2 from a distance, huge head on the one we saw closer- they are very shy here because they can still be hunted) and Steller Sea Eagles- we must have seen 10 of these huge, beautiful birds that split off from the bald eagle tree about 3 million years ago. The scientific name is Halieetus pelagicus. One more little “fact” about the bears in Kamchatka- we heard that last year some Japanese got too close and had an incident with the bears, but on the other hand we also heard that they have never been known to attack a group of more than 7 people. We had 6 plus the guide in our zodiac so we were safe.
The ride was colder than I expected and I need a little better pocket management to make the things I need to access like sunglasses, gloves, camera a little easier. The cloud has been low so I did not take any landscape photos, but everything is lush and green and there is a lot of rushing water coming down the mountains.
In the afternoon the ship historian lectured on WWII in the Aleutian Islands and connected it back in time to the R-J war of 1904, the opening of Japan in 1850, and the Meiji Restoration (where the shogun lost out after a couple of hundred years in charge).
Tuesday, July 17 At sea most of the day and then Nikolskoye on the Komandor Islands, the westernmost of the Aleutian chain. (Mileage from Zupanova was 200.) This was Vitus Bering day too. There was a good lecture by Peter about how Vitus (1681-1741) who was Danish, joined Peter the Great’s navy, got asked to explore the Northwest Passage for him, had to walk across Russia 6000 miles to get to Ohkotsk, build 2 ships, sail across the Sea of O, land on Kamchatka, then build 2 more ships there to start his exploration. His first voyage went north up the Kamchatka peninsula and then almost to the Bering Strait (Cook came after him by about 40 years and named it for Bering), and back to report to Catherine I, Peter’s wife who succeeded him. Then he did it again, this time with 2 ships named the Peter and Paul. On this voyage he sailed parallel to the Aleutians and made it to America. His ships got separated and it was the one he wasn’t on that got there first, sent 2 longboats to shore but they never came back. On the way back to Kamchatka, Bering’s ship ran aground on what is now called Bering Island, the westernmost part of the Aleutians. He is buried on the part of the island where we go tomorrow.
Nikolskoye is a town of about 700. The people all seem to live in long barracks like buildings, some of which are newer and some pretty weathered. The whole island is a nature preserve. The people get their supplies from an airport which also brings in a few Russian tourists. We were met on shore and accompanied by 2 boys who were very pleasant and I think enjoyed talking to Connie. There was a small museum to visit, some of the wrecked Peter’s cannon, a big red statue of Lenin, and cultural center where we saw some singing and dancing (no audience participation this time). Vera and Yevgeni, 2 of the 4 people on the island who still know Aleut, sang for us. Vera looked about 90 to me.
Back to Bering for a minute- Bering had a biologist on board named Steller, who discovered a number of unique species on this voyage and named them after himself. There is the S sea lion, the S jay, the S sea eagle, the S eider duck, and the S sea cow; then for some reason he deviated from the pattern and named the new cormorant the spectacled cormorant. The Nikolskoye museum has one of 4 known skeletons of the sea cow. It was hunted to extinction within 30 years of Bering’s voyage, but must have been quite a sight- basically a 9 meter long Manatee. Steller is also responsible for giving the scientific names to the 5 species of salmon.
On our way back to the SilverSea Explorer, Connie and I found the boat I have been missing since I gave Leesa the pontoon boat:
Wednesday, July 18 Komandor Bay, Bering Island- A perfectly clear day with bright sun, maybe 50 degrees, water temp in the mid 40’s. This part of the island is totally empty except for some reindeer imported a few years ago (third try to get them established, and now they are causing eco-havoc). Beautiful green cliffs, fog settling down the valleys, kelp on shore, clear water- we came ashore here to see Vitus Bering’s grave and to go on a “long, adventurous hike”. When his ship wrecked here, Bering and his men had to spend the winter in some dugout caves and to try to survive on sea cow meat. Steller advised the men to eat grasses and berries but they didn’t like that idea. Several including Bering had scurvy, but Steller took his own medicine and survived. Bering’s body was exhumed in the 90s for an autopsy and then he was reburied here again. The Russkis also did a facial profile based on his skeleton and found that in life he looked nothing like the picture of him which has been in books for the last 350 or so years. That somewhat obese and frilly looking man was Bering’s uncle.
The hike lasted a good 3 hours, up about a 75 degree grade to a cliff then a gradual uphill for a while, then down at about 90 degrees, and a mile flat walk on the shore. Luckily the vegetation, mostly grasses but a lot of beautiful wildflowers too, was so thick it provided braking on the hills. There were some antlers around. The rocks were a mix of sandstone and volcanic. In total it was 5 plus hard miles and about 55 flights of steps. No gym necessary today.
We got back to the ship at 11, and we are now at sea for about 250 miles back to the peninsula (still 50 degrees, clouding up a little, wind about 20, with whitecaps) and Tymlat village tomorrow afternoon.
Thursday, July 19 At sea and then Tymlat village, population 500. Light breeze, glassy sea right now, 60 degrees in the morning, foggy then clear and back to foggy, water temp about 50.
We just listened to a wonderful lecture by Robin on the life cycle of salmon, the range, how they figure out where they are going, their predators, and the tribal traditions and lore associated with the salmon. I guess if we hadn’t gone on the hike yesterday we could have seen some salmon in the river at Komandor Bay.
The Koryaks in Tymlat are the coastal Koryaks and depend a lot on the salmon.
The salmon just arrived, I saw a few jumping, and we were treated to a version of the ceremony of the first fish. Gulls, kittiwakes, and terns were everywhere. The village is famous for its dancing and the villagers demonstrated it for about an hour- pretty similar to what we had already seen. It seemed like everyone in the village turned out for the festivities, and there is certainly no shortage of children.
Friday, July 20 Yuzhnaya Glubokaya, a deep fjord that used to be the site of a herring plant, about 100 miles from Tymlat. Temp about 50, with fog high on the hills but basically no wind. Activities for the day included a 2 km hike to the plant and up a hummock thru beautiful wildflowers of several kinds. I spotted a bear along the bank of a creek about 1000-1500 yards away. This was a much easier hike than the previous one. There were mosquitoes so I got to try out my bug net.
Next we went for a zodiac ride around the fjord and saw a couple of bear dens, a young brown bear (got an extended view of him sitting on a hillside and then wandering along a rapidly descending stream), horned puffins, pigeon guillemots (remember: very distinctive red feet!) and a red merganser flapping along in the water without taking off.
Space pod plant with yellow flowers- seaside rag wort.
This afternoon there are two lectures, one on kittiwakes and one on the Russian Revolution from 1855-1924.
Kittiwakes are in trouble due to the extended range necessary to get food for themselves and their chicks- not enough resting time so the adults are getting stressed.
Saturday, July 21 On the way to Peter Bay, but then on the way to Anastasia Bay, two more fjords on the way north. Our visit to Peter Bay got scrapped due to weather, maybe temporarily, maybe not. Today the waves are a couple of meters, the temp in the low 40s, we have a little rain and 30 mph wind. Not many people at breakfast. Might be a good day for those long-johns they suggested we bring.
As it turned out I wore all the bad weather gear I had- rain pants, ski gloves, fleece gaiter, fleece hat, my ace in the hole wool t shirt. While Connie was in the gym, I went for an extremely wet zodiac tour (about the same conditions as the one August and I did in Alaska last summer). So far for marine animals, we have seen orcas, a couple of different kinds of seals or sea lions, a couple of sea otters, and now today we added walrus. Yesterday in addition to the live bears we saw one that was the victim of poachers- face (for the teeth), claws and probably gall bladder removed. Here we saw 7 live walruses and 2 or 3 dead ones, also the victim of poachers.
As for birds, here I added a king eider, common guillemots, and pelagic cormorants as well as salty backed gulls and black legged kittiwakes.
We are in a holding pattern for the rest of the day as we see what the weather does.
The afternoon activity was a lecture by Robin on Whale tales- are whales fish?, do whales spout water?, could a whale have swallowed Jonah?, do whales get the bends?, and do whales blow up? See the exploding whale.com on YouTube. The second talk was on pinnipeds ie seals and walruses.
Sunday, July 22 Peter Bay, Natalia Bay, and Bogaslav Island
Yesterday we ended up traveling north to another fjord to try to find calm water for the evening. Then we came back 35 miles to Peter Bay for today’s activities. In the morning there was a zodiac ride, much more pleasant than yesterday’s. Bogaslav has amazing craggy cliffs of nesting kittiwakes, pelagic cormorants, guillemots, horned puffins, and gulls. It was still col (50s) with a meter or two swell, and about 20 mph wind.
For the afternoon we opted for the moderate hike (about 2.7 miles) up to a couple of glacial lakes. The wildflowers were so plentiful and varied. Notable here was a golden rhododendron and a mini azalea. The terrain was tundra soft in places, boggy wet in places, and rocky in places. We saw no bears but did see a couple of bear imprints. The lakes fed into a river that looked perfect for brook trout with small falls, plunge pools and riffles. I looked but saw no salmon.
At 5 pm the ship pulled up anchor and we have a full day at sea ahead of us on the way to Yttygran Island.
It has finally started to clear and we can see some mountains all the way to the top, and a bit of blue sky, no more advection fog.
Monday, July 23- In the Bering Sea for 430 miles until 8 am Tuesday!!!
Notes from Hans Peter’s lecture on tundra:
Ocean surrounded by continents- arctic vs Antarctica= continent surrounded by oceans; conditions today= slick calm; 47; 66 30 = arctic circle; colder than 50 in July; north of the tree line; permafrost- here 1-1.5 meters deep, frozen all year long; axial tilt = 23 degrees; photosynthesis mid June thru September; snow depth, sun light, temp, depth of thaw; plants need to work fast- grow, flower, pollinate; tundra = vegetation without trees; less than 400 mm per year, subzero most of the year, veg days less than 50, permafrost; diff between shrub and tree- one stem vs multi stems; tussock sedge; adaptations- hairy leaves, dry leaves protect new leave, tap root to hold on, dark seed pods- absorb more heat, flowers parabolic antenna for heat, phototropism.
After Hans Peter’s lecture, Danny gave a lecture on 1816, The Year without a Summer. It was the a big volcano blew in Indonesia (Tambora) that sent enough sulphuric into the atmosphere that a spike was recorded in ice logs, the sky kept a golden aura, and the crops failed (all as the world got used to Napoleon being truly in exile). Danny ended with a quote to the effect of civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice (Will Durant).
After the lecture, Captain Maggie opened the bridge to visitors. Connie and I got there in time to see the immature slaty back gulls practicing their landings on the bulb of the bow light. They were pretty comical- Connie said they were getting a core workout.
At tea time today the contests began. In passenger trivia, Marilyn, Bobby, Connie, Mike, our new friend from Australia and a 747 pilot, and I tied for the lead with 12/20 correct answers. In the tie breaker, we won because of our team name- the Klepto-parasites. Who knew a frog’s favorite color was blue,that the youngest pope was 11 years old, or that a human hair has a tensile strength of 3 kg? We all then moved upstairs for a game of 30 questions to reveal the secrets lives of the expedition staff. We have a pretty interesting staff- one has met 3 presidents, peed in a cup next to Al Gore; one, a sweet young girl from Hawaii, had a seal haul out on her surfboard once, and worked as a butcher during school, converting several vegetarians by the smell of bacon; one spent a week on tour with Rihanna and did not enjoy watching the car crash that occurred after the concert.
Tuesday, July 24 in the Bering Sea, idling along in pea soup fog and calm waters on the way to Yttygran island (the fog is so thick that the gulls, fulmars, and kittiwakes that have been our constant companions no matter what distance we are from shore aren’t flying). Today is also the first time we have gone for an extensive period of time without a working wifi.
The fog lifted and it is the best day yet weather wise. We went ashore to an old spot where the native people brought in their whale catches, stored the meat, and set the bones out in a ceremonial or religious display. The bones are mostly from Bow headed whales. The coast was very rocky, almost all gray with some quartz injected in, and there was lots of biological debris such as bones, shells, skeletons of birds and a baby seal, urchins and whelks.
After the shore trip it was so pleasant that I got into the jacuzzi for a while, followed by a view of about 2000 walruses (first time in this spot for 30 years), a couple of humpback whales, and lunch on the deck for the first time.
The ship moved to Poliv Senyavina where there are a couple of hikes and hot springs. I went on the long hike the round about way to the hot springs and then back. Connie, having already exercised in the gym, took the short hike to the hot springs. The water was about 105. The long hike was beautiful, up hill thru some tussock and bog and then down into the river valley which looked like Montana. I actually saw a couple of Sandhill Cranes. The river looked perfect for trout, but what would they do in the winter? I did see a few salmon jumping but none in the river. My phone says it was 6.7 miles but maybe a mile of that I had already done on the ship.
That evening we had the Captain’s farewell dinner at which we shared the table with the Klepto-parasites and Javier from the expedition staff. When we pulled up anchor that night we started an overnight to Provideniya where we checked out with Russian authorities. Provideniya was very soviet looking with the same old block like apartments. We did not go ashore but I bet there was a big Lenin somewhere.
The morning was Tuesday all over again because of the dateline. We woke up at about 7 am Wednesday and then at 8 am we magically moved our clocks to 12 noon Tuesday. The ship served us brunch. Then James gave a great lecture on ocean currents and the plastic duckies and the gyres. Later for tea time there was another trivia challenge. This time since Hans Peter the botanist was the moderator we changed our team name to the Saxifrages after one of the tundra flowers. We did not come close this time even though we had 16/20 of more relevant questions. The lecture which followed by Peter about the Chilkoot Pass and the Alaska gold rush was a non event for me- I went to sleep.
After a dinner that came too early at 7:30 Alaska time but 3:30 body time, C and I tried to sleep but couldn’t quite get there. I think I went to sleep about 3 and woke at 7 as we came in sight of the USA.
Wednesday July 25- Nome
We cleared US customs, waited a while, worked on the 2000 piece map of the world puzzle, and then went into town. I rented a car and we went out in search of salmon running (check) and musk oxen (check).
To the airport and on to Norfolk for S week! I have to add though that the flight from Anchorage to Chicago was terrible- We were in the first row and I could never get my legs comfortable (restless leg syndrome) so it was a very long 6 hour flight.
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