KAMCHATKA LAND OF MYSTERY AND MISTS - Page 10

The horse racing {Pic. #33} was across a meadow with no discernable startingor finish line. Only stallions raced. There were mares in the thicket beyond thefar end of the meadow - so in the first heat didn't turn at the end of themeadow. Riders fought, with varying amounts of success, to turn their mounts before they went into the trees. Some fell. Chaos! The spectators loved it. After several heats a winner was declared. We foreigners never learned how he was selected.

"Biserinka" is a professional quality group of lively, enthusiast teens, taught by the same lady who teaches the "Noorgenek" children's ensemble. Their costumes are painstakingly made reproductions of traditional festival clothing. {Pic. #34}

Lunch featured fresh salmon served more ways than I thought possible at one meal - boiled in a tasty, thin broth - fritters, fried with chopped vegetables in the batter - as croquettes - stuffed and baked the same way it was at the Itelmen village - in fact, just about every way imaginable except chilled in aspic.

It was on the drive back to Petropavlovsk from Esso that, at a stop, we discovered fresh bear tracts along the road. We decided that because the bear had already gone so it would be safe for us to poke around in the brush, looking at the interesting local floral community, etc. Nobody gave a thought to the fact that people are more likely to be injured by the bears they surprise during "rest stops" or while picking berries than at any other time. Nobody gave a thought to the fact that there could have been another bear we didn't see attracted by the ripe honeysuckle berries in the area. The honeysuckle berries I ate tasted much like, but better than, blueberries and bears love them. We must have been nuts!

Monday morning we traded our large bus for two smaller ones built on heavy duty truck chassis to drive south to the Mutnovsky Geothermal Station, a 2002 joint Russian/New Zealand project. We needed these busses because in places the dirt road to Mutnovsky was too steep for many vehicles and there could have been a snow drift across the road. Most of the drive was across tundra above the tree line, which at this latitude is about 3,000 feet. Along the way, we stopped to survey [& photograph] the plants and to play in a snow bank beside the road. There were several plants we had not seen in Kamchatka before, including rhododendrons [about 6 inches tall here] and clubmoss.
There is no town at Mutnovsky: only the electric generating plant, housing for the plant workers and a new, small, hexagonal hotel, the Geotherm Hotel, {Pic. #35} with a good dining room and a lovely spa, all built in an area of steam vents and hot springs at the foot of the volcano, Mutnovskaya Sopke. This was by far the best hotel of the tour. Public rooms were on the 1st floor. An enclosed balcony ran around the outside of the 2 guest floors. On each, a hall surrounded the open stair. On 5 sides were suites with an entry area, a split bathroom with half on each side of the entry and 2 small bedrooms with access to the balcony. [For the 1st time on the whole trip, there was all of the HOT WATER Rachel wanted!] The 6th side had a meeting room and access to the enclosed fire escape. The 4th floor, under the roof, could be used as a lounge. There was also an observation tower from which one could get excellent views and photos of the surrounding countryside.