Yes, I finally got to the land of my dreams: Kamtchatka!

Now I´m already two weeks here and time is running so fast, that I even could´nt update my blog. Well, but what happend till now and how did I get here?

After I got my invitation from the polytecniques in Petropavlovsk, everything went very fast. I went to the consulate in Bern, got my visa within half an hour, went home, booked my flight from Frankfurt and one week later I landed already in Petropavlovsk, after stop-overs in St. Petersburg, Krasnojarsk and Chabarovsk.

In Petropavlovsk Frederik, another Volunteer from Switzerland picked me up at the airport and showed me Petropavlovsk, the capital of Kamtchatka. It´s quite a new small city and not very attractive, but surounded by beautiful volcanoes and a natural harbor.

The next day we spent on the bus to Esso. A 9 hours trip over 500 km, where we passed just 3 villages! All on a very dusty gravel road. Except in the capital there are no asphaltated roads on Kamtchatka.

In the evening we finally reached Esso and I got to know the other volunteers, Hanna from Austria and Mascha from Karelia in Russia, which join with me one appartement.
Hanna then took me for a sightseeing tour through Esso, where the mosquitoes almost killed me... Now, two weeks later, I fortunately don´t react so sensitive anymore, but I still have to wear a mosquitoe head, gloves and long thick trousers and jacket. That´s quite annoying when it´s nearly 30 degrees in the sun.

I must say Esso is a really nice place with colorful small wooden houses, each with a typical vegetabel garden, many of them with a green house heated by unisolated thermal water pipelines which run through the village.

Two rivers are running trough Esso, the Bystraja and the Uksitschan. The first gave the name for the district: Bystrinsky. The village is surounded by taiga in the valley and with tundra on the basaltic plateaus in the west and old vulcanoes in the east. The plateaus are between 900-1000 m high, while the highest nearby old vulcanoe, the Olengende, reaches 1950 m. Esso is on around 600 m above sealevel.

After I got a little bit to know my new working place in the Bystrinsky Nature Park office and my new collegues there, which are very nice and friendly, I already could join an excurion with some Spanish geologs to a nearby small lake and a place with Zeolites, a vulcanic kind of stone.

At my first weekend I took my paraglider and climed a nearby hill, but unfortunately the windforecasts were not exact, so that I had to carry it down again. But there are many nice places to take-off and possible landing places are also there. I just have to move away some stones and wood, which I like to do, especially during my official working time, cause it belongs now even to my official job to explore new paragliding possibilites here ;-) Last week I even got the help from two inspectors, who helped me with a chainsaw. (I was not allowed to use it...)

What else belongs to my duties here?
Well, last week we (the volunteers) spent at the Kardon, which is an inspector cabin around 20 km from Esso in the middle of beautiful wilderness. We helped there to build a new cabin and to get some ideas for a new ecotrail, which we start building in two weeks. It was a great time with banja every evening but myriades of mosquitoes during the day.

In the nights it can already freeze, while the days are very warm and dry. There is light from arround 4 a.m. till 2 a.m. and it seams that live goes on through the middle of the night: Some shops are open 24 hours, people move arround, visit or call friend.

But I have no problems to fall asleep, I´m always so done in the evenings, cause everything is new here for me. It´s especially hard if you don´t speak much Russian like me: It´s true, not many people here speak English. But I´m trying hard to learn it!

And what are the plans?
Next week I´ll probably go again to Petropavlovsk to pick up Larisa, another new volunteer from Germany with Russian roots and than start with the realization of the ecotrail and a new visitors center at the Kardon. If it works I´ll have the possibility to join some French guys in the end of August on a trip to the Itchinsky vulcano, where I should help to translate. And of course there are still many paragliding possibilities to discover and another project is a 5 day horse trip just to get to know the sourrounding.

But let´s see what time brings and if the mosquitoes and bears havent eaten me, I´ll post some more news as soon as possible.

I´m sorry that I can´t show you many photos, but with this slow internet connection it´s not possible to transfer big data amounts...