Communist Rope Tour: Out of the Woods

The security guard.

This past week has been a dream. As planned, Jesse and I headed up north to a small town called Kooznyechnaye, in search of a lake some 15km away. Armed with just a low quality satellite image with dots drawn on it, we bought a couple bags of food and started walking while asking lots of questions. Most of the locals had never heard of the lake we wanted, but when we got to the outskirts of town people started responding a little more knowledgeably. Eventually, we found ourselves walking through a large granite quarry when a security guard pulled up next to us in his Jeep. Instead of kicking us off his land, he drove us around while showing us some great views into the quarry. The guard finished our tour by dropping us off at a trail head that he guaranteed would take us to our lake. This was the beginning of a very lucky day.

Post Russian bath with the Armenian Family

About 15km and 5 hours later ( I wish I had a picture to show how much we were carrying), Jesse and I arrived at the lake. Continuing my question asking crusade on every person we see, I ask the first man I see for some advice on where to camp. Georgi turns out to be an Armenian living in Russia, and he invites us to camp with him and his family. His actual words were (in Russian), "If you camp with us tonight, then you can join us in a Russian bath". Intrigued, we accept the invitation. For the next couple of days, this amazingly friendly family fed us barbecued pork, chicken soup, 20 year old Cognac, and best of all, let us take a Russian bath with them two nights in a row. The Russian bath turned out to be a small homemade plastic hut with a rack full of stones in it. The idea was that you could light a fire under the stones for several hours to heat them up, and then voila, you've got a sauna right next to a cold lake!

This is the home made Russian bath (sauna).

Jesse scouting out one of the climbing sites.

Jesse taking a break from climbing the rocks.

Instead of jotting down a novel here, I'll wrap up the rest of the trip. Jesse and I ended up climbing for three days whenever the sun came out, and then practicing our Russian with the Armenian family back at the campsite. At 5:00 am on the 9th, we hiked back to Kooznyechnaye and took the next bus to Saint Petersburg. From there, we booked the night train to Moscow. One of my dreams about traveling across Russia was to drink vodka with a Russian while playing chess. Within 30 minutes of our first train ride, the Russian man sleeping underneath Jesse, his name was Sergei, buys a bottle of Vodka and starts throwing back shots with us. This is, of course, before he plays me in several matches of chess.