Tuesday 10 July 2007
Just as we were sending yesterday’s diary by Iridium phone there was a knock on the door of the Earthroamer at about 9.30pm. It was a strange time to be receiving visitors we thought. We opened the door and met two charming ladies and a more serious photographer. They were a reporter and an interpreter from the main regional newspaper. They wanted to know all about us and our journey. After an hour of much conversation and photographs they left us with smiles and thank yous.
In the morning Dick offered to pay for the parking of the vehicle and the electrical current used but just as previously in Russia, the lovely people at the truck stop refused to accept anything. We find it truly wonderful that people who have so little in material terms can be so generous. After a quick refuelling where the garage accepted Russian rubles, as we had not yet changed any money, we were on our way.
Once again we travelled through beautiful green countryside with extremely large broad acre farming land.
At one stage six brand new US. John Deere four wheel drive tractors crossed the road in front of us. The type of thing you would expect to see in Texas but not in Kazakhstan.
We were now on some of the bumpiest roads we had experienced during the whole trip. Even the shampoo holder in our shower fell apart from the vibrations. 55 to 60 kph seems to be about the most comfortable speed.
A friendly Kazakh policeman waved us over but only wanted to take our photograph and allowed Pip to take this one of him.
Fortunately just past the town of Kokshetau the road suddenly improved to a four lane freeway, dead smooth.
We are hoping this will last till Almaty but we fear it won’t. We drove past this friendly man selling some kind of drink beside the road.
At Shchuchinsk we turned north east on a ten kilometre road to Lake Burabay.
This is described as Kazakhstan’s Switzerland and we can see why.
We pulled into a small hotel at the side of the Lake and went for a swim.
There were hundreds of tourists enjoying the sunshine on their holidays as we walked into the town and had a chicken shashlyk for dinner.
This is obviously a top tourist resort area for Kazaks however English speaking people rarely get here. We found that we were quite a novelty with young school and university students trying their English out on us. Wonderful friendly people – we like Kazakhstan.
Today 299klms 21,120 km Total since Anchorage Alaska
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