Caucasus, Part II

Woo, update, and yes, I have many more photos than I have uploaded, so if anyone is interested in looking at around 400 pictures, they exist. By the way, I will put more pictures on here later; I am too hungry to spend a long time here waiting for them to upload. Sorry, I haven't eaten since breakfast, and it's already 4pm. Use your imagination for now. I know you all have one--I've been told I do, so if that's true, then you can all imagine too...

So, in any case, I've discussed up to the verblud riding session (the CAMEL!!) and have yet to discuss the majority of my wonderful vacation less than 200 miles from the Chechnyan border.

We also went to a waterfall, which was called the "Medoviye Vodopadi (Honey Waterfalls)." This was a neat trip with lots of great views, and it even had a rickety metal ladder-like staircase that some of us were sure would collapse beneath us. But it didn't.

The same day we saw the ring in the rocks, the group took another scary bus trip to the nearby city of Pytigorsk (which translates as five mountains or peaks--pyat=five, gora=mountain) to see some kind of lake as well as the house / museum of the Russian writer Lermontov. I didn't go because, well, I don't really like the way they drive in Russia, and, although I can easily read and do various other activities in a moving vehicle that may nauseate those with weak stomachs, I felt quite sick on that 20 minute ride back to our sanatoriy (hotel, kind of) because of the driver's wonderful swerving habits.

So the next trip I went on was the one to Mt. Elbrus, also known as the highest mountain peak in Europe. We only went up to 3500m, but that was still pretty high. However, it was kind of a nasty day for weather, and the sun didn't really break through the snow and clouds to give us a clear view. It was just enough to blind us if we were not wearing sunglasses. But it was pretty neat, and two people slid down a part of the mountain like penguins, while another thought it would be cool to walk around with just a t-shirt on. This was Friday.

Saturday was amazing because, although we went on what I considered a completely pointless little excursion around Kislovodsk to see an Armenian church, the smallest krepost (fortress) the world has ever seen, and another rock formation with a fountain of nasty sulfuric water, I spent two and a half hours watching the scenery of the steppe from the back of a horse. It was amazing, probably the best views I saw the entire week, and I absolutely loved being able to ride a horse. Plus, the people we paid to do this were the nicest people I've come in contact with here in Russia. They were not what you might think of as "Russian," though. They had darker skin and pokhozh (resemble) closer to Turks than Russians. The horses, too, were extremely calm and sedate. They were used to following a leader and did not want to walk off on their own. Mine flat out refused to move if there was not another horse in front of it, which was a disappointment when I figured out how to make it trot.

Then, we came to Sunday. I bought a lot of souvenirs and got on the train, where we stayed for the next 23 hours. This ride wasn't quite as bad as the one out to Kislovodsk, though, because at least one of the women who worked on the train opened a window and the door to our wagon so that we could get some air moving and not be so uncomfortably hot.

Getting back to Voronezh was about the biggest disappointment of my life. I got up early on Tuesday morning to go run and couldn't breathe. I wanted to cry because the air was so much worse than the amazing clean air of Kislovodsk. That about sums up the way I would compare Voronezh to Kislovodsk.