Shymkent to Gelendzhik
Between Taraz (a Silk Road town) and Shymkent we stayed the night in the parking lot of a mausoleum called Aysha-Bibi., reputed to be about a thousand years old and one of the best in the area. They even had a john there. Figured this could be pretty nice. When I went to use it, it appeared it was built in about the same time frame and last cleaned shortly thereafter. You CAN levitate over a hole in the floor. A Local pig in Shymkent decided we looked like a profit center, while we were driving around town, and invited us to follow him back to talk to some his piggy buddies. They couldn’t find anything wrong with the papers, even checked the insurance papers. So finally they said the van was dirty, and were going to write me a ticket. Course I could give them some money to get around this ‘problem’. Marisol decided to help out by throwing one of her five year old tantrums. This was not looking good. Shut the f%%k up and go sit in the f%%king van, were mentioned, all of which was ignored, of course. I finally pointed out she was from Brazil, not America, to get around some of my embarrassment. Seemed to me, this was pretty dangerous. Up to this time, we had done nothing wrong, but mouthing off to the police and refusing to do what they asked, was probably illegal. Apparently nothing was learned by her Globe experience. There was such a fuss that bystanders started to gather watching the action. It got so bad, it even embarrassed the police so they said leave. Didn’t even have to start writing down license and badge numbers. What works, works. All around, pretty lucky, I think. Turkistan was the next stop. There’s this great big mausoleum there. Incredible place. I mean big. Got cornered by some school kids and their teacher. Teach had some English so she would interpret the questions and answers. Turned out to be quite fun. Good place to visit, even though the mausoleum is the only thing to see.
Car Stuff
Gas runs from 67T to 90T per liter, in Kazak, which works out to about two bucks a gallon, so Kazakhstan is a cheap place to drive, if you ignore the beating the car takes. Flyer’s been getting around 15MPG, which is better than the Copper Streak got. There are Helios stations that are usually in the upper sixties to lower seventies, when the others are in the eighties, no idea why, but I always wait to see if I can find one of them. So far the van has been running fine. Hughes trans is working fine, as it did for all the miles in the Copper Streak. Shieb paint is staying on fine, only ding I have is a parking lot one, some yehoo did while I was on the other side of the van installing the shock bushings (so far the new ones are holding up fine). There are pullouts along the highways that have a big P and arrow marking them. There’s usually a ramp where you can run your car on to get underneath. No johns usually, and the few that are there you wouldn’t want to use, the bushes around the edges are real green though.Idler pulley for the air conditioner belt decided to have half the ball bearings turn to dust, had another along. Here I thought it was the compressor making the belt squall occasionally. So still have air. Only thing of a bit of a concern is the back springs seem to be sagging some, guess you can only flex them so many times. For every km you go forward you go up and down a km. Roads on the West side of Kazak aren’t near as good as between Astana and Almaty. Propane is about a dollar per gallon in Kazak. Always been able to fill, either using my handy dandy Russian adapter or when using the pump places they have a bag full of adapters, one of which will screw onto my adapter hose. Always best is if you find the pump station as then you only pay for what you use. Otherwise, when I bleed it in, I have to guess how much is needed, there’s no gauge on the tank, and buy a tank with how much I think I might be down. After lots of searching finally managed to buy the fitting used to fill the Propane car/truck/bus tanks in Russia. Now I can fill at the propane stations with the pump. You see them all over the place, but before, in Russia, I had to wait till I found one that had some tanks sitting about.
2 for 3 for M32
There are two direct ways to go from Aral to Aqtobe. I asked maybe ten people which way to go. The Italians in Almaty said start up the East one and then cross over to the West one, after about 150 kms. Said a lot of it was like Mongolia, where the road is so bad people drive along side the road, instead, but then there’s the sand hazard, if you pick the wrong track. Locals I asked two to one, said go all the way on the East track, which is marked as M32 on the map, and shown to be the main road in the Book of Guide, so that’s what I tried. There was a nasty nasty section, maybe a hundred miles long. Road was incredibly rutted from trucks driving on it while muddy. There were holes over a meter deep in places. Sometimes you just couldn’t avoid them. Side tracks looked pretty sandy so I waited till they looked like just dirt and started using them. Can’t imagine doing it in the mud. At the end of this section there of course was a police stop. You guessed it, they wanted money, finally they gave up and let me go. The ‘highway’ was then some old bagged out asphalt, but at least you could stay on the road. Slow going but we finally got through this and came to where there was some new asphalt. Problem was you couldn’t get on it, so still had to drive on really rough dirt. This section was probably fifty miles. Toward the end managed to sneak up on the asphalt. Got kind of a snarly look from the guard at the end. Real glad to get this section over with. The Flyer took a real beating, but survived. Steering sector is kinda loose now, so will need to deal with that. After Oralsk had to decide whether to head south and then go to Astrakhan, in Russia, or stay on Jack’s route and head west to Russia from there. The Book of Guide mentioned a Kremlin in Astrakhan, and I had never seen one of those, so we headed south. I was told the road was good to Atyrau but couldn’t seem to get any reliable info from there to Astrakhan, decided to just goferit. Road was good to Atyrau and not great to the border, but if I stuck to 25 to 30 mph, it was ok. After crossing into Russia, the road gets much better, like I hoped. We headed to Rustov on Don, and then toward the Black Sea Coast. Stopped for a night at the neat old town of Starocherkassk. It was the Cossack capitol for two hundred years, now a quiet little hamlet. Camped right along the river. Great town. Figured we’d start at the north end of the Russian Black Sea Coast and head south. First place to hit was Anapa. Little big for my tastes but the KLBC found a place on the bluff above the beach to park. Lots of wind, which I like, a great view. Could then just walk on down to the developed part for all the action. Did some snorkeling. Not real great but there was more fish than I expected. Water was real clear. You could also do some SCUBA but didn’t figure it was worth it. Been spoiled by the South Seas Diving. Next beach town was Gelendzik. Much better. Less people and again the KLBC camped on the street that faced the beach. There was a fresh water beach shower, maybe a couple hundred feet away, to replenish water supplies. This is where the latest missive was launched into cyberspace.
Things Ya Learn
By feel, whether you have enough TP in the baggy in your back pocket. Earth curvature needs to be taken into account, when figuring how far to walk in the morning to go Kah Kah, because it’s so flat sometimes in Kazak, and some areas of Russia. At first when we saw a camel or dromedary it was “Wow, look at that!” Just like when we first saw Zebras in Kruger Park in South Africa, but they’re everywhere so now even Marsol doesn’t throw one of her five year old tantrums and pout for an hour when I refuse to stop for yet another stinking camel picture. A women with good English said they are the cow, for Kazak.
Jack Was Here Plaques
We’ve drifting off and on Jack’s route, when he rode his motorcycle across these parts. He did a much more direct shot, so we only sometimes see the plagues he left.
How do you Argue with That?
I liked the newer Chevy van’s dash because they have fresh air vents in them. Many times just turning on the vent is good enough to stay comfortable. So of course Marisol constantly want me to run the air conditioner. On one of these occasions she had on three layers of clothes so I said “Why don’t you take off a layer or two?” She said “It’s cold outside.” How do you argue with that? I’m always having to wait for her. Assume it’s some sort of control thing. See I can control you, you have to wait for me. Sometimes hours. She of course throws one of her Five year old Tantrums, if God Forbid, she might have to wait five minutes for me. One day she gave the example of how she had to wait for me. She said, “Just this morning I had to wait an hour and a half while you changed the front brake pads.” How do you argue with that? Present plans are to head some more south, along the Black Sea Coast and then inland a bit to a coupla places along the Georgia border, in the Caucasus Mountains, that sound pretty neat. Then gotta decide whether to try and enter Georgia or take the ferry to Turkey. No idea what happens if you check outa Russia and Georgia won’t let you in. Our Russian Visas are only single entry so assume you couldn’t go back and say you didn’t mean it. Hey, it’s an adventure.
Till next time,
DZ
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