Saturday, July 3, 2010

The internet wasn't working, sorry for the delay.



Hello hello!!

So, Kirk and I have had a few adventures along the way. As a quick catch-up from some basic things;
1 - Almaty is a great city - totally laid back, a great view of the mountians (which are only a 20 minutes bus ride away), and the Kazakh people are great.
2 - Couchsurfing is awesome. We stayed with three guys in Almaty - absolutely fantastic. They made us dinner one night, gave us a bed to sleep on, helped us buy train tickets (which was needed because you can't use a foreign credit card), and gave us hiking advice. Absolutely awesome - thanks to Dima, Andrei, and Max.

Some far more interested stuff that has happened to us. First of all, on our first day, we couldn't meet Andrei (he had already left for work) so we scooted over to the Kyrgyz Embassy to get our visas done. Well, we met a new friend, Eva from Argentina, who was also trying to do her visa. We ended up hanging out for a little while before finally getting in only to realize that we needed to prepay and get photocopies of our passports to succeed - come back at 3 we were told. So we went off, did our business only to come back at 3 and find out that we had paid 62 instead of 65 dollars!!!! Long story short, we ended up paying 'the difference' and we should get our visas on time!!! Cool!! First bribe paid!!


Other than that, we're in Shymkent right now after a heck of an adventurous ride.... Since the Kyrgyz embassy has our pasports, we can't take trains - Hello 12 hour bus ride across the steppe!!!! Not fun. Especially since we had an incident with our tickets. My travelling companion decided to throw out all of our useless reciepts - groceries, clothes, stuff like that. Long story short, our ticket (which, in Kirk's defence DOES look a fair bit like a receipt) went out with the garbage. It took a lot of very polite Russian but true Kazakh hospitality, BAM - we were on that bus with no tickets and no passports!!!! Wicked!!!

We're now in Shymkent, which is a great little city 12 hours west of Almaty - it is REALLY hot here. But, we've bought new hats (and pants, and a new shirt for me) and are ready to deal with the heat. Check these pics out!!




One is Eva with our new workmen friends, another is 'letting the crazy out,' finally we've got our new clothes and our very generous Shymkent hosts - Burt and Gin!!

2 comments:

  1. хахаха можно я теперь буду называть Керка Лошариком?! Наверное без него было бы очень просто и скучно путешествовать ;) Передавай ему привет, за его улыбку можно простить даже выброшенный билет )) Скучаю по вам! Фотки супер. Шляпы вам идут очень. Керк не может расстаться со своими черными носками и джинсами даже в жарком Казахстане?)) А ты красавчик! Весь в белом! Тебе к лицу ;)

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  2. It's nice to see you 'boys' are still
    co-ordinating your clothes - well done !
    Cheryl

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