My first trip to Russia

Petropavlosk was one of the most surprising stops on the world cruise as like most people I had a very stereotypical view of what Russia would be like and Petropavlosk was very very different from what I was expecting.

To give some background on how massive Russia is Petropavlosk is over 4200 miles away from Moscow, its a large city that is completely surrounded by mountains and volcanos with no mainland road access to the city that is only reachable by boat or air.

As I'd soon learn getting of the ship in Russia is never a simple task and despite bringing in the tourist rubles, they always made it a bloody nightmare to get through immigration. My senior was booked on the 'Ring of Fire' tour which would take him up to a massive volcano which sounded all kinds of awesome, for me it was another dogsled camp which immeditaely made me think of Alaska so I was not enamoured with the way my day was going.

As you can see from the above video we spent most of the day in a field surrounded by dogs so it wasn't all bad! I don't know what I was really expecting but it did not feel like I was in Russia, it felt like I was back in Alaska with warm sunshine and mountainous views!

What surprised me was the ethnicity of most of the village people we met on the tour with most of the locals looking like the inuit people from Alaska, after many hours playing with the dogs the locals put on a local folkloric show for us.

I'll be completely honest most folkloric shows are not really 'my thing' in that to me most of the performances are lots of high pitched whistling and banging of drums and this show was more of the same, but trot out a few cute kid performers and the PAX absolutely love it.

I think the free vodka definitely helped as the PAX got progressively more drunk as the day crawled on, it was an interesting afternoon but I'd done this exact same kind of tour in Alaska and I didn't really get a sense of Russia as we were up in the Kamchatka mountains and it was just like being in Alaska except with more vodka.

You can look at the day two ways 1.) It was a nice relaxing afternoon in the countryside where we were plied with vodka and got to play with dogs for most of the afternoon before watching a folkloric show or 2.) We were driven to the middle of nowhere and left with some dogs and vodka for 8 hours with little to no information about where we were or the history of the place. It felt like heres your vodka, heres your dogs, enjoy the sunshine and we'll see you in 8 hours. It might not have been 8 hours but it definitely felt like it by the end of the day and this type of excursion in Alaska usually takes a half not full day.

When I got back to the ship I found out that my seniors awesome sounding Ring of Fire tour had been cancelled as by the time all the customs bribery had taken place there was not enough time for them to get to the Volcano and back again, so the only footage we had was from my dog camp tour which definitely didn't feel authentically Russian to be. Although in some cases I guess it was in other ways as we were taken to the middle of nowhere and left with Vodka!

On the next cruise diaries - Last days on the Sun Part 1