May 2018
Kamchatka was one of the places I always noticed on the globe and thought I might never have a chance to go there. It is a huge mass of land somewhere between Asia and Alaska, but it seems to be close to nowhere. When we saw Petropavlovsk(population: 180,000), the largest city on Kamchatka Peninsula, as a stop on the itinerary of the trans-Pacific cruise from Japan to Vancouver, Pat and I said,”why not?”
We arrived in Petropavlovsk harbor 2 days after leaving the northern island of Japan, Hokkaido. We started seeing snow capped mountains as we approached Kamchatka, and there were more and more of them as we got closer. There is no road connecting this peninsular to the rest of the world: you either fly in or sail in.
The cruise ship(Celebrity Millennium) had to be tendered, and life boats from the ship brought us to the shore. It was supposed to be a 5 minute ride, but extremely strong wind made it hard for the life boats align right to be able to park at the dock. Exiting the port, you could either turn left and walk up the hill to the cathedral area or turn right to walk straight into their downtown area. (map)
We first chose to turn left and made to the Cathedral. Unfortunately, it was under renovation and we could not get in. There was not much else going on in that area, thus, we walked down the hill and found a big Wifi sign at a beer joint pretty close to the port entrance. The place did not look very promising from outside, but, once inside, it was quite nice and cozy and served decent food. The bartender was friendly and spoke enough English to chat with us a bit.
We decided we had to see the downtown even though there didn’t seem to be much of anything there when we looked down from the hill top. As we got closer, we noticed the statue of Peter and Paul: Petropavlovsk meant Peter and Paul, the names of two ships Vitus Bering(yes, the guy whom Bering Sea is named after) arrived on in 1740, the St. Peter & the St. Paul. Soon we could see a big square with a big statue in the middle: who else but Lenin’s. Behind that were several buildings that looked like government offices.
There were some restaurants and shops scattered around in the center of town. Nothing charming or attractive caught our eye. Then busloads of soldiers started arriving. They all walked over to Lenin Sqaure and seemed to be getting ready for a parade of a sort. Maybe we will get to see a Russian military parade, we hoped. More and more soldiers arrived, but nothing was happening. It was windy and cold. after 20-25 minutes of waiting, we had to give up.
Returning to the ship was a long process due to even stronger wind. The cruise staff arrived with a big pot of soup & served it to waiting passengers, and that really helped. Well, now we can say we’ve been to Kamchatka.
Small Wide World 