PROGRESS REPORT NO. 4
WEDNESDAY August 17th.
Leaving Khatanga.
"To travel in the Arctic is to wait", and do we know that.
The wind has gone to the south-west along the Taimyr peninsula, and that's good-but will it be good enough to move the ice ?
We're leaving Khatanga tomorrow morning, going down the big river and into the 'Zaliv ', the Bay. We may not get very far in the Bay because we're hearing of a Tanker coming in from Tiksi making slow going of it, even with the icebreaker 'Kapitan Babicheff' leading.
Anyway it'll be great to be away. The charms of the town of Khatanga have long diminished. Our paperwork is complete, we're diesel-ed and have taken on water ---from the brown river. We're assured that there's no toxic, but bye-dad we'll boil it well!
This morning we saw migrating reindeer swimming across the river; a stag leading and the rest closely bunched about 10 metres behind. We followed, not too close, as they stepped out of the river and trotted up the bank and away across the tundra.
The other big animal we saw was the Mammoth, this one long dead, 23,000 years ago in fact. These furry elephant-like creatures with the long curved tusks once roamed these northern lands in great numbers. With the warm up after the ice age they declined into extinction. Frenchman Bernard Boeges has made a lifetimes' work of their study and collection of remnants. Here in an ice-cave in Khatanga , hewn into the cliff above where we're moored, he has brought his finds from all over the north.
He showed us his 'centrepiece', a full mammoth, horns sticking out but body still largely encased in the frozen soil in which she has been entombed all these thousands of years. Bernard works in cooperation with Russian academia and French scientists.
We must express our appreciation to our Partner Alexey Zhdanov of Lodestar Travel in Moscow who arranged our Visas and Permit, together with his wife Irena and friend Vladimir Vestugin. Without their professional help we'd never have started.
And here in Khatanga, Vladimir Yurchenko and his wife Natalia have been a constant help.
This may not seem like much of a 'progress' report, but as they say, 'all journeys begin with one step'. We're taking that tomorrow.
PS. We wish our friends and 'badoiri' a great Cruinniu next week-end in Kinvara.
Reindeer Swimming
Reindeer Migrating
