The great Siberian rivers are the Ob, the Yenisei, and the Lena. Not far behind them are the Yana, the Indigirka, and the Kolyma. These aren’t quite as long and wide, but they’re no less beautiful, contemplative, magnificent, and in places downright astonishing. So it’s in their direction we headed…

Time for some fun – but not like last time. This time around it was a cut-down version, atop and along the frozen Indigirka only: Ust-Nera > Khonuu > Sasyr, and back.

Out onto the ice we go at the start of the winter road, @ “zero kilometers” ->

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And so, early one morning in late February of this year, our convoy of several vehicles once again rolled out of the glorious city of Magadan. The plan: get to Ust-Nera, covering 910km of not-exactly-easy road…

The weather wasn’t the sunniest, but our spirits were as high as a kite. Let’s roll!…

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Every time I come to St. Petersburg, I’m amazed by what a bright, sunny city it is. The internet lies to you about gloom and low gray skies. Don’t believe it! Better yet – go see for yourself that it’s not true. This time around, though, there was a certain grayness to the sky at first, instead of the usual blue skies and bright sunshine…

Read on… )

(Prequel: Taking the (more) scenic route to Magadan)

We’d checked out the Natalka gold mine, dropped in on the settlement Ust-Omchug, and now we were pressing on along the super-scenic Highway 44N-4 toward Magadan…

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A few days ao we wrapped up our whirlwind there-and-back business dash to Kyrgyzstan, and to the Kumtor gold-ore mine and ore-processing complex (aka – a gold-extraction factory: the first time I’d ever come across the term). Why the holdup in getting these write-ups published? Simply because, when you visit industrial sites, you usually need to get a “yep, all good!” from the hosts before posting any photos – even though I hardly shoot anything inappropriate in the first place (my internal censor sees to that).

So. Kumtor…

First, it’s one of the main pillars of the country’s mining sector. Second, it’s one of the highest-altitude mining operations in the world (the second-highest, to be precise – behind the Yanacocha gold deposit in Peru, (also gold-ore)). And third, it’s just plain beautiful! Here are the pyramids they show you as you drive into the open pit:

The main pit – the one they showed us – is impossibly gigantic in size: 3.5km long, by 3km wide, and almost a kilometer deep measured from the ~highest point. And up on the loftiest peaks there are snow and glaciers. What a beauty! ->

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We’d checked out the Natalka gold-ore deposit and the mining-and-processing plant of the same name, but what else was worth a contemplative look at out there – further down Route 44N-4 (also known as the Tenkinskaya Highway, or just Palatka–Kulu–Neksikan)? Why – the settlement of Ust-Omchug! ->

Here it is on the map. Yes, it is very, very far away. But not too far from Magadan :)

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Where should you head first in Manaus – the capital city of Amazonas? The fish market, of course!…

It absolutely floors you with its sheer size and variety. They’ve got everything that lives in the Amazon and its tributaries here – well, except for Red Book protected species (dolphins, for instance). And in waters this vast, the variety is about as wide as it gets:

I’m afraid I can’t remember what any of these various species of fish are called; I just recall being bowled over by the variety:

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Alas, everything comes to an end sooner or later. Not only the Brazilian leg, but our winter tour around South America as a whole was drawing to a close. It was time for us to be heading back to Manaus, where there’d be a plane to São Paulo, and from there – back home. And what a fascinating route our tour had taken: Patagonia and Jujuy in Argentina > Atacama in Chile > Amazonia in Brazil! Done! Time to return to a place we hadn’t been for ages: home.

There was just one last thing we needed to see: the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon itself. So it was in to a hydroplane and off we flew!…

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Bem-vindos de volta, pessoal!

As promised, the second part to my report on our lodgings in the Brazilian Amazon. Land-based: done (yesterday); today… see the title!…

If only I’d known beforehand, I’d have made a point of lingering aboard this vessel a good while longer. I’ll come clean right away: faced with several options, we didn’t go for the one that would save us money – we picked this little boat based on… can you guess?! ->

There she is, parked alongside the more budget-friendly options :) ->

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Olá pessoal!

It’s time to tell you about the places we stayed at in the Brazilian Amazon – those on water and on land. Today: land – and there was just one: the Mirante do Gavião hotel. And since we checked in straight off the yacht – that is, from the river side – and left by seaplane, we never did get to see what it looks like on the other approached-by-road side, but only from the river – and from the inside:

Read on…