A nice quiet night. The plan is to reach the lake
Tierieblie-Tits’kie vodoskhovishchie just south of the
Natsional’nil prirodnii park, However we stopped in an apple
orchard for lunch. Had been driving for a couple of hours and had
done 80km. Half way through lunch a Russian landrover stopped on the
road. I waved out the door and got a toot back in reply. 5 mins later
he drove in. He had no English and we no Ukraine. However he said he
was going to town and when he got back in half an hour then he’d take
us to his home.
Well he was back in
5min so we hurriedly packed up and followed him a couple of k’s to his
house. He introduced us to his son and daughter who had a smattering of
English from school. The boy was 8 and the girl 11. We spent the next
few hours flattening phone batteries with all the google translating.
He is a dentist and his wife a lawyer. Supposedly his wife had a
position on assistant judge but only got paid US$200 a month with the
idea that bribes would cover the rest. The couple were not pleased so she
resigned. He has some dentists working under him and runs a “wood
pellet” business. Some pellets are sold as
kitty litter the others for central heating. A self feed furnace with
pellets only $150 per month where wood costs about double. The self
feeder costs $1500 to install which he makes in his shed. A shame we
could not communicate at a more in depth level.
Dinner was kebabs
cooked outside and homegrown spuds cooked in rice cooker / oven. With
home preserved pickles and preserved mushrooms as well as pork fat
fried up. Interesting. Oh and Brandy drunk or sculled with dinner.
The house was two
stories 3 bedroom, and nicely heated….. We were offered a room but
prefer to sleep in EC.
We parked in their
back yard for the night.
84km Camp
site