Today we had great weather, good road and just fabulous scenery. The route pretty much traversed the Altai Mountains by following a series of river valley's with one substantial climb over a pass to add variety. The rivers we followed were generally big and fast flowing, sometimes with steep gorges, and sometimes with grass banks. We frequently passed through nice little villages, that although clearly of modest means were well maintained and tidy. We have not seen any of the wide spread trash/garbage that we saw in Siberia. We saw many places catering to tourists (though we assume Russian tourists), rafing outfits on the fast rivers, hotels, and places that looked like camp grounds. We also saw a lot of cars and small SUVs with their roofs loaded with luggae - we assumed they were the tourists enjoying this fabulous mountain playground. There were miles of delightful (possible) camping spots along the banks of the rivers and we were a little sad that we needed to keep moving rather than enjoy these spots.

Mid morning we got our first exercise in a long time when we stopped at, and climbed up to, a small water fall. Twenty years ago we would have sprinted up the track in a few minutes but now at our more mature stage of life we walked up the track slowly and crept down trying to make every foot placement secure. Guess there is nothing we can do about the progress of years. Before departing the waterfall stop we sucked some water out of a nearby brook to top up our water tank. I am sure glad we brought along that emersion pump, without it we would never get any water.

At lunch, on an escapment overlooking a river, Nina heard a goat bleeting up on the hillside. After a short walk up the hill she discovered a couple of goats that had managed to get themselves out onto a ledge about 20 feet off the ground. They were stranded as goats don't seem to understand the concept of "back-tracking" to get out of a tight spot.

We had expected that once back in Russia we would have less trouble getting supplies, but maybe we were overly optomistic. Today we tried to buy Coca-Cola (we wanted a large bottle). We stopped at 4 or 5 places on the side of the road, cafes and small shops. One place had Pepsi but no coke, another place none of either, another place only a single small bottle of coke (when I saw the small bottle of coke I asked for 3 of them but she laughed and held up a single finger), and the one that really made me "laugh" was a gas station convenience store that had 2 plastic wrapped dozen packs of large cokes sitting on the floor, but when I pointed and asked for one I got a stream of Russian which clearly meant NO - I guess not checked into inventory yet!


Just before (east of) the village of Kurata we found a picnic sign in a small stand of trees beside a small river and decided that it would make a good campsite. Insects were a slight problem but not enough to move us on. Late in the afternoon a German family (the ones we met near Irkutsk) arrived and parked for the night also. A bit later a couple of Russia guys turned up in a small Chevy SUV; so it was a nice little group of campers who occupied the site.