Ka Pai Kiwis

This morning we said goodbye to Chris Eden, we have enjoyed his company and wish him well for his journey to the Pamir. We then headed into town to buy insurance which I had neglected to get at the border. The girl behind the desk was so patient with us, so between the odd word of English and Russian, a bit of sign language and Google translate we skipped out the door  with 1 month of insurance for about $15. We then adjourned to a really nice little cafe to reassess our plans. (real coffee what a treat) The central area of Almaty is really nice, there seems to be one arterial route which is extremely busy and manic. Away from this there are wide tree lined boulevards which can be busy but the craziness is not there. So we hit the road to the Charyn canyon area, destination Shonzhy. The first 150km were dual carriageway, perfect concrete road. The area is flat with crops in the fields but nothing much to see. The mountain range on our right is obviously impressive but we...

After a leisurely breakfast we offered Chris some route info for the Pamir area. We then caught a taxi into the central city area and had a wander around some nice parks and a beautiful cathedral. Almaty is a nice place, mainly for domestic and Russian tourists I suspect, also it is set to a spectacular mountain backdrop which supports winter skiing. The war memorials are very impressive monuments and they depict the war heroes as larger than life colossus' of men but in reality we all know we send off 18 year old boys to die in these conflicts. Certainly most of the soldiers we have encountered in our travels in this area fit the latter category. We had a nice lunch then back to the hotel for some planning, which has thrown up a couple of things that we need to do back in town, so we may end up there tomorrow as well. Chris has spent most of the day planning as well, we will meet up for beers and dinner shortly. On our way to dinner we caught ...