Day 3: Provideniya & New Chaplina
When I was a kid and read about Alexander Solzhenitsyn and others being condemned to Siberia, I pictured a bleak work camp on the frozen tundra. This didn’t look quite the same as the picture in my mind, but it felt the same.
Our first impression was of dilapidated, abandoned buildings rotting away in this obscure village in the far north of the Chukotka Peninsula. It looked like the gulag and was quite depressing.
When we went ashore, things changed. At first, walking down the street, we noticed that people didn’t look up at you. But then we visited their museum; so much thought and care went into it. The tourguides were educated and enthusiastic. The exhibits were really interesting. On the wall, I saw a kayak from the 1989 Bering Sea Expedition that our friend Jim Noyes, a parapalegic from the San Francisco Bay Area, put together. I wonder if he knows they have his paddle on the wall!
Then they took us to the community center for a dance performance. It was truly inspiring and as professional as any on the entire trip. We realized you can’t judge the spirit of a people by the exterior of their town!
Across the bay, we could see an abandoned military fort that once housed 3000 soldiers during the Cold War. We looked at the ramshackle structures and the first thought that came to mind was, “This is what we were afraid of?”
While we drove on military “transports” to the village of New Chaplina by the sea, our ship sailed to meet us. The Zodiacs came ashore to pick us up.
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