McDonald's Russian Blog: August 2011

Through this photo blog I will attempt to take you with us on one of our adventures in Siberia. On July 12 we were taken from Tomsk to a village rehab center near the city of Yurga. We drove for nearly 3 hours and came to the banks of the river Ob where we had to take a ferry. The bridge you see in the far background is a railway bridge. This ferry is the only way across the river for cars and people. When here in the winter of 2009 we drove across on the ice.

This is the ferry landing. We had to buy passage, but there was no obvious place to purchase it so our driver had to wait until someone else arrived. He then got directions, left us standing there and went to get the proper ticket.

This was a ferry idling before boarding. We had to wait for the approaching ferry to land and unload before we were allowed to board this one.

Approaching ferry

Letting down its ramp

A man jumps off with a shovel to smooth the ridge of dirt and stones that the ferry pushed up in front of the ramp when it landed in order for the vehicles to disembark

Now we can begin loading onto the idling ferry. As you can see the angle of the embankment and the boat ramp are somewhat acute.

This truck with its high undercarriage was able to board, but the next guy couldn't do it.

Rolling in cautiously

Mike helping

It quickly became obvious that cars wouldn't be able to board so the ferry raised the boarding ramp a bit, revved up its engine and simply pushed its way closer to shore where there was less angle.

Heading for the opposite shore

Almost there

Our driver didn't know how to get to the village rehab center and was told to "follow the direction that most of the cars go"

so that's what we did

and this was the road we took along the river

The road seemed to go on forever, but we kept that vehicle in front of us in our sites.

Here the road got a little bit better. It was drier and not so slippery.

That truck was 'makin' hay' and getting farther and farther away from us.

Suddenly we veered into a hairpin turn, up into a settlement.

O phew, there he is again.

At the top of the hill was a fork and we had lost site of the truck that was in front of us.

As we sat for a moment at the fork deciding which way to go this was a cute little house on our right.

We decided to go right,

soon came to another fork,

and then another one. The truck and other cars from the ferry have long since disappeared.

Mike is hanging his camera arm out the window snapping pictures

We decided to stop and ask directions. This is our driver trying to follow what the woman is describing to him. Taken through the windshield you can see the mud spatter.

This jeep belonged to the lady who tried to give us directions.

This looks old and funky, but was a much better vehicle for the roads we were on than the car we were riding in.

The lady said she was familiar with the center and we could get there going "this way," so off we went into the forest.

With the road growing smaller, and smaller,

and muckier and muckier.

When the car could no longer maintain traction we decided that continuing the way we were going would probably not be the wisest action, so...with no great ease, we turned around

and headed back to the ferry landing to try again. We had done what we had been told and followed the direction "that most of the cars were going." It was just our bad luck that that particular group wasn't going in our direction