Mountain Flower
View looking up Ala-Archa (just south of Bishkek)
Sara wanted to get up really early and catch the 8am bus to Cholpon-Ata, however she hit or reset the alarm clock so many times that it ended up being 10am by the time we got out of bed. The alarm clock changes it's sound as it goes off, but after listening to it for however long now, I don't wake up anymore to it. After repacking all our stuff (as it was all mixed up from the camping trip into the mountains) we headed off to get some brunch or snacks to eat at the grocery store before heading to the mini bus stand to go to Cholpon-Ata. We decided to take a one block detour to see if Alexi Alexander had his shop at this Antique store that was closed when we had visited previously. Well we walk in and ask are you Alexi? The guy says, Me? I'm Alexander. We had found our man and spent the better part of an hour looking over pins, coins, and other Antique type things from the last 50 years or so. Long story short if you are in Karakol and want to see or buy some pins, coins, etc, Alexi is very helpful, fairly priced (we think) and friendly and worth stopping in on. Now here is the really important part since nobody we meet knew him, his shop is located kitty corner (opposite side of a four way stop on a diagonal) from Neofit Guesthouse which is in Lonely Planet.
We picked up some bread, water, and a pinecone shaped treat and took a taxi across town to the minibus station where we only had to wait 20 minutes to leave for the 2.25 hour drive to Cholpon-Ata. I liked the ride better than the taxis, due to us driving slower, only problem was it was hot, the windows didn't open, and it took a while. When we arrived in Cholpon-Ata, we were expecting to be mauled by hotel owners, not the case. My blood sugar was low, or that is the excuse I give to my foul mood. We looked at one B&B right beside where we were dropped off and decided no. So we took a taxi down towards the beach and got him to stop at a guesthouse that looked nice. It was really nice, so nice that we couldn't afford it, so we got our bags and walked a bit until we found a place that looked more our price range. That is where we got a room, left our bags and headed for the beach.
There is a bit of a sea smell at the beach as the lake has no drainage point, only evaporation. We covered our very white legs and tummies with sun screen, layed out our very small travel towels, I began to read, and Sara began to nap. About 20 minutes later a guy came by asking for a light. We said no, no in english, which made us interesting. It turns out that this guy and his three friends where at the beach relaxing and drinking and celebrating his bacholar party (we think). We tried communicating but we still don't know Russian and they were a bit intoxicated to read what we pointed to in the dictionary. They poured me a rather large shot and motioned to drink and then go swimming. I tried to politely refuse for quite some time. Finally I poured over half the shot back into my hosts cup, toasted and drank. It wasn't as harse as I thought it would be, but it was still straight vodka. I still refused to swim as the water was a bit cool. They continued to insist on us swimming or drinking more, so we decided it was time to go. We said farewell and headed in the direction we said our hotel was. We found another nice bit of beach out of sight of our previous location, and read and napped until the sun had gone behind a large cloud and the wind picked up so that it wasn't so warm anymore. We proceeded to dinner where we ordered somewhat blindly guessing at the Russian on the menu and using a few words from the dictionary, plus we pointed at the table beside us for the french fries.
And that was our day, tomorrow we lie on the beach, and maybe check out some petroglyphs.
Tyson and Sara
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