Day 61, The Road to Astrakan

Wake up early to go meet Petar, can't leave the hotel because we are locked in. Spend 10 minutes yelling for someone, till cleaning lady finally shows up, wait 10 minutes while she finds keys. Now we need to wait again while she finds keys for the garage area where we left bikes.












Open the door to the garage area to find a huge Dog. Good thing he's nice.

Go and meet Petar, find out the truck he slept in last night is NOT going to Astrakan after all, even though 5 minutes before it was. Now we have to negotiate a new truck, and now the price goes up to $300.00, which is still not a bad deal for taking the bike across an international border. We split with Petar for a day, as Cory and I had planned to see more thing here before leaving for Astrakan.

Spent the next hour looking for an internet Cafe, finally found one, only to find out the thing we wanted to see, was about 1500 km back the way we had come. We likely passed it within 20 km of the road. D'oh!

End up driving to Astrakan anyway, an easy 350 km on good road.

Halfway to the border, we see a truck flashing it's lights on and off. It's the Kamaz and our guys from the night before, who saved us in the desert, and transported Petar's bike. We stop and say hi.

No issues with the border, other than having our luggage searched by drug dog for the first time. Book into cool hotel complex, that is pool, hotel, Banya, Snooker, and Cinema all in one. $60 for the first night, only $15.00 for the next night, and we didn't have to pay for supper, as the General Manager was a really nice guy.