Day 63: Volgograd

Petar met us at the hotel this morning, and we said our final goodbye's.

The parts for his bike won't be in Astrakan for another 7-10 days, so he is staying, and we must continue on.

Petar had become such a big part of the trip, that we both felt of him as a member of Terranova.

We were sad he was not continuing with us for the remainder of the trip as planned.






After leaving Petar, we drove from Astrakan to Volgograd in one day, but got there late, which meant we were driving through an unfamiliar (and very large) city, in the dark. This is something we had promised ourselves we wouldn't do. We also both had on dark view-screens on our helmets, so we had to ride with them up, which is not fun with all the bugs.

After driving by the standard 60's era Soviet Nuclear Power Plant on the way in to town, we still hadn't seen a hotel, so we used our trick of hiring a cab for a few hundred rubles and have him drive us to a hotel.

We found a cabby who seemed friendly, and he quickly agreed to drive us to a good hotel, so he jumped in the cab, and this is when we realized it was full of girls. So off we went, the cab full of girls, which we realized were all hookers, and the two of us, following behind.

We've gotten quite used to just following people in the dark, who we have just met, through winding side roads, down dark alleys to finally emerge at some hotel. It always seems to work out. Still, the thought that they may be taking us somewhere to harvest our organs does cross one's mind... from time to time.

The cab full of hookers took us to an interesting "hotel" which was a not too bad looking series of chalets and buildings, full of cars and people having dinner. Looked like a good place. So we pulled in and looked over at the cafe, and the table at the front was full of about 10 more hookers. So we had stumbled upon a "businessman hotel" for traveling men from Moscow.

We didn't care, as long as the room was ok, and it had a shower. In fact the hookers spoke the best English, so they ended up helping us get the room organized.

In the time it took to set up the room, record our passports and get the bikes unloaded, we had been asked if we wanted "sexy girls" about 15 times by various people. We kept politly answering... "Actually no, we would just like a shower and some food please".

After getting settled in our room, we had supper with some guys from Moscow who were on a Fishing road trip. After they went to bed we stayed up till 2:00 or 3:00 am talking to Nataly (23), her husband, and Natasha (14) and her father, the husband and step-daughter of our waitress. No one seemed to even acknowledge that there were hookers everywhere, but we had a great time talking to Natasha's dad about politics, our trip, Russia and Canada, with Natasha providing some basic translation, as she had the best English.

We woke up the next morning, and the bikes were exactly as we had left them. We concluded the hookers were probably very honest. :)