Day 22 Lovozero to a Bush camp on the Murmansk – St Petersburg road.

Awake bright and early…3am!! Thankfully some more zzzzzz’s till around 9am. The designated ‘man’ was around at 10am to collect the rent. NZ$30, but the interesting thing is how a young girl is latching onto the potential to rent out her apartment for what is probably a couple of weeks income, in the town. Jen found the town on Booking.com because it is the centre for Sami culture in Russia. There is a museum there, represented by two Wigwams, but it didn’t look like it was open. Jen visited a fairly ‘interesting’ shop and managed to secure a few items to supplement our supplies.

70k’s back to the main road to St Petersburg. Not too much to report though. We took a side track to a place called Kirovsk on Daria’s recommendation. Daria is the young hotel receptionist in Murmansk who was so helpful to Jen securing vehicle insurance. We hope to see her in NZ one day. She is quite a traveller and an adventurous sort. Anyway, after driving approx 30k’s and coming to Kirov, we could only find the town and after doing a circuit headed back out to the main road. This whole area is very picturesque with it’s lakes and forests. It is also a very mineral rich area with massive slag heaps of overburden from the various mining and processing operations going on.

We drove for a couple of hours and found a place to pull off the road in what has been some sort of camp site in the past. far enough off the road to be spared the traffic noise during the night. By the time we had set up camp it was about 5.30pm and time to read before thinking about dinner.

Dinner was bread and broccoli and stilton soup, followed by a cheese and bread course followed by some bread/chocolate???? rolls…..:)

Into bed by about 10pm and still bright as day!!

No internet yesterday so this is being written in another bush camp but nearly close enough for some wifi connectivity.

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