May 2016  Kamchatka - World heritage land of ice and fire

Kamchatka Peninsula

This is a precious place and with its volcanoes is listed as a World Heritage site. It is a fairly isolated and remote Krai (a geographic administrative division) of the Russian Federation and so often the people feel it is forgotten when it comes to resources and the like.  Health care is free but residents have to wait months for an appointment for routine medical matters. There are a couple of private clinics but most people fly to Korea, Singapore or perhaps Moscow 10,000 km away for more major surgery/treatment.  There is an increasing incident of cancer in young people but few resources to mount a serious health campaign. 

Wages are low but cost of fuel, in this fuel-producing country, is comparatively high. For instance a fully qualified doctor earns ~$600 per month yet fuel is about 80 cents a litre. As with country regions in Oz, many of their young people have to leave to find good career opportunities. 

They can grow vegetables such as cabbage, potato, carrot and beet and some berries, but much of the food is imported especially fruit. Meat and milk is imported either from mainland Russia or SE Asia. Fish however is plentiful and we could eat smoked salmon 3 meals a day!  You'd be crazy to complain about that but it makes one aware, yet again ,how luck we are in Oz with plenty of everything. 

Cropping near Yelizova

In the days of farm collectives, wheat and buck wheat were grown here but are no longer. Many people have a summer house - dachas - which may be quite close to their usual place of residence (apartments in town), but there they can grow their own vegetables plus some exotics such as tomatoes under glass; we saw many glass houses as we flew back to base last night as well as fields awaiting planting once the ground thaws a bit.

Central heating and hot water is piped to all building from volcanic thermal sources. It's turned on in September-October and turned off April-May.  So homes are warm as toast. 

This is a place of earthquakes due to its location beside the Kamchatka-Kuril trench which is around 10 km deep. I was told that tremors occur almost daily but most are too small to notice. As a result of decades of earthquake damage, old housing is gradually being replaced with structures which will be able withstand earthquakes of a higher magnitude.
I reckon you can probably google the rest and get more accurate information! Talking of Google reminds me how much I miss our easy access to the Internet - it's available but we don't have affordable access. I have a travel SIM but that is limited. Oh well - but next time (Note to self) I will buy a local SIM on arrival. In the meantime, while we are staying here (and I hope at every hotel we hit), we have free WiFi albeit intermittent, and for that I am very grateful.
Tomorrow we head out to sea and will have no internet so I will talk to you in a couple of weeks when we dock at Yuzhno-Sakhalin.