Word: kamchatka
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...active volcano during a hurricane and skinny-dip in a hot, sulfurous pond. We would marvel at spouting geysers and boiling mudholes in psychedelic hues. We would share vodka and salmon caviar with melancholy park rangers in ramshackle huts. And we would be seduced by the mystery of Kamchatka, a land of fire and ice that remains one of the wildest places on earth...
...Nine time zones from Moscow, Kamchatka has just begun to attract visitors. (A five-hour flight from Anchorage, Alaska, is the only international air connection to the peninsula). The 1,207-km-long region was off-limits to most Russians, not to mention foreigners, during the cold war because it was the site of a nuclear-submarine base and military radar installations. Today nearly a third of Kamchatka is protected nature reserves, including five parks designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO...
...Kamchatka's economy has collapsed in the wake of perestroika , as subsidies from the central government have dried up. Corruption is rampant, with poachers depleting the region's vast fisheries. Nature reserves are under threat from mining and energy projects. Electricity is frequently shut down, even during the brutal winters. As a park ranger noted while guiding us through the thermal springs of the peninsula's Valley of Geysers, "This is the only place in Kamchatka where they can't cut off your hot water...
...Russia's new regime has also opened the way to travel entrepreneurs: nowadays about half a dozen local operators offer packages. Our tour company, The Lost World Ltd. (go to travelkamchatka.com), was launched by Nikolay Kruglyakov, former chief of the Kamchatka rescue service, in 1993, when Moscow stopped financing the rescue service mountaineers. "The central government said, 'Make your own money,'" he explains. "That was the start of a business opportunity." In 2002, Lost World guided some 500 foreign tourists on summer hiking and rafting expeditions. In spring and winter, the company and several other firms organize helicopter skiing...
...Visiting Kamchatka is best done through a guided, organized trip with an interpreter and fixers to deal with glitches. With Lost World, we paid $1,890 each (not counting airfare) for 14 days inclusive of food, transportation and four hotel nights. But prices vary depending on where you go and how many people are in the group. A worthy nonprofit organization, the Wild Salmon Center (at wildsalmoncenter.org) based in Portland, Oregon, has been conducting fishing and scientific expeditions to Kamchatka for years...