This report is about the tour: The Lost World 🗓 3–April 5, 2010
Let me note right away that this hike is for those who eat the most delicious things first. Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people, so sitting on the train on the way back, I felt a slight cognitive dissonance. No, I liked the trip, but it was presented like French wine in a plastic cup:)
Having met with our tourist group near the observation deck near Laspi Bay (we started the hike from the end) and, looking with one eye at the magnificent Cape Sarych (the southernmost point of Ukraine), we wandered along a country path to our insurmountable obstacles. On the first day, this turned out to be the Kush-Kaya hill, from which, from a height of about 500 m above sea level, you can see the same bay and the same cape. The difference is 2 hours of long ascent, after which the backpack sticks to your wet back and, if you throw it off, it seems that you are in weightlessness. Another difference is the scale of the review, which is inaccessible to lazy vacationers who prefer to use buses and cars.
Having admired the view of the southernmost coast of the South Coast, we had a short walk along the plain to Mount Kokia-Kaya, on which a military base was located in Soviet times. Looking at the surroundings around this base, you understand why in those days the military was a privileged class. After all, not everyone could sit over an abyss more than 400 m high on any day, under which an endless sea begins behind a small edge of the coast. Admire the clouds that often float into these parts, or the sunset, the golden path of which tempts any camera owner to test the survivability of the device’s matrix.
Returning to my grumbling at the beginning, I’ll explain that I was able to appreciate the beauty of all this only later, after uploading the photos to the big computer screen. On the very first day of the hike, I was stunned by the landscapes; expectations did not have time to arise in the depths of my soul and serve as fuel for impressions. Although, I assure you, in reality everything looks much more beautiful than in the pictures.
I was also surprised that just 3.5-4 hours after the start of the hike, the instructor said something like: “We’ll stop here for the night, it’s time to go look for a spring.” But I was expecting difficulties, I was ready for a late halt, setting up tents under the light of flashlights and searching for brushwood in the pitch darkness. I note that I was not the only one who expected great difficulties: on the evening of the second day, part of our group sat down near the fire and listened with rapture to the hiking stories of our instructor Taras. Needless to say, the man who conquered a height of 6.8 km had something to surprise us, reducing interest in what was happening around him.
Already at the first night, I had to drink water for the first time from a puddle (not counting the Kyiv tap water), or rather from a stream of melt water slowly flowing along last year’s foliage. However, after boiling it turned into the most delicious buckwheat porridge of my life and no less delicious tea, flavored with dust from trees and leaves. This was where the new things in everyday life and the life of a tourist ended for me, and until the end of the hike nothing served to destroy my stereotypes and way of life. I sincerely envy tourists (mostly girls) who discover a new world for themselves on such trips.
As a rule, when thinking about going on a hike, a tourist pursues one of three goals (or all three at once): - to get useful physical activity after office-plankton work; - look at the beauty of pristine nature and attractions along the way; - meet new people, hear/tell interesting stories around the fire and, perhaps, find companions for future hikes.
The third goal, unfortunately, was only partially revealed. Kirill correctly wrote that bad people don’t go hiking. But we had so little time to get to know and make friends with the team (only 2 evenings around the fire) that we were able to really communicate normally with the majority only in the canteen of Sevastopol before leaving for Kyiv. In addition, 7 out of 10 group members knew each other well, which significantly reduced the potential for evening get-togethers.
In mid-spring, Crimea is a fertile place for a city dweller tired of a long winter and stunned by the yards opening up after the snow. Here the trees are already in full bloom, wildflowers give an unsurpassed aroma (something between mint and barberry), and the grass, out of habit, hurts the eye with an overdose of chlorophyll.
In addition, here, on the southern coast, there are still practically no vacationers, who in the summer turn the entire Fig - from Balaklava to Cape Aya - into a camp for primitive people, where you can’t find either firewood or a secluded toilet:). Therefore, roe deer and even wild boars carelessly roam the expanses of Cape Aya, and the imposing owl is not shy about “hooting” as hard as it can right after sunset.
Finally, in the spring, the hike resembles a walk on a cool lawn, while in the summer the merciless sun threatens to mow down the unprepared tourist on the first steep and long climb, simultaneously burning out all the nature around him.
But there are also disadvantages. Firstly, the water temperature in the sea in spring ranges from 8 to 12 degrees Celsius, which, however, did not stop half of the guys in our group (including me) from opening the swimming season with screams. Secondly, not having a newfangled sleeping bag code-named “-5” or “-20”, before going to bed I had to pull on the entire contents of the backpack (except for the poncho), packed according to all the canons of outdoorukraine.com.
In the end, guide Taras, probably tired of our whining about the unbearable ease of life of the hike, decided to give us a surprise. After descending from the last vantage point of our hike – the barrel of death – with my camera, heavy from several tens of megabytes of illustrations, I asked him: “Which path will we take?”
There were three options: - go around the barrel of death from the north side along the road beaten by cars; - walk along the path above the “gentle slope” descending straight to the sea (about 250-300 meters in height); - go straight through the mountain. The last option was not even considered, Taras said to me with a smile on his face: “Which one would you choose? – after which he added: “Let’s go along this path (the second one): it’s a little loose, but it’s picturesque.”
Unfortunately for inexperienced tourists, the path turned out to be not through, and somewhere, right under the barrel of death, we were invited to play a game called “Your Own Susanin.” The path could be laid either along the junipers, using them as insurance, or along the tops of large boulders, where there are no nasty small pebbles and the grip on the surface is reliable.
Afterwards, my friend from Sevastopol told me that it was on this path that most tourists walking between Balaklava and Cape Aya crashed and were injured. In such cases, you understand that with all the ease of the Crimean Mountains, you need to be extremely careful here. After all, it would be ridiculous to crash on the first path 20 minutes walk from Balaklava, wouldn’t it?
Having caught my breath after crossing the path, I asked Taras: “Why didn’t we turn back when it became clear that there was no clear path further?” “Because it undermines the morale of the squad,” he answered me. And for some reason I didn’t even doubt the correctness of this statement. Having looked at the sea, mountains and the path we had traveled for the last time, we reluctantly went towards civilization, hoping to quickly repeat a similar scam and return to Nature again.
P.S.: As a result of the hike, we learned another phrase from the guides’ vocabulary: “gentle descent.” This is something like “it’s not far, 300 m” in one of the previous notes.
P.P.S: If you are afraid, like me, of getting cognitive dissonance due to the dissatisfaction of inflated expectations, I recommend paying attention to the “Romantic Collection” campaign, which I am now biting my elbows about. Still, three days (read two days) are unable to reveal all the joys of camping life.
P.P.P.S: Don’t be surprised that after such a short trip there was so much text - the profession obliges.