Two in Magadan!!!

Cassie:
We made it through the first part of our journey and arrived in Magadan this afternoon. I think it's still sinking in where we actually are in the world. We saw the Mask of Sorrow monument on our way in today and it was solemnly beautiful. Unfortunately there were a couple of crazy people there practically yelling orders at each other. One of them even roped Graeme into a photo with one of his friends and when I snapped a picture of the guy taking a picture of Graeme he went off his tree at me. He kept saying in english "Don't shoot me, don't shoot me!!" So I said in english back to him, "Too late buddy, gotchya!". Weirdo. Then a drunken wedding party showed up yahooing and being total dweebs so we headed off. It's actually quite a sad monument. It's there to commemorate the Soviet prisoners during the 1930s - 1950s who were forced to make parts of the old Kolyma Highway. The part that we had all the troubles on to Tomtor and back is part of the old road that the prisoners ma
de. They were treated terribly, tortured and many of the prisoners died during its construction. It's said that their bodies were incorporated into the road as it was constructed, hence the infamous nickname, "Road of Bones". Anyway, needless to say we did our best to pay our respects but it's a bit difficult when there's crazies and drunk people crawling around it. It was still amazing to see it in real life though.

When we woke up this morning the rear left tyre was completely flat, as we had expected it would be. Thankfully it held the air enough for us to drive and just keep stopping to top it up every so often. We actually had another tyre failure not long before we camped last night and unfortunately it was just outside one of the derelict towns. Just as we've pulled over and Graeme's getting the jack out of the car a car load of drunk idiots stopped up the road from us and got out, still swilling from their bottles and gestured if we needed any help. Graeme said we were fine thanks, but they insisted they get a photo with him. So obviously he had to oblige to placate them and send them on their way whilst I'm hunkering down in the car praying they would just go away. They were fine, didn't bother us any more than that and after a short stop finally left. Although, when they weren't looking I locked the doors and climbed into the back where they couldn't see me. I'm over having any
interaction with idiots and crazy people. I'm sure when they see the pictures on their phones they'll wonder why they've got pictures of a random guy and his car - I doubt they'll remember.

This last tyre failure we had yesterday was the one we puncture repaired on the road of bones coming back from Tomtor. The plug kit held it for a good 800km I think. Amazing. Graeme put the dodge-illy repaired spare on the car to see how long it would take before it too went totally kaput. It was one of the ones that Gipetto tried to repair but it had busted through the sidewall and he said it's not a very good fix. Well, like I said, Graeme chucked it on anyway in desperation to get away from that town because it was the easiest spare to get to. We honestly didn't think it would last a kilometre, but hey hey, it's got us to Magadan about 500km away!

So tomorrow we need to organise a mechanic and a new set of tyres. Unfortunately, tomorrow is Sunday so we're not optimistic anything will be done until Monday at the earliest. Oh well, that means maybe three or so nights in Magadan and that's not such a bad thing really. As the past few days has shown us, the situation could be a heck of a lot worse! We did see the mechanic's workshop today on the way to the Mask of Sorrow. Thanks Jon, green door, number 23 in a line of sheds - just as you said it would be.

We have also since found out that Bolot had arranged for a friend of his in Magadan to drive two new tyres to us all the way in Ust Nera if we still needed that. That's over 1000km away on dirt roads. Amazing generosity from total strangers. I'm just blown away. We're going to contact this guy to hopefully meet up with him if he has the time.

We definitely need a very good rest here before we embark on the return journey to head towards Mongolia.

Another thing of note, I was able to order us something other than borsh and bread for lunch today! I've found that we need to have at least two choices ready just in case they say "Nyet" to something on the menu. Pretty much everytime we've ordered something we've found that just because it's on the menu, doesn't mean they're serving it. Strange. So I asked for the first thing "Roast Meat" and the lady said "Nyet". Hmmm, ok so I asked for the second choice "Meat and Rice" and that was met with a "Dah". Woo hoo, two of those thanks! And it was actually really tasty. So there you go, I can now order borsh, salad, chicken and meat with rice. Our food vocabulary is growing!

Graeme: Please see all of our photos to help explain stories you've heard over the past few days:
https://picasaweb.google.com/twomagadan/YakutskToMagadan?authkey=Gv1sRgCLnW_cu5_KGInAE