Moscow to Petropavlovsk

Tony had noticed that on our flights to Patropavlovsk we were all entitled to a 40kg baggage allowance. What a pleasant surprise. It was only when we arrived at the airport that we saw why. With our snowboard bags and gear, when compared to our fellow passengers, we were still relatively light packers.

I think our fellow passengers broadly fit into three categories: There were fellow skiers and snowboarders, there were Russians taking every conceivable luxury and household good presumably not available in Kamchatka, and lastly there were American and German hunters packing some serious heat!

It turns out that Kamchatka also attracts a lot of hunting tourism. I am a little uncomfortable with sharing the beautiful surrounds and natural beauty of Kamchatka with hunters. I do not object to hunting per se. I have shot at a few ducks on a friends farm before. Had we been successful we would have taken them home to his mother and they would have been lunch. I however do draw the line somewhere. It just doesn't seem right to me to travel half way across the world to a place that has less stringent regulations than your own countries to go out and shoot bears whilst they are still yawning and stretching out after having just woken up from their winter hibernation. What chance do they have when they still have sleep in their eyes? I just don't get trophy hunting.

We all managed to land the front row of economy which is great if you can stretch your legs out into the aisle. If like me, you are sandwiched in the middle, you have a X hour flight without straightening your legs. I guess it could have been worse. I could have been allergic to pollen and been sandwiched next to a flower weilding mamuschka like Colleen and Andrew

The person sitting next to me was Marja Persson who it turned out that was heading out to join Patrik Linqvist and others in Kamchatka for a shoot and would be flying in the same helicopter as us.

I had some sleeping tablets shortly after take off (the guys behind us were using vodka instead) and managed a few fitful burst of sleep before being woken 7 hours into our 9 hour journey for breakfast, my 9th airline meal in 5 days (was it breakfast?). I still wasn't quite with it when we touched down to an overcast Petropavlovsk at about 10 am local time.

It was a very uneventful flight really. I remember it being dark only very briefly. In future I would try to get a window seat so that I could take a look at the volcanoes poking through the clouds in event of bad weather. I also would ask not to be woken for food. It seems you have no choice.