{"id":597,"date":"2015-05-04T23:06:40","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T22:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/?p=597"},"modified":"2015-05-06T20:22:06","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T19:22:06","slug":"monday-sochi-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/monday-sochi-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday – Sochi, Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, we arrived in the Olympic City of Sochi. Oh… those Russians…<\/p>\n

With the amount of time and palavar it took to get through immigration, one could easily be fooled into thinking they don’t really want tourists visiting at all.<\/p>\n

Add to this the dreadful, wet and drizzly weather, and our tour to see Agura Waterfalls
\nwas starting to look unpromising.<\/p>\n

Sadly; the inclement weather never gave up for one minute. A 30-minute drive to the outskirts of Sochi brought us to a car park from where we had to walk the rest of the way. In many ways, this is the sort of tour that is right up our street; a walk in the woods to see a waterfall… how perfect!<\/p>\n

The walk took a good 50 minutes along a rough path. Being an escort means bringing up the rear, so as not to lose anybody. In my group, myself and four other people became separated from the group. This wasn’t a massive problem since the walk was linear, with little chance of getting lost. Even so; when we came to a fork in the path, none of us knew which way to go, and the guide and rest of the group were nowhere to be seen. Fortunately, I was able to ask a couple of Russian walkers, who were passing in the opposite direction, if they’d passed a large group of people… they had.<\/p>\n

When we finally got to our destination, we only had a few short minutes to look at the waterfall before the guide set off on the return journey.<\/p>\n

\"Sochi_01\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It was a pleasant enough waterfall; quite high, and split into two parts, very similar to Aira Force in the Lake District. Unfortunately, because of the rain, the rocks around the base of the falls were wet and slippy, so we were stuck with only the one view if we were to avoid the risk of broken limbs – and that was mostly surrounded by trees. To be honest; The Yorkshire Dales and Lake District are positively bursting with waterfalls that are far more impressive than this one. It was nice enough, but not a patch on West Burton or Aysgarth Falls.<\/p>\n

When packing and upacking, then re-packing, at home, prior to coming away, we’d made an executive decision regarding waterproofs. We decided that we wouldn’t need them… how wrong we were…<\/p>\n

By the time I got back to the coach park, I was drenched through to the skin. In the little restaurant there, we were offered a complimentary glass of wine and a slice of traditional cheese pie (basically cheese on a bread base… that’ll be a pizza, then…).<\/p>\n

The guide in my group checked no-one was looking, then asked me if I’d like a glass of something stronger; something to cement Anglo-Russian relationships in the cold, wet weather. I accepted a glass of something that, as he furtively took it out of his bag and poured, he explained that a friend of his brews it… that would be rocket fuel, then… After two glasses, I declined a third on account of not being able to see straight and worrying that I may lose my sight completely. Serge, the guide, then sang folk songs to us all the way back to the ship and offered me a CD of his music that he’d recorded in the UK several years ago.<\/p>\n

It was nice to, finally, get back on the ship, and in the warm and dry. We almost certainly didn’t see Sochi in it’s best light; frankly, it’s difficult to imagine Russian Immigration in anything other than the officious light that they portray themselves in. From here on in, the weather can only get better…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, we arrived in the Olympic City of Sochi. Oh… those Russians… With the amount of time and palavar it took to get through immigration, one could easily be fooled into thinking they don’t really want tourists visiting at all. Add to this the dreadful, wet and drizzly weather, and our tour to see Agura Waterfalls was starting to look...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":""},"categories":[8,12],"tags":[],"author_meta":{"display_name":"Peter Woolley","author_link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/author\/painter01\/"},"featured_img":null,"coauthors":[],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["Minerva<\/a>","The Black Sea<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Minerva<\/span>","The Black Sea<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 11 years ago","modified":"Updated 11 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on 4th May 2015","modified":"Updated on 6th May 2015"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on 4th May 2015 11:06 pm","modified":"Updated on 6th May 2015 8:22 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":599,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}