In July 2003, Justine, Hadas and Alexey successfully completed a 650km sea kayak journey up the Pacific coast of Kamchatka. It was a great trip full of close encounters with surf, bears and Russian tanks.

Just a day after leaving from the capital Petropavlovsk we were kayaking in wilderness, camping on a rarely visited coastline with no roads and very few people. All we had for company were perfectly conical volcanoes, long surf beaches and the world's largest population of brown bears.   Life was pretty good!!

Perhaps the most surprising thing about our expedition is that we made this incredible journey with a novice kayaker! Alexey proudly showed me some photos of himself in a double baidarka on a flat lake but he had never been in a sea kayak before. However the Kamchatka authorities insisted that we have a Russian with us at all times if we wanted to travel up this militarily sensitive coast, so Alexey it was!

The surf was always intimidating and at times downright scary. I got knocked over onto my side on the first day and my heart sank as I thought I was going to have to try to roll. Luckily I got away with it and hip flicked back up. Alexey swam many times when the surf was big but he did amazingly well and managed to stay in his boat on days when Hadas and I felt sure we'd be fishing him out of the water.

Back on the water, we saw our first brown bears and we were very nervous about landing anywhere. Massive foot prints seemed to be on every beach, no matter how steep the cliffs. On day 3 we arrived at the perfect beach for a campsite but it was so good that there were already 2 bears there foraging for seaweed. Fortunately they ran away when they smelt us and we were treated to the spectacle of them clawing their way up an impossibly precipitous cliff.

Hardly anyone lives along this stretch of coast but we visited most of the people that do. Our first encounter was at the fishing village of Jupanova. A few dozen men work there for 8 months of the year with no contact with home. They looked after us in the fashion that everyone we met would. They let us use their Russian sauna and fed us salmon and caviar for dinner and breakfast. They also let Alexey salt some salmon that he had found in a washed up fishing net that morning.

The most touching contact we had was with 2 couples who man a remote lighthouse. Their outpost is so isolated that we were the first people they had seen for 8 months. We delivered 2 letters to one man and it nearly made me cry to watch the joy on his face as he read news of his son. The letter had been written 6 months before but that didn't matter to him. Overall the trip was very exciting and full of different challenges. We had thick fog for several days which kept us on our toes navigating - especially as there were many offshore reefs and rocks. At one point we couldn't tell if we were kayaking around a small offshore rock or if we were right by the mainland.

For the last 4 days our fortunes changed, the sun came out in force and we found we were too hot in our winter thermals. Kamchatka was experiencing an unprecedented heat wave. Even the swell died down and we enjoyed sunshine, calm seas and stunning views. I even paddled in a bikini one day!

We pulled our kayaks on shore for the last time in the fishing town of Ust Kamchatsk, 19 days after leaving Petropavlovsk. We'd made it safely to the one road back to the capital. As always at the end of an exciting and challenging journey, our heads were full of conflicting emotions. Happiness and relief to have achieved our goal, and sadness that we have to leave it all behind and face that thing called real life again.

By Justine Curgenven
Used with permission