Day 6

This morning we headed to Aktau, which is on the Caspian Sea... Basically the purpose was to put our feet in that body of water. Secondary objective was to see a city off the beaten path. Apparently it is so not-a-destination city that when my parents told Kazakh friends of our plans to visit, they'd say "Oh.... why?" I've been told that the city mainly exists to serve the oil and gas industry, and as a jumping off point to visit Islamic pilgrimage sites ("bring a live goat for an offering, leave the next day with leftovers."). Based on guidebook descriptions, it's a pretty bleak city where a Ukrainian poet was sent in exile. Sounds delightful.



Holland slept well on the first leg to some totally remote, tiny layover airport. The next flight..... she wasn't so happy.

As our plane prepared for landing, we looked down and saw lumpy creatures gleaning the desert. Are those.... camels??
Our drive from the airport confirmed our worst fears. The area looked dry, dead, and dusty.

The hotel, on the other hand, was quite nice! On the edge of the city, yes, but had plenty of amenities. We did realize that we didn't have a great place for Holland to sleep. Hmmm.. sleep in a drawer? Not really big enough. I know- flip the coffee table over and line it with the bath robe! Perfect.


There's the sea!

We were room 503!

Of course we had to sample the nearest mart for snacks, so we google mapped our way over. Notice the jugs of water. Among the new snacks we tried, we found hippo/turtle-shaped gummies that resemble our favored British Percy Pigs!!!! We eventually bought all the shop had.





Then we fulfilled the overwhelming purpose of the trip... stepping in the Caspian Sea! Our hotel was conveniently only a block from the beach, so we strolled down toward the sand. Ok, so we passed a used hyperdermic needle, but the area looked decent otherwise- only a bit of Hep C and broken bottles. We saw a few families and kids frolicking about. One small group consisted of a few presumably Muslim women who work full black or multi-colored Burqas.

After we navigated our way to the sand, we doffed our shoes and socks, and felt transformed as we waded in the warmish water.







My mom had been told that Aktau was the place the get sturgeon Sashlik (shish kebab). The hotel arranged a taxi to take us where we could get some. I guess they didn't carry it, but my mom did get some sturgeon something and the rest of us got central asian somethings. Whitney got mashed potato sashlik and my dad and I got soup of some sort. tasty!

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