Day 32: Sunday 13th September

By the time we’re awake the Russian couple have upped stakes and moved (without the car) back down the beach. They had planned the weekend as a hiking visit in Crimea but getting stuck in the sand has torpedoed that idea. Looks as if they’ve settled on spending the rest of their time here on the beach. Good decision.

I bury the cassette waste in the copse behind the beach and then we dump grey water on the side of the road by the railway sidings – nobody can complain at that, can they? Anyway, we have learned to dump little and often so the nuisance is minimised.

We’re first in the vehicle queue at the terminal but too early for the kassa. I check out an OSAGA agent in a kiosk 50m back from the terminal. As I’ve already completed another company’s application form I decide not to buy his.

While we wait, more punters arrive and the Russian disdain for queuing etiquette is all too apparent. About the tenth person through the door promptly plonks his bag right under the counter window, thereby announcing ‘I’m going first!’ Oh no you’re not baby, sez I and I go and stand at the head of the queue. By chance that is just when the counter clerk opens up so I am actually first in!

First thing she does is to throw our OSAGA application form straight back at me, no word of explanation. She goes through the other forms and issues the tickets, no conversation until she asks for R1600 – about £32. Fine.

Then we go over to the other OSAGA agent to buy insurance for Ukraine (R530 – about £11 -for the minimum 15 days). We’re now third in a queue and I curse not buying it earlier when nobody was there. It’s 45 minutes before we’re clear for emigration.

Back in the queue, then through the gate to customs – but we are a special vehicle so we have to go round the side. Another desk clerk goes through the papers. Then we are able to join the customs queue proper – a full inspection follows with mirrors underneath, storage hatches opened, internal inspection, etc. There’s great interest in the van – ‘how much?’ we are asked. Sharp intake of breath when I tell him.

Passport control is an unusually lengthy process too, a very thorough scrutiny of passports, visas and registration. Harry is asked where we stayed. (If we had stayed more than three nights in any one place we would have had to re-register the visa each time – and the Lonely Planet guide said the more registration stamps the better when leaving Russia.) So we were ready with a list of places stayed in/camped near over the 21 days and handed that over. The guy smiles at Jill’s innovation and returns the passports, keeping the registration slip.

After this we join the boarding queue and here, yet again, we are faced with the usual Russian rush to get to the front. People sneak up on either side to try to get ahead. The security gates remain closed and then just one is opened – on the far side of the approach road, so we have to sidle across and end up being the penultimate vehicle on. On the other side the process is repeated – until the Ukrainian customs place us last in the queue!

It’s lucky we bought the car insurance in Russia rather than leaving it till we reached Kerch – the kiosks there are closed, presumably because it’s Sunday, and we would have been stuck till Monday’s opening hours.

Eventually we’re through into Crimea, or Krym, as it’s called locally. We pass through a rural area that is light years behind the urban modernity of southern Russian cities. There are real peasants here and real hovels in the villages. We struggle to find any sort of supermarket until we see a good-sized one that appears well stocked in the first town of any size. Weird thing, though, outside on the roadsides there is all sorts of fresh fruit and veg available, but here there are piles of the same stuff rotting on the display shelves. It’s as if the place is being boycotted. Nobody in their right mind would buy the stuff, we certainly don’t, but why doesn’t the manager simply have a good clear out? Perhaps locals know full well they can fresher stuff and cheaper on the roadside.

Everything else looks OK, though, so we buy a cooked chicken and a roast potato salad and a green salad. Later these prove to have been a first-class buy, delicious.

We still need fresh water but can’t find any in the garages we try – though one lad really tried to find a source we could get close to. Then a brainwave – a car wash. There are hundreds of the things and we are soon installed in one with the lads willingly helping us to fill up – and offering a car wash at the same time. This I decline as it would soon get covered in flies again and, in any case, the dirty state is part of our tactics for making the vehicle appear less worth stealing. I reward the lad’s kindness with 10 hryvnia (grivna), equivalent to only 76p I realise later, and a packet of tea.

Now we try to find the campsite shown on the map – down a side road towards the sea. Yet again this proves elusive so we end up on a cliff car park on the edge of a resort beneath bare clay hills but with a beautiful view out across the bay. We eat our delicious chicken dinner as the sun sets across the bay. Struck it lucky again!