Can anything else go wrong?
Thursday we find out that we can’t take the boat from Baku and cannot take the train back to Almaty from Atturau (sp??) So more MONEY buying plane tix (money that we don’t have, of course). Friday we found that Arad may not be able to join us on the tour because his Visa won’t allow him to get into Baku. But Saturday comes, and Arad is able to join us, we have the plane tickets, we packed everything, and we were finally off on this tour that seemed like would never happen.
Beside the plane being insanely HOT, a few flies buzzing over our heads,babies crying, old men smelling, and a family in front of us eating a bag of meat, the flight was great. Successful.
We stood in line for our Visa’s, filled out the apps like we were told, then look over our shoulders to see Arad being taken away by a lady. Turns out, he was unable to get the Visa in the airport- should have gotten it in Almaty.
Tabitha, Nathan, and I proceeded to get ourselves into the country and stood by as Galina conversed with some men in Russian trying to figure out what to do about Arad. We had no clue what was going on.
About…..oh 2 hours later, we finally got our whole group back. Zhandos and Galina had gone off to try to take care of things. Meanwhile, we’re in a waiting area with Dias pacing back and forth with worry for Arad and Tabitha attracting almost 40 pairs of staring eyes as she listens to her Ipod, “hip-hop dancing”. I was having fun watching the ’starers’. Nathan’s ear was being talked off by an airport employee (in Russian).
Then, out of nowhere, a guy comes up to us and says he wants to talk to Galina. We had no idea who he was, where he came from, and how he knew Gala’s name.
Dias tried asking him questions, but got no answers, he said the guy was extremely secretive. For the next hour, we saw this man come and go, always on his cell phone. Apparently, he was a friend of a friend of a friend, and had been called to “free Arad”. After another hour, apparently his mission was a success, because he told us Arad would be arriving shortly. And he did. When we all left the airport, we were accompanied by a slew of men. One of them started running off with our stuff to his car, but the rest of our group was going in the opposite direction with the other men. I guess they were fighting over who was going to drive us. Before that though, Gala was talking privately to the man who “saved Arad”. Not sure how much to disclose on here, there may be spies. But let’s say, we are pretty sure some illegal operations were carried out last night,unbeknowst to us.
So we end up taking two separate card to where we were staying, but none of us knew exactly where we were staying. we were dropped off in the general location. We couldn’t find the rest of our group. Arad, Nathan, Zhandos, and I waited for about a half hour (I was preparing to stay out on that sidewalk all night). But then Zhandos came to the rescue and found them. The lady came to give us the keys to the place. We had to walk there in separate groups so as to not make much noise….something with the KGB…
But too make this already long story come to an end, everything turned out just fine. we are staying at a really nice place, we (almost) all have beds, and a really nice shower.
One bad thing, there’s lots of stray cats here, and I am still traumatized by my cat attack a month ago, so whenever i see a suspicious- looking cat, my heart throbs, and I get petrified. But no more cat attacks yet.
