Well, we made it through our red eye flights ok, and welcomed the cooler air of Kiev, capital city of Ukraine. Our host Dave Fulwood met us at the airport and we made our way to Hotel Ukrainia, right in the heart of Kiev city. It is a beautiful city, some lovely old buildings, nice and clean, and a good atmosphere at night with lights and people wandering around everywhere.
We checked out some local markets, and then did a boat cruise down a major river that runs through the middle Ukraine. It was a nice way to see the city.
Dinner was a traditional Ukrainian meal, delicous, along with toasts and shots of vodka, not so delicous..
With only a few hours of sleep, I hit the sack pretty early and I dont know how they did it, but most of the crew hit the vodka bar, with some not hitting the pillow to 5am this morning!! Stamina!
It was a great fun morning, as people dragged themselves from their beds to head on our tour to Chernobyl. There were a few sore heads!! It was an amazing day learning about the tragedy of the Chernobyl disaster. The town where the power plant is located, was a full ghost town. We wandered through abandened apartments, schools, sports centres, houses, civic centres, fire stations, fair grounds and more. In the 26 years since the meltdown, nature is taking over and trees and shrubs cover a lot of the buildings. Everyone has just up and left, they were told that they could come back in a few days to collect the stuff, so of course they left everything. Most of this things had been looted and trashed.
We carried with us a metre that read the radiation levels, and we were able to see it increase as we approached different areas and also different machinery that had been used in the clean up. The area is entirely safe, however tourism is only just starting. Nobody lives in the 30km zone full time, but many transit in and out as they continue to run another 2power stations. As we are the first of tourists to start to go through, many of the places we went may never have been visited before.
As we left we had to go thorugh 3 different testing stations to measure our radiation levels, which we all got through no worries. The bus also had to be tested before it was allowed to leave the site. On the way to and from, we watched some videos on the bus that explained how the disaster happened and some of the tragedies that occurred. Many brave people risked their lives trying to stop the radiation leaking out. The government tried to cover the whole thing up for many years. People are still suffering the side effects today, similar to asbesots in Australia.
Tommorow its time to get back into some Agriculture, we have reeally been tourists for a few days, so we are looking forward to getting out of the cities and back into some Ag stuff.
A small village just out of the main city where the plant was. This was a street and there are actually houses on each side covered in bush.
We checked out some local markets, and then did a boat cruise down a major river that runs through the middle Ukraine. It was a nice way to see the city.
Dinner was a traditional Ukrainian meal, delicous, along with toasts and shots of vodka, not so delicous..
With only a few hours of sleep, I hit the sack pretty early and I dont know how they did it, but most of the crew hit the vodka bar, with some not hitting the pillow to 5am this morning!! Stamina!
It was a great fun morning, as people dragged themselves from their beds to head on our tour to Chernobyl. There were a few sore heads!! It was an amazing day learning about the tragedy of the Chernobyl disaster. The town where the power plant is located, was a full ghost town. We wandered through abandened apartments, schools, sports centres, houses, civic centres, fire stations, fair grounds and more. In the 26 years since the meltdown, nature is taking over and trees and shrubs cover a lot of the buildings. Everyone has just up and left, they were told that they could come back in a few days to collect the stuff, so of course they left everything. Most of this things had been looted and trashed.
We carried with us a metre that read the radiation levels, and we were able to see it increase as we approached different areas and also different machinery that had been used in the clean up. The area is entirely safe, however tourism is only just starting. Nobody lives in the 30km zone full time, but many transit in and out as they continue to run another 2power stations. As we are the first of tourists to start to go through, many of the places we went may never have been visited before.
As we left we had to go thorugh 3 different testing stations to measure our radiation levels, which we all got through no worries. The bus also had to be tested before it was allowed to leave the site. On the way to and from, we watched some videos on the bus that explained how the disaster happened and some of the tragedies that occurred. Many brave people risked their lives trying to stop the radiation leaking out. The government tried to cover the whole thing up for many years. People are still suffering the side effects today, similar to asbesots in Australia.
Tommorow its time to get back into some Agriculture, we have reeally been tourists for a few days, so we are looking forward to getting out of the cities and back into some Ag stuff.
A small village just out of the main city where the plant was. This was a street and there are actually houses on each side covered in bush.
An abonded farm, lots of old barns and feedlot area's
BATTERY on camera went flat here, so Linda has the rest of the pics I will add on next time!!!
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