Aidan & Karen’s Travels

Disaster has struck and the Dunkirk spirit came through. Adapt, improvise and overcome is now the motto of our trip.

Whilst staying in Lake Baikal and hiking around the hills around the shore, Karen slipped in some ice and landed on her wrist. Immediately she knew that she had broken her wrist and we had to then explain to our guide, Ramon, that we needed to be taken to the hospital in Irkrutsk (an hour away). After hitching a lift home to the family stay by a random Russian blooke (in a big fur hat and a lada) Ramon made some phone calls and said that a driver would be about two hours. We waited and waited and Karen was really feeling the pain by this point. Finally Sergei, the driver arrived, and so did the strangeness.

Sergei can be best described as a Russian version of Manuel from Fawlty Towers crossed with Arthur Daley. He immediately took us into town in his car and promptly got stopped by the police on the highway for speeding )doing 70 in a 40 zone). When we got to Irkrutsk he didn’t take us to a hospital but to a shop that sold bandages and started pulling bandadges down to see if they would fit. At one point he pulled a manequins hand off - not a good sign! We made it clear that we needed a plaster we left for the hosiptal.

The hosiptal was equally surreal. Sergei didn’t bother with patient confidentiality and opened every door until he found the doctor he wanted and we were immediately shown in. Well I say we - Sergie wouldn’t let me in and it was just him and KAren. At this point I don’t really knwo what happened inside but I sat in the corridor for ages. (Go to Karen’s page for her account)

Karen had x-rays done and her hand put in plaster and it was all done really quickly an defficiently. It was then that Ramon (after a hushed conference with Sergei) said, ‘You may want to give the doctor some moeny. You are not registered in Irkrutsk and what he has just done is illegal’. OK, then. We paid the doctor $40 and we were back into the car to be taken back to our home stay.

On the way back we were stopped twice by the police again - seems Sergei never learns!

When we got home we had a Russian sauna out in the back yard and finally made it to bed!

After all that excitement it was nice to have a realxing and uneventful day yesterday. Who knows we might be able to write something about all the fantastic stuff we’ve seen and done on the blog!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 5:42 am and is filed under Places we visit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.