October 13 - Lake Baikal

Not crazy about spending two days in Marez, we went back into the village in search of somebody with a car. It was like a scene from a bad Western movie. The village was like a ghost town, complete with howling wind sound effects. A couple of pigs wandering "Main Street" were the only visible signs of life. We finally met an old woman who told us that our only chance to find a ride out of town was to go down to the pier, where every three hours a ferry arrived with cars from a nearby island.

The noon ferry arrived and unloaded its cargo: two motorcycles and a dog. We returned to the boat to eat lunch and regroup. It was obvious that Tatyana, the team leader, had mixed feelings about our predicament. She didn't want leave us stranded, but we were delaying the expedition. She decided to wait with us for the next ferry and in the meantime try to find us a place to stay in Marez.

The three cars that came off the 3:00 p.m. ferry were packed full with baggage and passengers. This time we returned to the boat to gather our equipment and bags. We had found a place to sleep and resigned ourselves to spending at least another day in Marez. As the G.Titov pulled slowly away from the pier, Tatyana and the rest of the team looked down on us with pity and waved good-bye.

Lisa and I walked back to the village, bought six beers from the only shop in town, and went down to the pier to wait for the last ferry of the day. Looking out over the beauty of Baikal we decided there were a lot worse places to be stranded. As the late afternoon sun set a chilly wind picked up off the lake. A truck driver waiting to take a load of cabbage to the island offered us refuge. Huddled in the cab of his truck we shared vodka and candies as we awaited the arrival of the 6:00 p.m. ferry.

From a distance, we could see there were a couple of cars on the ferry. The first one to pull off was empty. We flagged down the driver and asked if he was going to Irkutsk. He was, and just like that, we were rescued. It was sort of an anticlimactic end to our adventure, the idea of being stranded in a fishing village on the shores of Lake Baikal had begun grown on me.

Five hours later we were back in Irkutsk and checking our e-mail.



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