Update: Mon 19:25

Sunday

A rather lazy day after the mountainous exertions of yesterday in which we reviewed the Eco Park's credentials.

In the first instance they have a faery tale "park" on the edge of the lake which we wandered around the lake shore to (not realising there was a road) which consists of a number of wooden constructions from one-room houses (including the faery bordello), through gothic mansions to ships in the bay, all aimed at children, of course. They are most assuredly not aimed at the Health and Safety Inspectorate with the jetty to the ships falling in the water, the gangplanks to the ships being just about as far as you're prepared to step down to and up from a wooden bridge with much of the bridge missing. Still a pleasant enough wander about and bang your head on doorways built for kids.

I managed to leave my "registration" (foreigners (still) have to register everywhere they go in RU which is a real ball-ache for everyone) in the cafe on the way back so more wandering about was required than really necessary.

In the Eco Park itself the credentials go way down with nothing crying out Eco other than some of the buildings being made with a lot of wood -- which is very common in RU. Further they have two bears in cages along with a wolf (not all in the same cage), a bactrian camel in a larger caged area and a host of dogs in small cages then sled dogs tied to kennels outside.

It certainly didn't ring eco to me even if it is very famous in (this part of) RU.

We headed off up the road to Zlatoust.

Currently at lat/long: n55 9.304 e59 40.338

Hotel Bellmont, Zlatoust.

Monday

Having recovered from climbing the mountain on Saturday we headed into the forest again (this time a National Park) for an amble about where we were advised to climb another mountain. This time, however, we were much better prepared and had a half litre bottle of water between us on the 12km and 1000m climb. D'oh!