Last night I had planned with Roland to take the ferry over to the main town area of Anadyr and spend the day there. We met up at the small pier and took the 09:00hrs ferry accros the Anadyr strait. The weather was rather grey and chilly to begin with and the sea state was a little choppy during our journey over. Upon arrival we decided to find some shops and get some much awaited decent food inside of us. The main town area of Anadyr is nice, has a clean and modern look to it with a reasonably friendly atmosphere with a vibe of life about it. There are a few nice shops, including a supermarket, a museum of which we visited, a rather large wooden built church (photo above) and probably best of all there is an excellent bar/restaraunt called coffee studio. "Ah coffee studio" now if ever you are ever in or near Anadyr then you just have to visit this place. It is next door to the main supermarket and has a big red sign with the words "Coffee Studio" in English on the wall outide. It is nicely fitted out with comfy leather sofa's, nice decor, plasma TV's on the walls, has 2 levels and does great food and has a range of coffee's and deserts. It is more like a nice wine bar in Covent Garden, London than that of a coffee shop.
Upon arrival in Anadyr town we had a stroll and found a small store and out of no-where Roland sniffed out and found fresh, cold mini pizza's. That was it, we grabbed a couple and sat outside the store just enjoying these mini pizza's. You have no idea just how good these were. After this we walked through the main high street and I managed to find a hair dressers and so I went in and got a much needed haircut. Then we visited a few shops and then went to the museum. After this we went to the supermarket and saw the sign for coffee world and so the thought of a nice, decent coffee took over for me and I just had to go in. I was surprised at how good the place was and as we sat down and got comfy we decided to settle in for a while. Roland had a few beers (photo above) and I had 4 latte's! (photo below) Then we checked the food menu and I had the chicken fillet steak with fried potatoes (chips)
There was a choice of six different deserts and I went for the two in the photo below. My taste buds felt like they were awakening after a very long sleep and just the flavours alone just caused this small feeling of euphorea.
After a few hours of being settled here we decided to do a bit of shopping at the supermarket and then get the ferry back to the other side of the straits. Whilst sitting at the pier the late afternoon sun appeared and we sat there watching the Beluga's (photos below)
The Belgua's were so close it was un-real and they seemed to be every where but seeing the calves riding on the back of the adults at times (photo below) brought back memories of the TV series the Blue Planet and the episode "frozen seas" where it shows the claves of Beluga's riding on the backs of the adults and here I was watching it right in front of me for real.
The return crossing was calm and enjoyable and I contiuously scanned in the hope of picking up an aleautian tern but by the time we arrived back it still remained "elusive tern" and I was now starting to think that maybe I was infact to late for this species as maybe they have already departed from the area but then I hoped that surely there would be a few still present. As we disembarked the ferry I looked back at the bay and again both Beluga's and Ringed Seals (photo below) were just every where. After this we both went back to our bases and planned to catch up tomorrow at some point.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/expeditions/arcticicewhales/stories/seacanaries
