Almaty, Kazakhstan: Day 2

Today we were up for breakfast and then loaded up into a small van that took us to National Reservation Park. The drive was "gorgeous" as we passed through a very scenic gorge up the mountains into the park. There were mudflow dams all around, since I guess this town is plagued with large amounts of mud and large stones sliding through it. We eventually made it to a little chalet where we were spending the late morning and early afternoon. Several of us went hiking, and enjoyed the spectacular scenery!












We hiked for about 2.5 hours until it was time for a late lunch. We had lunch, and then piled back into the van and made our way down, stopping along the way to talk about the history of the mudflow dam and the huge speed skating complex they had constructed on the protected side of the dam. Great views!

When we made it back to town, it was almost 5 and we had free time until dinner. Since we are leaving in the morning for Kyrgyzstan, I did some packing in preparation for that. Apparently, the border crossing can be a bit tricky, so I wanted to make sure that I gave the customs officials no reason at all to stop me. Dinnertime came and we walked to a nearby restaurant, where we ate a good meal. Now back at the hotel for the night, I will be going to bed shortly!

Note: You may have noticed the picture quality of this and the last blog were not as good as previous blog posts. This is due to the fact that I am only attaching pictures I took with the iPad itself on the blog. It is simply too time consuming to upload all my pictures onto my iPad, and takes up way too much room on my iPad's hard drive... Sorry about this, but I'm streamlining the process!

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Location:Timiryazev St,Almaty,Kazakhstan