10 Jul 2019

A Taste of Village Life at Lavrentiya

We spent this morning exploring Lavrentiya village, home to Chukchi, Yupik and Russians. While Russian development here began in the late 1920s, Lavrentiya had been an indigenous settlement long before. In the village library, housing 40,000 books, we learned of two famous Uelen writers who wrote about life in Chukotka: Rytkheu and Bek'et.

Meandering into the town square, we paid our respects at the WW II memorial and heard the story behind smiling caricature statue 'Pelican'. Around the corner, two large tents sheltered a smorgasbord of traditionally prepared foods for us: doughnuts and tundra berry sauce, whale meat (pickled, smoked and boiled), whale intestine sausage, whale tongue, tundra herbs and whale oil, whale blubber and skin, cured fish, pickled salmon and hot tea. Our hosts were delighted by our adventurous palates as we sampled their local delicacies. Some of us wandered into the natural history museum with Elena, our Russian guide and interpreter, while others enjoyed snapping photos and waiting for the dance performance to start where colourfully dressed women, girls, and men performed The Raven, Walrus Hunter and Girls Helping Mother, among others, accompanied by enthusiastic chanting and drumming.

Following lunch, we launched the Zodiacs to explore the coastlines of former native village Naukan and Cape Dezhnev - the eastern most point on the continent. From sea, we could see remnants of stone foundations and whale bone framing infrastructure. Just down from the Cape Dezhnev monument, a few abandoned and derelict border guard buildings cling to the hillside. We briefly stepped ashore to stand on this far eastern corner of land before continuing on to find Least and Crested Auklets, Pigeon Guillemots, Tufted and Horned Puffins, a Snow Bunting, while a lucky few spotted three Walrus swimming. 

Image (c) A.Tockston

Image (c) K.Wright