Saturday 25th September
Once again we are dumped unceremoniously at the train station to be greeted by our tour guide. We have an infinite ability to Forget peoples names as soon as they are given to us, however her English is great and she speaks enthusiastically about the area as soon as we arrive.
She even offers to pull over to allow us to get some breakfast before we make the hour and a half drive from irkusk to listviyana, which we snap up without hesitation. On route our guide shows us a collection of pictures from the local town, during winter lake baikal freezes across with up to 2 meters of ice, strong enough for tankers to drive across (which her pictures contest to).
They drop us off at our guest house, a wooden chalet accommodation with our own private room and en suite (considering where we had been living for the past week this seems like a 5 star hotel). The landlady is lovely and has offered to cook us dinner later in the evening to save us having to navigate the town on our first day. After a shower (during which we manage to flood the dining room and have to walk downstairs to a room full of patrons with our tails between our legs) the tour guide returns and takes us on a guided tour of this wonderful waterfront town.
We stop of at the museum dedicated to the wildlife and scientific research of the lake, she seems genuinely enthused by the information that she is relaying and we cannot help but get caught up in her excitement.
There are even two sea lions from the lake that have their own space within the aquarium there, they are unlike anything that we have ever seen, far fatter than usual and with real character.
After this we head off to one of the few tourist attractions, the local market. This is split neatly between a large majority of fish stools selling all sorts of inedible looking local fish and a large selection of stools selling local tat. We were not there long as neither we that appetising, and were returned home for an early dinner and early night.
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