August 16-26 Khabarovsk

At the end of the trip, we spent some time at home to wrap up things and get some rest after the busy trip. The weather was a mix of rain and sunshine and more news of possible flooding were coming, so it was not a good idea to venture out of Khabarovsk in case the road collapses/disappears under water. Indeed, the water kept rising. We went to the river bank a couple times and it exceeded 6m level, which is dangerously high for Khabarovsk.

One day we went to the zoo and saw several bears. We finally saw bears during our trip, but that was real cheating, so it does not count. We also visited dacha a couple of times to pick up some vegetables and berries. Due to the rains, the harvest was not great at all.

For Pablo's birthday, we drove to the Bolshoy Ussurisky Island nearby - quite a large island in the Amur River divided in half between Russia and China. The Russian side is purely agricultural. There used to be a village there, but after the great 2013 flood it was evacuated. Some people decided to remain, hence there is one or two inhabited 5-storey buildings amidst other empty buildings and infrastructure. We saw several flooded summer houses (dachas) and plenty of trees standing in water. We saw plenty of herons, white egrets and even ciconia storks, plus plenty of small birds. Storks really made my day - they are at the brink of extinction, so seeing them in the wild feels like a privilege. The road was at times a minefield of potholes. Then we went for lunch in outdoors setting with two grey cats. We continued to the dacha and then had a small celebration dinner at home.

At the end of our stay we had two family reunions. First, with my father's side and then with my mother's relatives, where we played bingo, where my cousin's 7-year old daughter Sonya played for the first time and won big. We also took a boat trip on the Amur.

This was time to say "see you" to our car. We decided to keep it as the time was too short to sell it. We went to local UAZ centre for an advise on car storage and also to fix some door locks. We were told that our car is a miracle of very few problems - they often see a list of issues that need to be fixed, whereas we only had issues with door locks and handles (well, apart of wheels, but that it slightly a different story). Hopefully, our Patriot will continue behaving next year. As we put it to the garage, the odometer showed 21700 km. Leaving the car behind was quite emotional, but bittersweet as we know we will use it next year.