Field Trip to Karaglye

Marc and Nick from my school created a great field trip on Saturday with their classes and I got to go along. Marc has 2 teenage twins from China and they both came along and Nick's ten year old student came with his dad. This family is from the Netherlands with blonde, blonde hair. The bus was one of the old city buses and a tour guide who spoke Russian showed us all the sites. Dinara, my assistant, did most of the translating with help from Medina, our school's business manager who is from Russia. We all set off merrily for our 12 hour adventure, even though all of us had to set our alarms for around 5:00 AM.
I have heard so many bus stories in oversea countries where you take your life in your hands when you head out on the curvy roads and crazy drivers, so I had no idea what to expect. Well, this driver was very smart and had a curtain behind him so that nobody could see the road ahead and the roads were definitely not curvy in the 7 hour ride. However, the bus was so old and noisy and bumpy that you had to hold on while trying to talk to anybody. The transmission sounded like it was going to go out any second, making horrible screeching and grinding sounds whenever he sift the gears. We had a few hills to climb and the bus would almost come to a stop it was going so slow and the driver seemed to be frantically shifting the gears back and forth. Anytime someone seemed to be on the verge of throwing out food in the trash, I would say, "No, save it!! We might be sleeping on this bus tonight and want it for supper."
It turned out to be a wonderful trip and I am so glad that I went even though I am exhausted today. It was perfect weather and I found out so many amazing things about this area. First of all Aktau is the youngest city in the whole of Kazakhstan. It is only 46 years old. It was built by Russian prisoners (mostly people that were against the Communist government). The guide told us a story about how the prisoners were given a certain amount of water each day and they had to give it up to use it to make cement. The water from the Caspian Sea had too much salt to make cement apparently.
All these pictures are of Karaglye, the deepest depression in Kazakhstan. It is the 5th deepest depression in the world. It is one of the Wonders of Kazakhstan. In America it would have been turned into a tourist trap with entrance fees, huge parking lots, souvenir shops, and restaurants. This place was only identified with a Russian sign that translated into Deepest Depression. There was only one shabby building that was closed, an outhouse, and no cars in the gravel parking lot.