Translated material
...Seven miles is not a detour
The country still retains its “Moscow-centric” structure; getting from Moscow to the sea coast by train or plane is not difficult. But getting from point “A” to point “B” in the very south is almost impossible. Russian resort towns are generally not connected by any acceptable transport links. Acceptable for a person on vacation: dusty old Ikarus cars, which the local population is forced to use in the absence of other transport and which cover a 400 km journey in ten hours with stops at all roadside villages, do not count.
Despite the fact that the infrastructure in all major southern resorts is already fully adapted for a decent holiday, a unified infrastructure of the Russian south - transport, tourism, information - does not exist. And in the current state of affairs, despite neither the grandiose plans associated with holding the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, nor the project to create a gambling zone in the Krasnodar Territory and “tourist zones,” nor the ambitious federal target program “South of Russia”, in not expected any time soon. To make the south fully touristic, there is not yet sufficient state will, nor regional resources, nor even the desire of the indigenous people living in these cities. I was once again convinced of this when, out of family necessity, I visited the Krasnodar region twice during the summer season.
Almost every year since the mid-90s, we travel back from Yeisk on the Sea of Azov to Moscow “with an inspection,” making a detour to other southern resort towns to swim, relax and evaluate what has changed.
Attempts to travel by private car have been made previously. In purely technical terms, the option is quite comfortable, because most of the main routes in the Krasnodar Territory are well repaired. But you have to cover long distances without interruption. Forced. The motels are occupied by truck drivers. Hotels in regional centers are at your service, but the desire, having stopped there, to look around - to wander around the city and visit an “antiquity” that comes in handy along the way, such as a mound that is open to visiting - encounters almost fierce resistance. “There’s nothing to see here,” the residents insist, contrary to the guidebook’s assertion. The majority of museums are closed - the workers have nothing to pay, the county architecture has not been restored - the local administration does not consider it necessary to spend money on this, because there are no tourists!
But let's not forget that rest is rest and holding the wheel around the clock is not always included in the plans of a traveling vacationer. The only options left are public transport or taxi.
Taxi is a different matter. In principle, local authorities in most cities are ready to make efforts to transfer spontaneous “taxation” into a civilized direction; buying a patent for passenger transportation is quite simple. But the competition of numerous “green lights”, “golden bees” and “cubans” leads to a paradoxical phenomenon. Taxi drivers do not want to take passengers to another resort town, because they will have to go back empty (it’s not every day that you find a tourist traveling far away unnecessarily!), and colleagues on intra-city transportation will earn more at this time.
Conquering public transport is an activity for the most desperate fans of the Krasnodar region with its mountains, caves, ancient monasteries, mineral waters, fruits and two seas - the Black and Azov. Being such, we, easy-going, worked out the following route this year: from Yeisk we go to Anapa or Gelendzhik, and then from these cities, or at worst from Novorossiysk, we get to Sochi. Life has made its own adjustments.
Trains disappeared immediately. During the high season, the routes are overloaded, the monopolist, JSC Russian Railways, seems to be happy with the situation, and the short journey to Anapa by train will take more than half a day, and to get a ticket from Anapa to Sochi, you will have to stand in a rather long line at the ticket office.
Studying the bus schedule did not add optimism. Buses this year, as before, run on a killer schedule - once a day, once every two days. In addition, if a bus leaves a route due to a breakdown, which often happens, there is nothing to replace it with. You are simply offered to return the ticket and solve your problems yourself. In addition, with a complexly planned route, it is impossible to book a seat on the bus immediately from Yeisk for our next Anapa-Sochi route. It would be reckless to hope to buy tickets on the spot - previous practice has shown that intercity buses are also overcrowded, and the driver will not take you without a ticket, this is strictly monitored by supervisory authorities.
However, at the bus station tourists were offered a relatively new option for tourists in Yeisk - an excursion to Gelendzhik. This could be an alternative to the planned trip. But it was postponed for a day, then another two days. Local tour operators always had something going wrong. For comparison: an Arab travel agency organizes a trip from the Egyptian Sharm el-Sheikh to Petra (Jordan) “on time”, and this 300-kilometer distance is covered in pure time in three hours by land and sea and in one and a half by plane, including landing - disembarkation.
There was only one slim chance that something had changed for the better in terms of shipping over the past year. Few people believed when we told our friends who still remembered the Soviet south that there was not a single regular passenger route from either the Black Sea or the Azov Sea from any southern coastal city. Not just to take a boat ride, but to take your suitcases and travel by sea to a neighboring city from Anapa, Sochi, Gelendzhik - today this is impossible. Okay, Yeysk is a small city, but serious cargo port terminals operate there, and in Soviet times the passenger port operated successfully. But the fact that Novorossiysk, one of the largest ports in the country, closed the passenger customs post last year due to the lack of passenger traffic, always shocked my interlocutors. This year - and this has been verified - nothing has changed.
We learned about the restoration of cruise traffic on the initiative of the Ukrainian side a month later. Of course, you can board the ship on our territory, in Sochi. But this route for the entire Russian south is a drop in the ocean.
And, having moved on a Ukrainian ship from the village of Port Caucasus to Kerch, we left for Crimea. With all due respect to the Krasnodar region.