After walking through the amusement park in Pripyat, we found ourselves on a wide path lined by trees on both sides.
“What do you think this path is?”, asked the guide.
The amusement park in Pripyat was set up for use during May Day and Victory Day celebrations. Because the Chernobyl disaster happened just days before the important holidays, none of the attractions were ever used. The amusement park is one of the eeriest areas in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, yet it’s also the most photogenic.
Lenin Avenue was the main road into Pripyat. At the corner of Lenin Avenue and Kurchatova Street was 32/13 Lenin Avenue, a residential building with a furniture store on the ground floor. It was surrounded by a few public places and shops.
The highlight of my Chernobyl tour was a visit to the ghost city of Pripyat. It’s a city that was founded in 1970 for workers at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and had a population of just under 50,000 at the time of its evacuation on April 27, 1986. It has been stuck frozen in time ever since.
After Kopachi, the second stop on my Chernobyl tour was a visit to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Known as the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station during Soviet times, the plant is located a few kilometers from the city of Pripyat, 18km northwest of Chernobyl town, 16km south of the Belarus border, and about 100km north of Kyiv.
There isn’t much left of Kopachi. It was a small village that was contaminated and completely evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Most of the homes were made of wood and destroyed by decontamination teams. They were buried and a series of mounds now represents where the homes used to be.
I always got strange looks when I told people I was visiting Chernobyl. Maybe it was for fear of me getting radiation poisoning, or many people don’t have a desire to see a place that is synonymous with death and destruction. But for me, it was important to be reminded of how fragile life and the environment really are.
One of the main reasons our small group of friends went to Sharm el-Sheikh was to celebrate Martin’s birthday. We decided that on the exact day of his birthday we would go on an action-packed full day excursion in the Sinai Peninsula.
Tyra and I booked a day trip from Sharm el-Sheikh to visit the Colored Canyon, a spectacular natural canyon with high walls north of the city of Nuweiba in the Sinai Peninsula. When we were picked up from our hotel, we were driven about an hour away and turned left at the junction to Nuweiba, away from the city. I asked the guide why we didn’t go towards Nuweiba and he told me to relax.
The Tiran Island snorkeling trip is a popular and economic day trip in Sharm el-Sheikh. It involves a full day on a boat visiting snorkeling spots in the Red Sea.