From Russia, with love….kind of!

Last we left you, we were in Mykolayiv, the town to find Ukrainian love or go to the zoo. We found beer and a nice place to sleep. The next morning we were on a mission, to find some oil for the bikes. Through a random series of events we stopped outside of a Suzuki/Mazda dealership. A guy with a big smile on his face and some broken English came out to ask if he could help. His name was Vadym, he had built his own Indian motorcycle, crashed it, hurt his back, and is now building a trike. He even knew about Burt Munro. He was super stoked to see some fellow bike enthusiasts and really keen to help. We managed to describe the exact oil we were looking for and 30 minutes later we had two litres of the stuff. What a four-stroke of luck!!!

On we headed through the middle of Ukraine. Have you ever wondered what the middle of Ukraine looks like….well it is flat….and empty. We got on the road and the GPS said 196km to the next intersection and that’s pretty much what it was. One straight was over 40km long (there were still pot holes and severe undulations in the road but we made good time). We ended up in a town called Melitopol, a run down place in the middle of a flat plain with nothing on it, you’d think it’d be a place no one would go to – you’d be wrong. After visiting six hotels we ended up being directed to a place where you’d think the rooms would be rented by the hour rather than by the night, but at least it was a bed. Apparently Ukrainians go to Melitopol for a holiday – wow!!

So, on to the story of the last few days. We’d always planned to go north through Ukraine to enter Russia due to the Ukrainian-Russian conflict. Over the previous few days we had talked to a number of locals, most of whom said that there’d be no issues getting through the southern most border crossing near between Mariupol and Rostov. We also contacted the Ukrainian Border Guards hotline who said it would not be a problem. So we headed east thinking it’d be great to save a whole lot of kms. About 40kms from the border we hit a checkpoint, probably the 4th or 5th we’d passed without any issues. This time we were told we could not pass. Fortunately there was a military guy who spoke some English and explained that it was not safe to travel through to the border and that the border was closed anyway. Bugger! He showed us where we could cross the border, a 550km trip around the conflict zone on secondary Ukrainian roads. None of us were very excited by that prospect, but we had no choice. We took it on the chin and started to head north. It was a day of things not going right, we couldn’t make the border crossing we planned, Amand got a flat tyre and it rained for the first time on the trip while we were fixing it, but most serious of all is that Steve lost a jandal!!

So here we are, three days later, sitting at the border between Ukraine and Russia near Prosyane.

We had night stays in Pokrovsk and Bilovods’k, both great experiences of little Ukrainian towns where the people were friendly and the beer was ridiculously cheap. In Bilovods’k, a small town near the border, we couldn’t find any hotels, so we asked a couple of guys sitting in the very small town square. They directed us to a place by this beautiful old church. We arrived and there was music and cheer going on inside, it was a wedding. We poked our head in the door and realised it probably wasn’t what we were looking for, but a couple of people came outside and we were able to mime what we were looking for. Then out came the bride and groom and the wedding party, all having a great laugh at these random adventure bikers who spoke no Ukrainian or Russian but had interrupted their party. A guy then pointed to his car and got us to follow him, he stopped outside a closed shop and called a number. A couple of minutes later a lady came out in what looked like her nightie and showed us the old house next door. A nice little home and a place to park the bikes out of sight, all for 500 Ukraine gryvina (about 17 Euros) – score!!

We’ve now been sitting inside a booth at the Russian border using Google translate for the last 7 hours with Russian customs not accepting that Amand has permission to ride a bike registered in Sam’s name even though Sam is right here too. And Steve is not allowed to ride a bike registered in his wife’s name; in Russia legislation does not allow for a vehicle to be registered in one partner’s name and for the other to drive it. We are hoping to be able to find a solution soon!!!!