(Born to be) into the wild!!!

Olkhon Island is an amazing place. For the past few days we finally start to feel like we are somewhere else. Here the world ends when you take the ferry and you enter in a parallel dimension. The rhythm slow down and you feel relaxed and causy. We spent here four days, where the first one was entirely used to reorganized our stuff in the car and finish the closets and other little thigns that we didn't have the time to do before the departure . Finally we have a nice “mobile apartment”!!
Prairies cover the west side of the island, forests and cliffs cover the east side. Few wood-made villages are spread along the coasts. Life here is simple but pretty hard especially during the winter and we were wondering what could keep people here during this season but then, when you start to visit the island, you understand why people can stand such hard conditions. Every hill and valley that you pass is more beautiful than the previous one...
We were not lucky with the weather as it was raining most at night and sometimes during the day and the temperatures were pretty low, but probably this was better like this, at least the mosquitoes were not attacking us as they did other places. With this weather the island has a mysterious atmosphere and, together with all the Shamanic symbols spreads all over the island, everything becomes intriguing and magic.
Finally here on the island we tasted for the first time the Russian vodka!!! We were camped in front of the lake, ready with our dinner, when a new Toyota Land Cruiser arrived with the music very loud. Our magic moment was destroyed. Two pretty drunk guys came to us with a empty bottle of vodka and they wanted to share their drink with us. At the beginning we were not so comfortable with this situation, but few minutes were enough to understand that they where really nice guys and they really wanted just to share their drink with us. They realized immediately that the bottle was empty..but no problem, another bottle was ready in the car. So we started to drink and to talked a little bit (alcohol helps a lot to speak a language that you don't know). They offered us a smoked “omul”, a typical Baikal fish, that we share all together and then the woman that was driving the car joined us. She spoke a little bit of English and the conversation became a little bit easier, but with the alcohol there was not so much problem! They offered us one new bottle of vodka, 2 omul, one can of Russian meat and a picture of one of the two guys fishing. We had a crazy funny hour with them and a good first meeting with Russian vodka!!
This island was a good place also to do a little bit of real 4x4. In the island there are only tracks and dirt road and if you want you can drive anywhere you want. We took the track to go north and, as the landscape was terrific, we decided to spend the night there. We had two difficult passage in the forest, but our pilots are great and we passed them. But the situation was not the same after 12 hours of rain. Yes, at midnight it started to rain and it finished the day after around midday. The tracks were full of sticky mud and it was difficult to have the control of the car on the flat part..impossible on the two passages where we had problem before. We tried to enter in the forest but it was too dangerous: we are heavy and tall. So the only thing we could have done was wait and hope for the sun. After few hours the rain stopped and the ground started to adsorb the water, it was the time to try to reach the village. We studied the track accurately and, with some moment of stress, we did it and we reached the village! Well, now we can laugh a little bit, but it was not a relaxing drive in the forest: fortunately everything went good and we had a good dinner in a little cafe along the street to decontract our minds: we deserved it!
Here is some pictures of Olkhon Island and, of course, our new Russian friends and the 4x4 day!
Few days and we will enter in Mongolia, see you there!

PS: Contest!
The person who can tell us 3 major caracteristics of Lake Baikal wins MATRYOSHKA # 2!