Thar she blows

In Russia.
Ok, so we pulled up to Lorino today, and we expected to go ashore and see the local Eskimo/Chukchi people. Try their food, see them dance, the usual touristy things. Oh no, it was to be so much more!
We hopped into the Zodiac boats, and from the ship you could see the villagers lining the shore. Our arrival was a spectacle of great proportions. They don’t get many visitors……Ever.
So we arrive on shore, and the local kids are all laughing and grinning and running around. Everyone who had a traditional outfit was wearing it, and everyone who lived there was with us on the beach. I’ve never seen more miss matched clothes, except maybe in my own wardrobe. There was a long table of food prepared for us.
Main ingredient=Whale. I had boiled whale intestines (tasted like pork), I had raw whale skin with blubber (tasted like really fishy ham…sort of), and smoked whale meat Yummy (Jack Link’s got nothing on this stuff). Then, we had a presentation, of a ceremonial dance.
Well, I had just recently broken the language barrier with the local children, by playing a few hot games of rock, paper, scissors with them (it doesn’t matter where you go, Everyone plays that game), when all of a sudden, I looked down the beach and some of the locals where hopping into canoes and Umiaks (kinda like big canoes but made of walrus skin!), and were going out to sea.
So I asked my new little friends “What’s up with that“, and the response was smiles and giggling at me because they still had no clue what I was saying to them. “Where are they going?” This time, I accompanied the question with some gestures and pointing to get my message across. “Baidarkas” was the response, which is the name for the big canoe, what are they doing, “Whale“.
The locals had caught a 10 year old grey whale and had been waiting for our arrival, before bringing it in for the celebration. They struggled in their 3 boats for some time paddling this 17 foot whale in to shore.
It was amazing, the tail fin had been lopped off and the fins pinned to the side to reduce drag. They threw the tow line to shore, and then this really, really, really, old rusty bulldozer was brought down the hill. I thought the thing a relic, it was so covered in rust and clunked along! They attached the tow line to the tractor, and pulled the whale in enough, to keep it from floating away, but still in a bit of surf to keep it wet. Another dance was performed and then the “mother” came out in her traditional clothes, and blessed the spirit of the whale and thanked it for giving it’s life. She gave it a drink of fresh water, by throwing a bowl of water at it, and the chanting ended with a round of applause from everyone.
Then the kids swarmed around poking, and playing about it. One boy decided to play king of the mountain by standing on the tail, and his friends kept trying to push him off. I tentatively approached the body, I was really in awe. We’ve all been to Sea World but this was the real deal. People carrying on a traditional lifestyle, in a modern world. I touched it’s skin, which was smooth and cold and then started to examine the surface. There were several barnacle, and some tiny crustaceans on the skin, I made the brilliant comment that our whale had lice, because that’s is what these crustaceans look like. Ick.
Then announcements were made in Russian and the girls started to perform more traditional dances. Most of which included throat breathing. For those of you who don’t recall the Steven Segall, in Alaska shoot em up movie… where he has the vision quest with the half naked Eskimo chick, it is a heavy throaty sound, almost like an emphysema rattle, mixed with a hum. The whole sight was spectacular. I know I keep saying this but, Amazing.