Once, my geography teacher pointed with a pointer to the side of a large map and asked us, "Imagine Russia as a big house! Do you have that image in your mind? Good. In the east, this house ends with a balcony that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. And that balcony is the Kamchatka Peninsula..." From that moment on, I dreamed of seeing Kamchatka's 30 active and 300 extinct volcanoes with my own eyes. And then there were the geysers, the vast volcanic lava fields, the sulfur springs filled with a bubbling bluish-gray liquid, as well as mountains, forests, bears, bird colonies, waterfalls, sea lions, seals, dolphins, and whales. In short, Kamchatka offers an endless array of interesting things. Additionally, there are the settlements of the Itelmen, Koryaks, and Aleuts. The flight takes nine hours non-stop from Moscow to Yelisovo, the airport.