Rest in Ochakovo
When N. A. started to feed me (in accordance with a preliminary agreement), then I finally and irrevocably realized that I was in Ukraine. Even if I don't eat meat. Traditional Ukrainian hospitality is just some kind of misfortune, a natural disaster. But N. A. I quickly became convinced that the eater from me was weak and unreliable, and resigned myself. A little later, I also agreed with hot dishes, because. the weather was not hot. Around the second day, I directly told N. A. that she was “not being honest” with the guests she was feeding. Only for the quality of cooking and variety, you need to take as much from them as she takes for everything together.
The hosts are accustomed to receiving guests in delegations, they even came from Vietnam somehow. Not to mention the Russians and Belarusians.
65 ambulance departs from the Kursk railway station at 19-40, crosses the border with Ukraine early in the morning and towards the middle of the day the steppe is already spreading outside the window. A slightly hilly plain, pyramidal poplars and acacias growing at a much greater distance from each other than the trees of the middle lane. The grass no longer spreads like a continuous carpet, but grows in bunches, bushes, between which sand is visible. In Ochakovo, this steppe plain breaks into the sea with reddish clay "walls". It seems that in the distance (on the Black Sea Spit and beyond) they are almost a hundred meters in height. Illuminated by the rays of the sun, these red-haired giants on the horizon look very majestic.
The seashore in Ochakovo is 7.5 kilometers of sandy beach. The city stands, as they say, "on the estuaries", i. e. on the shore of a huge bay, it is separated from the sea by a very rare natural phenomenon: a huge sand spit. In good weather, a boat runs to the Kinburg Spit (40 minutes). Walking along the uncrowded beaches of Ochakov, I recalled the story of Andrey Bitov about a trip to the Curonian Spit (Baltic Sea, Klaipeda, Neringa), and my walks along it.
You simply walk along the surf line and watch the sea wash away all traces.
A young couple plays tic-tac-toe on the sand of the Ochakovo beach. They immediately wrote down their relationship: "Sasha + Nastya u003d" a heart pierced by an arrow, from the end of which blood drips into the bowl. It was stormy at night and the next morning there was nothing left of the heart...
You can walk along the beaches of the Curonian and Kinburg Spit all day long, these are many kilometers of sand and sea. When you sail on a boat to the Kinburgskaya spit and look along it to where it finally merges with the shore, you can only see the bluish silhouettes of trees on the horizon, “strait” between the mainland shore and the spit and some cargo ship going to Kherson.
Opposite the Ochakov Spit, 200 meters wide, and apart from seagulls, olives, grass and sand with shells, there is nothing there. Closer to the mainland, pines and deciduous trees grow on it, people live. Even the temple stands, built by A. V. Suvorov.
And in the spring, the women drag buckets from the spit to Ochakov with “this kind of” strawberries. Despite the fact that there is a sea on both sides of the spit, in the middle the shallow soil waters turn out to be fresh. It is amazing, but a fact that allows the locals to grow all sorts of things. “Where did the fresh water come from in the middle of the sea? Does sand work like a desalination filter? ” I asked N. N. “That’s it, that’s all, ” he replied.
The beginning of this September was not typically cool, but just right for me. When the sun peeped out, children were taken out to the city beach in groups to swim. The nearest beach is 300 meters from the house with a grove of weeping willows, acacias planted 40 years ago (in the south these are trees, not just shrubs) and ash trees. In the morning I would go there, sit under the acacia tree and look at the sea. N. N. once said that for a long time a person can only look at three things: water, fire and how others work. On the first two points, I agreed with him, on the last - we laughed.
I counted 4 types of gulls: large gulls with a bluish-gray plumage of the wings, the same in size, but with a grayish-brown plumage, common gulls and the smallest ones with a black cap on their heads. These are the most desperate: from a height of several meters they throw themselves like a stone into the sea, hide under water for a moment and then take off again. Whether with a fish in its beak, or without it.
Common gulls, pawing their paws, amusingly trample on the surf line. The oncoming waves wash out some living creatures from the formed hole, which the gulls immediately peck at. Black cormorants are excellent divers. Unlike seagulls, for some reason they fly very low above the water. A rare guest on the Ochakov beaches is the white, elegant heron. From the two beach dogs that ran through the grove in the morning, I was once again convinced that with a very strong desire, you can adapt to everything. Even lap up salt water from the sea when you're thirsty. True, I didn’t try it myself: as soon as my appetite woke up, I returned home.
On the second day, I climbed onto one of the red “walls” to admire the expanse of the sea (a water “dome” bordered by shores) and was surprised to find a scattering of small shells on a cliff more than 10 meters high. As if a wave washed up on the shore, not in the soil, but on the surface. How are they so high?
I did not go to coastal drinking establishments, but I tried homemade grape wine on the city beach. Delicious. This year was not fruitful (2006), because. everything is frozen (-26 degrees Celsius is very cold for grapes and other southern plants).
When I left Ochakov, the weather improved and it was hot. ON THE. said that the season usually runs from May to October.
