Day 5 - Parks, Ferris Wheels, and Roller Coasters (Almaty)

Today was our last full day in Kazakhstan as we’ll be going over the border into Kyrgyzstan tomorrow morning.

There are plenty of tours you can do from Almaty but most of them are pretty long as alot of the attractions are hours outside of the city.

In fact, there was one tour that was 16 hours long from 4:30 in the morning til late at night.

In the end, I decided to just have a “do nothing” day today. Honestly, I find those days are so important to sprinkle into my trips as you need time to relax and decompress every once in awhile.

There’s just no way you can be “go, go, go” for a month as you’ll just burn out. Trust me, I learnt this the hard way.

So, yeah, a “do nothing” day was on tap for today.

That’s not to say that we’d just sat in our room all day and played cards.

Nah, we got out there too…

Went to a Square, found a Park

After a nice full sleep last night, I was up at 7am this morning.

Of course, Nathan on the other hand, was still fast asleep.

No worries though as there just wasn’t any rush to get anywhere or do anything.

Eventually Nathan got up and by 10:30 we were out the door to explore a part of the city we had yet to see.

My map had a couple places marked in the southern part of the city so we took a Yandex (their version of Uber) down there to explore.

The attractions were the Independence Monument and the Republic Square.

The monument was, well, a typical monument.

The square across the street was, well, I don’t know.

It certainly wasn’t a vast concrete square that I had been used to seeing in other cities in the world.

In fact, as far as I could tell, there wasn’t nothing square like to the space at all.

There was, however, a nice sprawling green park complete with water fountains and benches.

Hey, I will never complain about strolling through a park while I’m out and about.

A late breakfast

At just before noon, we exited the park and were on the lookout for some food to eat as both of us were pretty hungry by this point.

Across the street was what looked like one of those concession stands you find at a beach with big pictures of the different food options.

My first choice of meat skewers was denied so I uttered a word I’m sure to say many times this trip – plov.

Plov is a classic dish in this area of the world made of rice, vegetables, and horse or lamb meat.

I believe this is the third time I’ve had plov already and I’m still enjoying it very much.

Walking down Dostyk street

We sat there for awhile trying to figure out what to do for the rest of the day.

I suggested we just head to the “touristy” area of town and maybe find some souvenir shops.

Well, trying to find a touristy area of a city that isn’t really a tourist hotspot is a bit of a challenge.

I ended up just selecting an area we hadn’t visited yet down Dostyk street which is one of the major streets here.

We never did find anything really touristy but we did, however, pass by a Burger King so I must have guessed right.

Note to self – next time just Google where the Burger Kings are to find the touristy area.

The street itself connects with the memorial park we visited in our walking tour yesterday so we popped inside to visit some more.

And, naturally, to get another ice cream from one of the vending carts surrounding the memorial monuments.

Kok Tobe Hill

At 1:30 we decided to just get out of the heat for a few hours and reset before heading out again in the early evening.

A few games of cards and a couple of video watches later, we were back out to explore the Kok Tobe hill.

I actually found an app that shows be the buses and their routes in English so we took a bus for our first time here in Almaty.

Of course when I went to tap to pay by card it didn’t work and since the driver didn’t really react when the machine buzzed at me a few times, I just sat down without paying.

A few stops in and, sure enough, a ticket inspector boarded the bus.

Thankfully she also saw that we were just a couple of hapless tourists and just kind of waved us off as she went on to check other tickets.

At just after 5:30 we finally found out all those tourists we were looking for early.

Yeah, they were all ahead of us in line for the cable car taking us up to Kok Tobe hill.

It took about 10 minutes to get to the counter to pay for our tickets but that was nothing compared to what was awaiting us later on.

Anyway, aside from the cable car ticket (10,000₸, $30), we also purchased tickets for the ferris wheel (4000₸, $12) and the Fast Coaster (7000₸, $21).

There was a bit of a discount since they had a combo pack of all three for 16,800₸ saving us 20% so, in all, our total for this excursion was $50 each.

A bit pricey but, hey, we’re tourists and visiting Kok Tobe hill is one of those things we’re just supposed to do.

The cable car itself was pretty quick getting us to the top in just 6 minutes but I look at the $30 price tag for that return ride as an entrance fee instead so I can justify it.

We wanted to grab dinner at the fancy restaurant up there but they were unfortunately booked out for a private event.

Instead, we grabbed some carnival style food at a food kiosk nearby.

For me, it was a lamb kebab on a stick with fries and for Nathan it was a good old hotdog and fries.

Ferris wheels and roller coasters

After watching the sunset over the city, it was time to have some fun.

First we rode their ferris wheel and I believe we were the only ones on it.

It was a short, simple ride but it did give us nice vantage points to see the city down below.

And then, the main attraction.

The fast coaster!

We walked down to where it was and I was instantly dismayed to see a huge line waiting for it.

I won’t lie, there was a big part of me that wanted to just throw away the ticket and head back and, honestly, if I wasn’t with Nathan, I probably would have.

Boy, I sure am glad I didn’t!

Yes there were 100 people in front of us and, yes, it took an hour to get to the front of the line but, man, it ended up being so worth it.

First of all, this roller coaster is one of those where you’re in your own individual car and you go down a winding track.

When we were coming up in the cable car we could see other people doing the ride and I remember thinking “wow, they’re going so slow – that seems kind of lame”.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was watching them at the tail end of their ride as they were being slowly guided back up the track to the start.

So, imagine my surprise when my car went into a quick acceleration and didn’t let up as it rounded corner after corner including a massive looping spiral on it’s way down.

Yeah, I was ready for that at all and I got it all on video.