Russia doesn’t have many places for surfing. Still, this sport is gaining popularity. Here are some recent photos of surfing in Sochi.

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Sea storm that has been rocking the shore in and around Sochi has damaged part of new cargo port which is being constructed to support Olympic construction projects, flipped a construction boat that was used in building the port, and broke Moldavian cargo ship in half.

Following is a photo of the «Aras-I» cargo ship that broke in half.

(c) mmordasov

You can view the more photos of this at mmordasov.livejournal.com blog.

The couple of videos below show some of the destruction as it was happening.

Another video: Read the rest of this entry »

I a few amazing lightning-over-the-sea photos taken by other people in Sochi, and wanted to share with you.

The photos are clickable, and lead to the large size originals.

Taken in Dagomys district of Sochi (c) v_kryukov53

Taken in Adler district of Sochi (c) pmirosevic

More amazing photos » Read the rest of this entry »

Today I bring you Black Sea with an attitude! :)

(c) argall

(c) shunk

(c) maximb68

And six more:  Read the rest of this entry »

As reported by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS about a week ago, Russia and Ukraine have reached the agreement to build a bridge connecting Russia’s South and Crimea. I’ve written an article about plans for the Kerch Strait Bridge when they were announced by Ukrainian officials last year.

That announcement came short after Russian gov’t officially pledged to develop Sochi as round-year resort no matter how the Olympic bid goes. Many believe having this bridge will help Ukraine get some of the money Russia will pump into the south over the next decade. Anyways, both Russian and Ukrainian prime ministers have confirmed the agreement, and Ukrainian PM, Yulia Timoshenko, announced that the work on this project will start within days.

The first Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Krasnodar Krai and Crimea was built back in 1944, but was destroyed within a year by sea storms, and was never rebuilt. There are several projects for the new bridge in existence, valued between $700 million and one billion dollars.

As a separate, transportation related, piece of good news for Russia’s south – Russian government allocated extra money for reconstruction and maintenance of Russia’s roads. And the largest part of it – 86.7 billion rubbles ($3.7 bln), instead of originally planned 27 billion ($1.1 bln) just this year alone – will go into “Olympic” roads: М4 “Don”, connecting Moscow and Novorossiysk, and М27, Dzhubga – Sochi.