The only real purpose of today was to organise a diving trip for the morning. Since both diving schools in Batumi have not replied to my multiple enquiries, I decided to go there in the morning to fix a dive for me in the Black Sea, finally! The one dive school “International Diving Academy” even puts the following proposition on their webpage “open 24 hours”… Not true! First they are difficult to find because instead of I diving flag and a booth or house they have a table in a restaurant, and second, they don’t show up until 14:00, too late for me as I wanted to move on at around noon…
A side purpose of today was to get closer to the Armenian border, because I don’t want to let my friend Ed wait, who will take care of me in Armenia 😉 I checked out possible routes and basically there are only two routes from Batumi, north and south… the southern route is much shorter and because I have no time to lose I checked out accommodations on the way and found one Airbnb (yes I don’t give up trying) in a national park of Georgia and booked it… but again it came differently than planned. I ended up on a road that was worse than the one I had in Moldavia!!! It also had potholes, only more, and on top of that it also had furrows, cows on the street, depressions 30cm-filled with water, and mountainous, curvy roads => it was amazing! The best nature experience that I’ve had on my trip so far! I even turned off the radio to be able to listen to the sound of the woods… I really liked it, but it took me like forever and I didn’t reach today’s target city… anyway, I consider the booked apartment as sunk cost and again: it was totally worth it!
Most of the time I could go only between 12 and 18 km/h and there were moments when I thought that it would take two more days to be back even in “civilisation”, I mean where streets are asphalted and you can go faster than 25 km/h 😉 …funny detail, as we spoke about the scarcity of petrol stations in Turkey yesterday, even on those “lost” areas of Georgia, there were more petrol stations as on Turkish highways 😉 …but apart from the petrol stations, which did not deliver the flair that I was alluding to before, it was such a picturesque scene, especially when I was up in the mountains… there were views, wow!!! I even had to store away my camera so I would not constantly stop and take more pictures… of course it’s difficult to trick yourself, so I always got it back from under the seat or out of the bag or wherever I thought I wouldn’t find it anymore or it would be too time-consuming to get it 😉
But I was so slow, that I didn’t make it to the national park but ended up in Akhaltsikhe, kind of a dreamy little village/city that has a lovely castle guarding over it on a hill…
Although I couldn’t accomplish my targets for today, this day was among the most beautiful that I have had so far 😉 …plus, I’m writing this from a small restaurant where I got a very typical Georgian dish that reminded me a lot of “Kärtner Nudeln” (Carinthian Pasta) because it looks similar, and also comes with different fillings, e.g. potato, meat, cheese… the only thing missing was a big portion of melted butter 😉
Given the delay today, I am not sure about my schedule for tomorrow and if I will reach Armenia, or let’s better say Ed and his family in Yerevan, in time?! Let’s see… keep your fingers crossed for me!
Nomads4Children 