Mountain Adventures Sandwiched by too Much Time at the Tbilisi Airport

The Tbilisi airport is tiny for a national capital, but the even stranger part about it is that it’s busiest when all sane people are asleep.  I flew in at 2 and had a flight to Mestia, the capital of Svaneti at 11, so borrowed the free wifi and then headed to the Astroturf underneath the escalators.  Don’t ask me why there is Astroturf in the airport, but I joined the legions of tired travelers who have napped there.  When I arrived, the airport was bustling; by the time light shined through the skylights, waking me up, it had thinned. By the time I was supposed to be on a flight to Mestia, the place was deserted.  Thankfully, two friends had shown up by then.  Unfortunately, they delayed our flight for two hours before canceling it because there were too many clouds.  We knew that they canceled this flight regularly because of bad weather, but too many clouds?  Really?

Tired and unhappy, we had to go to another part of town to collect my money for the tickets, then get on a marshrutka to Zugdidi, whence we could take a Mestia marshrutka the next morning.  Somehow we won the baby lottery, or lost, more accurately, so we had about 6 screaming toddlers on our marshrutka.  They were pretty good once we got going but one mother decided the best way to calm her screaming child was to soothe her with lullabies. I would have been all for this except her idea of lullabies were Selena Gomez’s ‘I Love You Like a Love Song’ and Maroon 5’s ‘Moves Like Jagger’, both of which are terribly overplayed in Georgia and don’t soothe my nerves, let alone a small child’s.  Regardless, we finally made it to Zugdidi, only to find a storm had killed the power.  I had to scramble to find a place that would let me top up my internet so we could find a place to stay.  A while later, we found a hostel and they said they would call the marshrutka drive to pick us up there the next morning.  Finally, some good news!

I woke the next morning to a text from another friend who was supposed to come to Mestia to meet us.  Georgia was due for 3 days of storms, so he and his friend were putting their trip on hold.  Great.  Storms.

The storms next adversely affected our trip when we spent well over an hour on the marshrutka sitting on the road in the middle of nowhere because a storm had taken a chunk out of the road and sent it rolling down the mountain.  I was getting a sincere feeling Georgia was either mad at me for leaving or mad that I had returned.  Either way, I was getting punished.

Thankfully, when we arrived in Mestia, one of the people from our homestay came to pick us up and took us to the lovely home we would be staying in for the next few days.  2 friends who had arrived the day before soon arrived and then we were treated to a massive meal that exemplified Georgian’s culinary skill.  As the day was still drizzly, we just walked into town to check things out before coming back home.  The 10-year-old, Ananano (Ana) who lived at our homestay, also showed us their adorable kittens and bunnies.  I don’t like cats, but these were pretty cute.  I was quite happy when the bunny just let me hold it, even if it did get my white shirt dirty!  We ate another huge meal and called it a night pretty early.

Even I will admit this tiny kitten is cute.

We got up early the next day to hike to and past the cross, a walk people say is gorgeous.  Unfortunately, while the weather was cooperating enough to keep the rain at bay, the clouds were enveloping all the prettiest mountains.  By the time we made it to the “lake” at the top, the cloud was enveloping us, to the point that if we got separated, we could not see each other.  Still, we somehow managed to spend 9 hours hiking around some deserted and beautiful mountain areas.  We were exhausted by the time we got home so did not make it much past another delicious dinner.

View at the Cross.  Do you notice how the clouds block all the good stuff?

At the lake

 

The next day, one friend left early and the rest of us took it easy and then got a ride to Ushguli, the highest permanent settlement in Europe.  Some people debate that it is the highest settlement and another friend debates whether it is Europe, but regardless, it was pretty epic.  The ride there can only be undertaken in SUVs and other suitable vehicles because at times it is overtaken by water or landslides.  We stopped along the way to take pictures of the beautiful scenery and even got to venture inside a Svan tower at one point.  When we got to Ushguli, it was muddy and dreary, so we walked around a bit and then went to the café, thinking we would explore more once we had a cup of tea in us.   

Svan tower we stopped at on the way

Ushguli

Ushguli, with lots of Svan towers

 The place was deserted except for the two girls who worked there until we decided to order, when a Georgian man brought some tourists in.  Eventually, he started talking to us and we learned that they had a true Soviet collective going on. There was a Russian who lived in the Czech Republic, another one who lived in Moldova, a guy from Baku, and an Armenian (I believe), as well as a Georgian girl, who seemed to be their guide.  The Georgian man was from Tbilisi and, in true Georgian style, bought us wine, chacha (hard alcohol), and food.  They toasted us, and we toasted them.  The experience was delightful, very Georgian, and restored my love of Georgia after the past few rough days.  We spent so long in the café that we had to head home after that, but none of us minded since the café had given us an excellent Georgian experience and we could all feel the chacha. Once we arrived in Mestia, we were greeted by an amazing rainbow.

That night, at dinner, the family just kept bringing out food so our table was full of the supra stack-when you stack plates of food somewhat pyramid-like on top of each other because the table is not big enough for all the dishes, usually something done at supras.  Every meal we ate there was amazing and basically supplied me with all of my favorite Georgian dishes save two, but dinners were extra large.  We only ate 2 meals there and had no idea how anyone could eat 3.

The last full day we tried to go to the ATM but found that it was not working.  We walked around in search of Svan salt, a brownish mixture that I brought home but have yet to try, and Svan gum, pine resin that tastes kind of like furniture and sticks to your molars.  The experience was sweetened by he fact that we could only find the Svan gum at a 'store' that was really a converted van.  Being a small town, there was only one ATM in Mestia so we then headed home.  Thankfully, even after our purchases, we had enough money to get us all home so then went on another hike with little Anano as our guide.  She claimed we were going to see rive and “ice”.  Turns out, we hiked to the glacier friends had talked about.   While the glacier refrained from calving in front of us, it was still awesome to see water rushing out below the blue ice.  

Close-up of the bottom of the glacier

 Even though the hike was much less intense than the one to the lake, we were exhausted since our muscles were still aching from the hike to the lake.  As it was our last night, the host family had set out chacha alongside our immense spread for dinner, so I enjoyed one last night of toasting Georgian style.  We all grudgingly agreed to finish the bottle, since anything else would be silly, and commented on how strong it was since it made all of shudder until a few shots in.   

Dinner for 4

We had to wake up at 4:30am to catch the 5am marshrutka, which, of course, did not leave until after 6am.  It also tore down the twisting mountain roads, giving me one of the few severe bouts of nausea Georgian roads like to provide.  Thankfully I survived and we rolled into Tbilisi in the afternoon.

My last few days in Georgia were spent between Tbilisi and Manglisi.  Rain hampered me from doing too much in either place, but I got to say a few goodbyes, buy a Georgian cookbook, and soak up what was left of my Georgian experience.  At home, I mostly relaxed and spent a bit of time with my host family.  Saying goodbye to them was quite sad, but I got pictures with all of them except my host father, who was not home when I left.  About an hour before I left, my host family and favorite neighbor came in to give me gifts.  My host family gave me a clock, which is certainly designed for babies, that had a sweet message about good friends on it.  That’s why they had bought the clock for me, and I felt quite touched.  My neighbor gave me some apple-shaped toothpicks, and my host brothers gave me some beautiful but incredibly heavy drinking glasses. Somehow everything fit.  My host sisters and a neighbor walked me to the marshrutka.  Of course, it was one I had never seen before and was much nicer looking than most of mine, but the drive drove so fast that I hardly got to appreciate my view for the last time.  I ran a few last-minute errands and had dinner with friends, eating khinkali and drinking Georgian wine one last time.  When I got to the airport, I had to pay quite a bit for excess baggage but made it to Istanbul just fine.