Underway: Sprinting through the Kalahari

 

Departure from Cape Town (at long last!)

Drifters Camp, Maun, Botswana

Terri and I are relaxing here in rather idyllic conditions, in an overlander camp right on the banks of the Boteti River, full of birdsong and flowers and peace and quiet. It's a great place to take a couple of days off from travelling and recharge physically after setting a fairly gruelling pace for the first week of our expedition, which we have christened Stanley's Travels: the CEC Expedition, where CEC stands for Cape Town-Europe-Cape Town, our intended overall route.

The call of the open road!

Camping in Brandvlei

After a few days of last-minute preparation, repairs and shopping (including having a small incipient crack in our chassis welded), we set off from our little guest house in Kuilsrivier (another suburb of Cape Town, where we had been staying since our return from Hermanus on Sept. 28) on the morning of Sunday, October 2nd. We were both anxious to get moving after spending too much time (and money) waiting in Cape Town for things to get done. It was exciting to load everything into Stanley, lock the hatches and drive off (via one last stop at Cape Gate shopping mall, where we had spent a lot of time over the previous two weeks, to exchange some cables and a hard drive which weren't the right thing). It was a long drive north through increasingly arid landscape and then up and over the steep Van Rhyn pass to get into the Karoo, the interior plateau that makes up so much of the land mass of South Africa. We drove along, past rocky outcrops and clusters of purple wildflowers and big nests built by crows atop telephone poles, through a landscape increasingly devoid of human settlement, to the tiny, dusty one-horse town of Brandvlei, where we found a small campground at the Halfpad tourist house, popped up Stanley's roof and slept in him for the first time in over four years. It felt unspeakably good finally to be underway on our trip after four years of planning and waiting, and three weeks in Cape Town. We cooked up some boerewors on a charcoal fire, and went to bed happy after our first 550 kilometres.

A purple carpet for the Karoo

The purple flowers that lined our route

Khi Solar One power plant, Upington

We woke up refreshed and ready to continue our dash north. We headed up through Kalahari landscape, with more vast emptiness punctuated by sudden splashes of colour from wildflowers. The previous day's crow's nests atop telephone poles were replaced by enormous nest complexes woven by sociable weavers which almost enveloped entire poles, occasionally toppling them over from the sheer weight of twigs. We eventually dropped into the valley of the Orange River and made our way through irrigated vineyards (a shocking contrast to the drab colours of the Kalahari) into the town of Upington, where we had spent a few days back in 2016. We marvelled again at the Death Star-like solar plant Khi Solar One on the outskirts of town. We did some last-minute shopping and I made a vain attempt to convert some Swiss francs into US dollars before giving up and driving off. We drove past a series of pans, including one used for setting land speed records, then passed a series of parallel red sand dunes before making our way into Kalahari Trails, where a meerkat sanctuary helps to rehabilitate former pets back into life in the wild. No sooner had we arrived than a wild group of meerkats, including an enormously pregnant matriarch, showed up and looked photogenic for us. We set up camp and settled in for three days in this idyllic spot.

Sociable weaver nests

Return to the Kalahari!

Meerkat family at Kalahari Trails

The first day there we walked (and jogged) around the property, climbing dunes and then dropping down into the flat land between. There are no lions or hyenas on the property, so we weren't worried about unfortunate predator encounters, but we did see springbok and gemsbok (oryx) grazing or bounding away through the veldt. In the afternoon Mareli, the resident guide and meerkat whisperer, took us to see the group of young rehab animals who were hanging out at one of the other campsites on the property. We spent a happy hour taking photos, watching the meerkats scurry around and dig for scorpions, and even picking them up (they're very habituated to people, from being former pets and from being handled by Mareli). Meerkats are incredibly charismatic creatures, perhaps partly because they seem so humanoid when they stand on their hind legs to look around. It was an unforgettable afternoon, followed by a stunning sunset over the dunes.

Typical meerkat pose

Mareli uses hands-free mode

Terri and Fleur the meerkat

You lookin' at me?

Gemsbok

On October 5th we got up at an ungodly hour, pulled down Stanley's roof and set off for a day of game spotting in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. We pulled up at the park gate at 6 am to find that the gate only opened at 7, so we sat and read until the staff drove up, processed us and let us into the park. We set off immediately up the dry Nossob River in search of the lions and cheetahs we had seen before back in 2017. We weren't so lucky this day, but at least we spotted lots of wildebeest, springbok, ostrich and gemsbok. After a brunch stop beside the road, and then a nap back at Twee Rivieren gate, we set off again in the late afternoon.We were rewarded for persistence when we saw meerkats in the wild for the first time; Terri spotted two separate groups and we sat and watched their amusing antics until it was time to drive back to Kalahari Trails, tired but happy after a day watching some of Nature's most interesting creatures.

Colour in the desert

Eurasian hobby

Pale chanting goshawk

Wildebeest

Secretarybird bestriding the grasslands

Springbok

Two lappet-faced and three white-backed vultures

October 6th saw us crossing the first border of the trip, between South Africa and Botswana at Bokspits. We made a classic rookie error by not checking the border customs requirements of Botswana, which forbids the import of raw meat and some fruits and vegetables. Luckily the customs officers let us lightly cook our sausage and bacon in our frying pan so that it no longer qualified as raw, before letting us go. We drove off shaking our heads at making such an elementary error. The road on the Botswana side was perfectly smooth and utterly empty as we paralleled the border all the way to the town of Tsabong, where we found a place to camp at the Tsabong Camel Park after two abortive attempts to get to a different campground that ended up being closed and derelict.

Tire pressure lowered to increase tire footprint in soft sand

Our resident leopard tortoise

The following morning we went out for a long walk around the property to stretch our legs after long hours of driving. Then we set off towards the Botswanan side of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, the Mabuasehube sector. It was a grim slog, with the track in much worse shape than we remembered it from 2016. We deflated our tires for better buoyancy in the sand, changed into low-range four-wheel-drive and Terri drove on, grinding grimly along through soft sand drifts for hours until we finally emerged at the Mabuasehube gate of the KTP. We didn't have reservations, but were hoping to strike it lucky. When we entered the park gate complex, we found nobody at the desk, but eventually a disheveled-looking ranger emerged to let us know that we could camp at Lesholoago Pan for one night and then at Manamodi Pan for a second night. He also warned us that wildfires were raging in the bush. We drove off towards Lesholoago and soon saw what he meant; around us most of the bush was charred black, with some stumps still smouldering. It was an apocalyptic landscape, and one almost entirely bereft of game, except for a few hardy steenbok who were pawing at the blackened grass. We got to Lesholoago and set up camp. It was a lovely spot overlooking the pan, but all around us had been burnt, and it felt ominous. 

Lesholoago sunset

We had company in the camp: two cheeky ground squirrels, a gaggle of spurfowl, a leopard tortoise sheltering in the latrine building, and a black-backed jackal with sore legs, possibly the result of burning his feet on the hot coals of the ashy veldt. The campsite had a desolate air of decay and neglect, a strong contrast to what we had seen in 2016. We had a wonderful steak dinner grilled over charcoal (our own, not the remnants of the park vegetation!) and sat out watching the sunset and the stars.

Forlorn footsore jackal

Hyena

October 8th was a long, hard day. We got up very early, pulled down Stanley's roof, packed up rapidly and were driving by 5:45 in search of game. For several hours we drove along park tracks (thankfully hard-packed enough that Terri could drive them in two-wheel-drive) through a post-apocalyptic grayscale of burnt grass and shrubs. There was almost no game, other than a few hardy steenbok. Eventually we made our way to Mpayathutlwa Pan, the only pan in the area that had so far escaped the fire, and found plenty of game out on the pan, including a magnificent male lion that we saw from a great distance through binoculars. We took some photos, then pushed on to Manamodi Pan, where we had a campsite booked for our second night. There was a spotted hyena at the waterhole, but the campsite was strange, lacking a toilet and looking utterly neglected. The winds were howling, covering us with ash and soot as we stopped to cook up a late breakfast. It was an utterly unappealing spot to spend the night, especially as it seemed likely that the fires were going to return. We made the decision to cut our losses and head out of the park to Jack's Pan, a place we had failed to reach back in 2016 thanks to some poor navigating by me.

Steenbok

We drove back to the park gate, finding it utterly deserted this time, adding to our conviction that morale and professionalism in the park staff was at a low ebb. We ground our way along the park boundary along a mildly better sand track, then turned onto a cut line headed towards Jack's Pan. Terri made good time (in two-wheel-drive) until we were within sight of the turnoff to Jack's Pan, when we suddenly encountered a fast-moving wall of flame that had Terri turning around in a hurry. We gave up on Jack's Pan and drove back along the track, then another 100 km of tough sand driving to reach pavement near Hukuntsi. There we refilled our tires using our portable compressor and I took over at the wheel from a rather tired Terri, who had been driving for nearly 10 hours. We were relieved to get to Kang and comfortable roadside campsite. The Botswanan side of the Kgalagadi had been disappointing and exhausting! 

The following day Terri was content to play passenger for most of the day as I drove us 580 km north along perfect tarmac to Maun, and then another 30 alarming kilometres in the dark to reach Drifters, an oasis and a balm to the soul after the scorched hellscape of the previous few days. We spent the first evening catching up with Heike and Oskar, a German couple we had met in Cape Town, and then spent yesterday and today editing photos and videos, doing workouts, eating well and watching the prodigious birdlife flitting amongst the trees. We had one of the best sunsets either of us had ever seen last night, and we are hoping for a repeat performance tonight.

After covering 2700 kilometres in eight days, we are planning to adopt a much more leisurely pace over the coming month or so, starting with a visit to the emptiness of the Makgadigadi Pans over the next few days (wildfires permitting). Travelling is great, but it's usually the time spent not driving that is the most memorable!

A Roadtrip through Western Georgia

Tbilisi, January 7

Tomorrow it's back to work after three weeks of Christmas vacation, so now is a good time to draw a curtain on our adventures in western Georgia, also known as Colchis, the Land of the Golden Fleece from Greek mythology.  The wind here in Dighomi is howling, so it's a good afternoon to sit indoors and type up this account of our road trip in Douglas the Delica.

A First Attempt at Goderdzi

On Friday, December 21st we rolled out of Tbilisi after a couple of lazy days recovering from our ski trip to Gudauri.  We rolled west all day, through increasing rain, along a modern double-lane expressway, then on a single-lane road clogged with slow trucks over the low pass (the Rikoti, now with a tunnel under it) that separates eastern Georgia (Kartli, or Iveria) from western Georgia (Kolkheti, or Colchis).  We kept going towards the coast, thus entering new territory for both of us, as on our previous trip we had diverted north towards Zugdidi and Svaneti.  This time our destination was the Black Sea coast and the resort town of Batumi, where half of Georgia seems to migrate in August.  In December it's dead, making for cheap deals on hotel rooms.  We stayed the night in a fancy apartment in the Orbi Residence, a towering concrete structure close to the shore.

View over the Lesser Caucasus from Sataplia

The following day we drove inland from Batumi into the small, mountainous region of Ajara, the only area of Georgia with a Muslim majority (thanks to the long Ottoman occupation of this part of the country.)  The road was new and paved for the first 30 km, then winding and potholed, and then turned to dirt and mud, making the entire 100 kilometre drive take more than three hours.  Our destination was the newish, small ski resort of Goderdzi, located near the Goderdzi pass which connects Ajara with the town of Akhaltskikhe to the east.  That road is closed in the winter, making our route from Tbilisi much more circuitous than it would have been in the summer.

We hadn't been able to get in touch with anyone from Goderdzi to find out if it had opened yet for the season.  We knew that this winter had been unusually snow-free, and Bakuriani hadn't opened yet, but Goderdzi is touted as the "Japan of Georgia" for its abundant fluffy powder, so we took a chance and drove up on a reconnaissance trip.  As we got up to 1700 metres, the elevation of the bottom of the lifts, we realized that there was far too little snow, and it was far too warm, for the ski resort to be open yet.  We talked briefly with some of the workers, who assured us that come December 28th, the lifts would start running.  We had lunch and contemplated our options.  There might have been enough snow to skin up and ski down, but it looked thin and rocky, and we were both on fairly new skis, so we decided that patience was the better part of valour and turned back downhill, vowing to return before the end of my holidays.

Birdwatching in Poti

Terri in the ruins of Gonio

The drive back down was just as slow and miserably muddy as the drive up, but our Delica's 4x4 handled everything well.  When we got down to Batumi, it was mid-afternoon, giving us time to visit a place that has been on my mental radar for years, the Roman/Byzantine/Ottoman fort at Gonio, just south of Batumi on the way to the nearby Turkish border.  It's a big place, with high walls (mostly dating from the Ottoman period) enclosing a 200 by 200 metre square.  There's not much left to see inside, but it was pleasant to walk up on the walls, gazing out at the surrounding citrus orchards, and to poke around the small site museum.  Gonio (or Apsaros, to give it its Greek name) is located at the mouth of the Chorokhi River, which flows down from the highlands of modern Turkey and which would have been a main trade route into the interior.  The legend of Jason and the Argonauts plays a role in the mythology of Gonio, as does the legend that the Apostle Matthew was buried somewhere inside the fortress walls.  

There was still plenty of light left in the sky when we finished up at Gonio and we decided to put some kilometres behind us and continue north along the coast to the town of Poti.  We booked a holiday apartment on booking.com and headed north into the darkness.  It took a while to find the apartment in the dark, and the grim crumbling Soviet exterior and stairwell were supremely unpromising, but the apartment proved to be lovely, with a view out over the water and a well-equipped kitchen in which Terri whipped up a delicious repast.

Me on the beach at Poti

We had chosen Poti as a place to spend the night because we knew that it was surrounded by a protected wetland area rich in birdlife; the parents of one of my students in Tbilisi are ornithologists, heavily involved in bird conservation, and had talked up the area to me.  Terri and I are not true "twitchers", but we have derived a great deal of pleasure from birding in places like Ladakh, Iceland, Antarctica and (especially) southern Africa, and we were curious what we would see in Poti.  

It was a fun morning; we walked out to the Black Sea coast, past an inland lagoon, and then along the beach.  We then drove over to Lake Paliostomi, the large lagoon just inland, and had a poke around there.  Both places were rewarding, even if it was the off-season and even though we didn't hire a boat to head out towards the uninhabited eastern shore of the lake.  We spotted well over a dozen species, from smews (a largely white duck that summers in Siberia, and a new species for us) through crakes, coots, herons and crested grebes, culminating in beautiful kingfishers and stately Dalmatian pelicans.  It was good to spend time scanning the shore or the air with our binoculars, trying to pick out new species.  It was also a good day to see the snow-capped ridges of the Greater and Lesser Caucasus floating ethereally above the waters of the lake.

The mountains of Svaneti loom over Lake Paliostomi

A Return to Svaneti

Winter wonderland in Mestia

All good things must come to an end, and we drove off mid-afternoon bound for Svaneti, where we had been two months earlier.  It was an easy drive, through the coastal lowlands, through the city of Zugdidi and then up the Enguri River.  We were anticipating a white winter wonderland in Mestia, but there was very little snow in the town when we arrived, dampening our excitement about skiing.  We took a room at Nino Ratiani's guesthouse, where I had stayed on my bike trip in the summer of 2011, and settled in for some skiing.

On the lift at Tetnuldi

We drove up to Tetnuldi, the big new ski resort located about 20 kilometres from Mestia, on December 24th and 25th.  It was an exhilarating drive, over snowy roads and up steep inclines, our 4x4 and new snow tires proving their worth by effortlessly handling conditions that stymied other vehicles.  Tetnuldi is high-altitude (from about 2200 to 3100 metres above sea level) and offers access to plenty of off-piste powder.  The gain in altitude from Mestia meant that there was much more snow on the ground, although most of it had been skied out.  We had two fun days exploring the runs and finding a few lines of untracked powder, and my new telemark skis proved their worth, effortless floating through the powder.  On the 25th it began to snow and visibility dropped dramatically, particularly as most of the resort is well above the tree line, providing no visual help in a whiteout.  Back at Nino's we built a tiny snowman in honour of Christmas (Western Christmas, that is; the Orthodox world runs on the Julian calendar and celebrates on January 7th instead).  

Terri's first-ever snowman

Tetnuldi

On the 26th it began to snow heavily and we took the day off, convinced that we wouldn't see anything, and reports from a Ukrainian group staying at Nino's confirmed that there was no visibility at all at Tetnuldi.  On the 27th it was still dumping snow, we drove over to Hatsvali, a tiny ski resort directly above Mestia and skied there, enjoying plenty of new powder and the visibility provided by abundant trees lining the runs.  Our enjoyment was marred, however, by Terri being knocked over getting off a chair by our seatmate and her glasses being broken, leaving her largely blind for much of the day.

At Hatsvali with our rather mud-spattered Delica

Snowy forest at Hatsvali

Bluebird pow day at Tetnuldi

Finally on the 28th we got the day we had been waiting for:  perfectly clear blue skies, dazzling sunshine and Tetnuldi full of freshly fallen powder.  We drove over early and were first in line for the chairlift.  We skied off the chair at the top full of purpose, and found an entire mountain blanketed in deep, fluffy, perfect powder.  That first run, flying through the snow, contrails of billowing white smoke streaming from our skis, was unforgettable.  We skied hard for hours, slowly working our way outwards from those first runs, whooping with delight at the sheer joy of graceful movement and the illusion of floating.  It was perfect, and by the time we took a late lunch, our legs were just about finished from the effort of skiing so much deep snow.

Beautiful mountains seen from Tetnuldi

At lunch we chatted with a couple of Swedish skiers whom we had met over the previous couple of days on the slopes, as well as the mother of one of my students from Tbilisi.  As we stood up to go to the car and drive home, I somehow managed to lose the ignition key for the car.  We didn't have a spare key, and so we couldn't get into the car, and couldn't drive it.  To make matters worse, I had left the lights on in my hurry to get out and ski the lovely snow in the morning.  We searched everywhere, but eventually gave up and hitched a lift back to town. 

To make matters more annoying, we had packed up all our possessions that morning to move out of Nino's guesthouse, as she had prior reservations that completely booked out her rooms.  We walked over to our new lodgings with only our skis and our skiing daypacks, only to find the power out.  It was a cold, somewhat miserable evening, but at least our host made some phone calls and arranged a rescue mission for our car.

Replacing our ignition system

The next morning a vehicle drove up to our new guesthouse, with a skilled car ignition specialist and a driver inside.  We drove to a non-descript Soviet-era apartment complex and bought a second-hand car ignition system from a wrecked Delica, then drove up to Tetnuldi.  The driver had brought a long, thin metal rod with him and, having pried the driver's side door slightly ajar at the corner, slid the rod in and popped open the lock.  Then Andrei, the ignition man, set to work.  Within an hour and a half, he had replaced the entire ignition system, and after jump-starting the car with our booster cables from our driver's vehicle, we were good to go.  Our car was completely frozen, we couldn't lock it and we didn't dare turn off the engine until the battery had recharged, but at least we could drive.  The best part was that everything (the car and driver, the work by Andrei and the purchase of the ignition system) cost us less than US$ 130.  We drove back down the mountain and over to the Becho Valley, where we had hiked in October and where we wanted to do a ski tour the next day, then drove back to Mestia and our guesthouse (where the power had mercifully returned).  We spent an enjoyable evening chatting with another group of Ukrainian snowboarders, twenty-somethings from Yalta who had left Crimea after the Russian takeover in 2014.

Ski touring up the Becho Valley

Our last day in Svaneti was wonderful.  We packed up our gear and drove back to the Becho Valley, where we drove to the foot of the Guli Valley, put on our skis and skins, and climbed up to the Guli Church, where we had hiked in October.  The scenery was magnificent, as the morning ice mist dissipated and left us with wonderful views of iconic Mt. Ushba and the glistening of millions of snow crystals in the crisp winter sunshine.  We headed uphill a bit further from the church and I climbed up a bit above Terri to try to get some decent turns in.  The snow wasn't bottomless and the underlying terrain was rough, but I managed a reasonable descent.  The rest of the way back down the valley to the car was pretty much just following the up track, but the scenery was ample compensation for the lack of quality downhill action.  We got back to the car with broad grins on our faces, glad to be alive and outdoors on such a beautiful day.

A Goderdzi New Year

From our ski tour we drove back down into the lowlands, reaching Zugdidi in the dark in time to be caught in enormous traffic jams in this small city.  We eventually reached the Green House guesthouse, by far the most genteel accommodation of our trip, and settled in for some well-earned rest.

New Year's Eve in Goderdzi

The following day was a long day of driving.  We poked around Zugdidi for a bit, buying food and wine and trying to visit a museum that was closed for the New Year's holidays.  We finally headed out of town at noon, retracing our path of a week before, through Poti and along the coast to Batumi, then uphill to Goderdzi again.  This time the drive was muddy at the bottom and snowy and frozen at the top.  The last twenty kilometres were a bit hair-raising, with icy roads making the potholes more treacherous, especially with steep dropoffs on the side.  It was dark when we finally reached Danisparauli, the tiny hamlet just downhill from the ski lifts.  We knew from our reconnaissance the week before that there were twenty or so tiny guesthouses there, but we weren't prepared for the fact that they all seemed to be full.  Luckily a guesthouse owner took it upon himself to phone around the entire village looking for a place for us, and eventually we found ourselves welcomed into the Iveria Guesthouse.  It was New Year's Eve, and we found ourselves welcomed into the bosom of the extended family that was celebrating downstairs in the kitchen.  It was yet another example of Georgian hospitality, and was a wonderful experience, although we were in bed long before midnight, worn out by skiing and driving.

On the wall of our Goderdzi homestay

The guesthouse was bitterly cold when we awoke in the morning and Terri never got warm as we dressed, ate and headed up to go skiing.  She was desperately chilly, and the howling winds buffeting the mountain did nothing to make her feel warmer.  We did one run, and then I left Terri indoors at the bottom of the hill while I went for a few runs.  There was definitely a lot more snow than there had been on our last visit, but it was hardly Japan-style bottomless powder.  Raking winds had pummeled the snow, making for a bleak landscape of cardboard crust.  I jumped off for a few powder turns here and there, but it was hardly a touring paradise as I had hoped.  Eventually Terri returned to the mountain, warmed by her indoor sojourn, and we did a number of runs before calling it a day and having a late lunch at the foot of the hill.  Georgian tourists, late-arising after the New Year's festivities, many of them having driven up from Batumi, were swarming the lower slopes of the mountain as we left, and driving back down to our guesthouse was alarming as we had to stay out of the way of two-wheel-drive cars with bald summer tires and no snow chains fishtailing madly up the rutted road.

Goderdzi looking cold and forboding

After another frigid night in our guesthouse, Terri decided that she couldn't spend a third night in the cold, so we packed up, paid up and headed back up for our second and last day of skiing.  The wind had strengthened overnight and the mountain looked bleak.  Terri bailed out on the idea of ski touring, leaving me to do a few runs on the piste before heading off to do a short ski tour.  The wind slabs on the snow made me cautious, especially as I was on my own, so I headed up through a summer village for herders and up the middle of a gentle valley.  I could see interesting-looking descent lines on either side, but as I had set off a tiny slab avalanche on my way into the village, I kept to the gentle incline and wide-open slopes of the valley.  I reached the top in an hour and peered over to see a wonderland of rounded peaks stretching off into the distance in the west.  Luckily there was a shepherd's hut at the top, providing welcome shelter from the searching wind as I took off my skins and got ready to descend.  The snow was surprisingly good and provided plenty of good telemark turns on the descent.  I skinned up and across to rejoin the pistes, and found Terri ensconsed at the bottom of the mountain, glad to be out of the wind.  We packed up and were on our way by 3:00.

An exploratory ski tour in Goderdzi

Overall Goderdzi was a bit of a disappointment.  Since it's so close to the Black Sea, it gets more snow than anywhere else in the country, but the constant winds scour the ridges and turn the snow into unpleasant slabby cardboard.  The accommodation, while adequate, is cold.  Until a hotel or apartment complex opens at the base of the lifts (both are under construction), it will be a bit of a hardship spot in terms of midwinter lodging.

Exploring the Colchis Lowlands

Medical waste on the beach at Paliostomi Lake

The drive back downhill was long, tedious and unpleasant.  There were more ill-prepared cars than ever trying to make their way up the road, which had been churned into sheets of ice by fruitlessly spinning summer tires.  It took forever to get through Danisparauli because of the narrow roads, lack of passing spots and the number of cars coming uphill.  It was a relief when we finally got onto pavement again 30 kilometres (and an hour and a half) downhill from Goderdzi.  From there we followed a familiar route back to Batumi and Poti, where we stayed for two nights in the same apartment as before.  The birdwatching was good, and we had a delightfully lazy morning watching the sun rise over the Black Sea, 12 hours after a full moon had risen in the same spot.  The only blight on our happiness was the sheer quantity of rubbish that was everywhere along the shore of Lake Paliostomi, including a huge quantity of medical waste from the local hospital, including syringes and intravenous tubing, that had been dumped beside the lake.  Georgia has a serious issue with trash disposal, and this was an unpleasant reminder of that fact.

Sunset over Poti

Prometheus Cave

Our last stop on our way back to Tbilisi was Kutaisi.  I had visited Georgia's second-largest city in 2011 on my bike trip, but hadn't really taken the time to explore much.  This time we stopped in at two caves, the Prometheus Cave and Sataplia, and found them to be wonderful.  Prometheus is a long cave system, and we were underground for a good hour, oohing and aahing at the stalactites and columns, lit up in different colours.  Sataplia's cave was smaller but still pretty, but the real attractions were the dinosaur footprints nearby and the primeval oak-hornbeam forest surrounding everything.  Kutaisi is the centre of ancient Colchis, where Jason and his Argonauts came searching for the Golden Fleece, and the forest felt as though it was unchanged from Jason's time three millenia ago.  In keeping with this theme, our guesthouse was called the Argonaut, and our delightful hostess told us stories of ancient myths, including the connections between Georgia and Sumeria and the story that the Holy Grail ended up in Georgia, where the drops of Jesus' blood that it captured fertilized the finest grapes in the country.

Dinosaur footprints at Sataplia

Gelati churches

Our final day on the road saw us visit two very different monasteries and an ancient archaeological site.  We started off with Gelati Monastery, built up by David the Builder, Georgia's most accomplished medieval king, as a centre of royal prestige, religious power and secular learning.  His tomb lies beneath one of the monastery gates so that everyone entering could step on him and remember him (a strange mix of humility and egotism).  I loved the churches as well as his Academy, and spent a long time trying to capture details of roofs and stonework on my tiny ski camera.  The beautiful frescoes and stunning mosaic of the Virgin Mary are some of the best medieval art to be found anywhere in Georgia.

At Gelati

Magnificent mosaic at Gelati

Motsameta Monastery

We drove from there to Motsameta, a much smaller and more isolated monastery perched high above a forbidding gorge.  The monastery marks the spot where two brothers were martyred by Arab invaders in the eighth century and tossed into the gorge.  The surrounding forest and limestone cliffs are in some ways more impressive than the recently rebuilt structures, and it was wonderful to stand looking out into the void contemplating the long history of this area.

On the final stretch into Tbilisi that afternoon we stopped briefly at a small archaeological dig near Gori called Graklianis Gora.  It's not yet fully ready for tourists, but we were happy to poke around the muddy hillside, looking at shattered potsherds and the remnants of Zoroastrian temples from Georgia's pre-Christian, pre-Roman past.  

Shattered wine qvevris at Graklianis Hill

And then it was all over, with a final 45-minute drive through frenetic traffic back to our house in northern Tbilisi, happy with the exploration we had done in western Georgia in our 2300-kilometre, 15-day odyssey (or should that be argossey?).  There is so much to see in this country, but we are finally starting to make inroads into it.


PS  Although I started this post nearly two weeks ago, I only ended up finishing it now, in Bakuriani, the fifth and last Georgian ski resort that we have visited.  I will have to have another blog post soon on our weekend ski trips out of Tbilisi!