After being dropped off in Borjomi we found a nearby guest house 2km outside of the centre with a lovely lady Mzia and her family. We didn't do a fat lot the four days we were there, Djalma was fighting a nasty little chest infection that we got seen to in the local clinic who prescribed plenty of tablets.
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| From Borjomi, Georgia |
The third day after arriving we got some maps and information from the tourist office and walked to the water park on the outskirts of town. Borjomi is famous in Georgia for its mineral rich water and the watermark had a couple of fountains where people filled up 5 litre bottles for free.
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| From Borjomi, Georgia |
We drank from the warm water fountain, the cold one wasn't recommended for ill people, it tasted like flat sulphur rich fizzy water (fart) and made us burp a lot. The park itself followed a river and was beautiful, all the trees were still green despite the cool weather and there were carpets of emerald green moss in places where the trees provided enough shade. It was a lovely walk even though we had to go slowly for my wheezing sweetheart, we followed a path to an outside pool which was also mineral rich and very good for the skin, we only dipped our feet in the lukewarm water, not about to go skinny dipping in Autumn or in public.
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| From Borjomi, Georgia |
We walked back through town past several restaurants, none of which looked particularly inviting, and eventually found one on the way back to the guest house near the town's post office. It. Was. Amazing. We ate like kings for very little, the restaurant had all it's tables tucked away in little booths and so we sat by ourselves warming our hands round cups of earl grey tea (the joy of bergamot tea) and tucking into a feast of; veal, wild mushrooms, aubergine with walnut paste, cold spinach with spices and a huge pastry filled with creamed red beans, we had enough left over for lunch the next day which we heated up and ate in bed while watching films.
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| From Borjomi, Georgia |
We decided to leave without visiting the National Park, the only walk we felt up to covered a minuscule loop near a lodge and we thought that one of the many National Parks in Azerbaijan or in Eastern Georgia might be a better idea when we were feeling healthier, so on the last day we got up extra early, not the most pleasant after 9am starts to our days, and got a bus partway to Vardzia, home to a Monastery complex. We got off the minibus early, the driver was an absolute pleb and a rude one at that, trying to overcharge for the ride because there were other tourists who were paying through the nose for the ride. He told us to go fuck ourselves and left us by the side of the road from where we hitched lifts with considerably friendlier lorry drivers.
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| From Vardzia, Georgia |
The road to Vardzia was very scenic, lots of rolling hills and mountains and covered with green, the approach to the Monastery was breath taking and we made it to the entrance just in time for the first of many showers. We left our bags in the ticket office and climbed up the path leading around the Monastery, it looked a lot like the caves in Capadoccia, Turkey, there were plenty of caves carved into the rock to shelter from the sudden and heavy showers in between bursts of bright blue sky and lots of sunshine.
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| From Vardzia, Georgia |
After a couple of hours we made our way back down along some steps carved into a tunnel and into the light happy to leave the steps and the slippery concrete behind, my knees felt like they belonged to my Nan and I was happy to walk down the relatively level path before hitching and walking to the border with Armenia. Along the way we got different lifts, the one was with a 50 year old Armenian guy with a lovely smile and 10 litres of home-made cha cha (vodka made from the left over pulp of grapes, hideous) some of which he offered to Djalma who eagerly accepted before I reminded him that he was on antibiotics! He drove us all the way to the last village before the border where he sat and waited with us before stopping another car to take us to Armenia.
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