We hitched a ride all the way to Telavi with one man who, although wasn't very talkative, gave us a massive carrier bag of sharon fruit (we're talking several kilograms here) and some Georgian snickers which we've affectionately renamed dildos for their long knobbly appearance. We headed straight for the tourist information centre and got details for things to see around the area and a place to sleep for the night. We walked up the road to a deceptively large but beautiful guesthouse and were met by the owner, a friendly old lady who was blessed in the kitchen as we later found out. She showed us up to our room where we left our back-breakers, sorry backpacks, and went out for a walk round the town. We didn't intend to stay long, the town isn't all that pretty and there haven't been any efforts to renovate it but it kind of made the place look more real and less like a village straight from a fairytale like Sighnaghi.
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| From Telavi and Kvareli, Georgia |
We bought a few essentials, some henna (at last), sensitive toothpaste (can enjoy ice-cream again woo!) and a very sexy, super cool jackets for Djalma (straight from an 80's ski catalogue), as well as socks and a new scarf. I also booked my place in the massage course in Kerala (very exciting) and tried to cancel my old phone contract (failed). We got back to the guesthouse for an enormous feast with more homemade red wine and spent most of the evening sitting at the dinner table talking, it was a lovely purple lipped/toothed evening (the most common grape for red wine, Saperavi, is also called black wine and complements white teeth with a purple/black stain).
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| From Telavi and Kvareli, Georgia |
We left, after a huge breakfast, for a winery in Kvareli.
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| From Telavi and Kvareli, Georgia |
We hitched all the way there and managed to pass by the biggest winery in Georgia with the second longest wine storage tunnel in the world, but we stopped at a small family run winery for a tour round the premises and a very generous tasting of their best semi-sweet white and best dry red – she left us the bottles so we obligingly finished the half bottle of white, which was a proper white not like the amber wine which is what Georgian white wine really is, and got a good way through the red.
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| From Telavi and Kvareli, Georgia |
We bought a bottle of the cheapest plonk because they were so nice and set off down the road feeling rather tickled, well I was at any rate, to try and hitch to Lagodekhi. We didn't quite make it under our own steam and admitted defeat when darkness rolled in and we were freezing our nuts off standing by the side of the road with barely a car passing by let alone stopping to pick us up. Someone, not going in our direction, stopped to talk to us and called us a taxi. Djalma called all the numbers the tourist information centre in Telavi had given us but only one of them proved helpful in giving us a number to some where else. We pulled up and were welcomed into their house, oh yes another guesthouse, fed, and sent to bed.
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| From Lagodekhi National Park, Georgia |
The following day we were up and out of the house by mid-morning and making our way to the park entrance of Lagodekhi Nature Reserve, with a packed lunch from Sveta (the mummy) a couple of bottles of the good local water and only a half powered camera battery. We spent the next six hours walking through the stonkingly beautiful reserve being silly, giving each other wedgies and generally admiring the view, until we had to start climbing anyway.
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| From Lagodekhi National Park, Georgia |
We had decided to go on the shortest walk, which should have only taken four hours, to a small waterfall. This small waterfall was a good seven/eight metres high and very beautiful, we stopped by the small lake round it and had our packed lunch before climbing back up, down and around to the flat part of the trail.
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| From Lagodekhi National Park, Georgia |
Knees almost done in, legs very wobbly and ankles inches away from being twisted we walked back home where I staggered to the sofa by the fire and didn't get up again till nature called. We showed Sveta our pictures while sipping on a small glass of their home-made “Georgian Cabernet” before having pork shashlik for dinner and creaking up the stairs to bed. I am ashamed although not surprised to say that I felt like I'd aged a few decades while Djalma was as fresh as a daisy and ready to walk the 7km again – I was tucked up in bed and asleep by 9pm snoring like a porquinha (little pig).
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| From Lagodekhi National Park, Georgia |
We left the next day after a very Russian breakfast, well there was horrible plain spaghetti which is quintessentially Russian to me, as well as rice, salad and a small fillet of pork, washed down with some fruity Princess Noori tea. I was feeling rather grumpy and very sad at leaving Georgia which had come to feel a lot like a second home. The place has everything going for it; great scenery from beaches to mountains to forests, wonderful capital, amazing food, delicious wine, friendly people, good weather and it's cheap. We hitched a lift a couple of kilometres to the border with Azerbaijan, the country has big boots to fill... I hope it doesn't fail too miserably.
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