Part 6 (6 May - 25 June) Georgia and Armenia

Georgia was one of the republics of the Soviet Union, has had some recent issues with Russia over their break-away province South-Ossetia and their previous prime-minister Saakashvili is married to a Dutch lady. So much for the trivia, let`s see how it really is!

Border formalities were again without any hassle, mainly because of our strategy; Nicolette sits behind the wheel smiling at the border officials and Jeroen does an enthusiastic show-and-tell of the car in case of any questions about our cargo. We managed to enter Georgia in a record-breaking 15 minutes.

Batumi

When we drove to our first stop in Georgia, the coastal resort of Batumi, it became clear we had entered the former Soviet union. Remnants of border fortifications were visible in the landscape and ugly gray Soviet-style flats appeared in view when we approached the city outskirts. 

We reached the lovely guesthouse ‘Old Boulevard’ in the city center run by a young lady, who was captivated by our car and our travels. After being offered a room with the size of Jeroens house in Haarlem at a bargain price, we were pointed to a great restaurant where we ordered the national dumpling-dish ‘Kinkhali’ for the first time. 

As we took a stroll along the coast we came across a little harbor where we were offered, in Russian, to take a boat ride along the coast. We thought it would just be fun to see the city from the Black Sea so after haggling down the price we got on board. Well, apparently we got on board of a dolphin-watching expedition and pretty soon after we left the harbor the first dolphins were starting to appear (all the while the English version of ‘Suzanne’ from Dutch band ‘VOF de Kunst’ blaring out of the on-board speaker system). Check out our dashcam video of Georgia which includes some dolphin action.

So we explained in our best sign-language that we would love to see the concert. They invited us in and without having to pay for anything we were pointed to true opera house seats and were able to see the entire concert for free. It was pretty good Georgian pop music with some covers of western music (including: “Alice” of Peter Koelewijn translated into a mix of English and Georgian). Since the hall was half-empty and there was no entrance-fee, we figured it was a try-out band playing for friends and family. After asking our host at the guest house it turned out to be the 20 year anniversary of a famous Georgian pop band. Boy, were we wrong J

Gori

En route to Tbilisi we wanted to visit the city of Gori, where Joseph Vissarionovich Jughashvili was born and raised. You may know him as Josef Stalin. He was the leader of the Soviet Union responsible for defeating the Nazi`s and the rise of the Soviet Union as a superpower. He was also a paranoid madman and killed about 20 million of his own people in Siberian gulags (labour camps). Gori is quite proud of the man and has a Stalin museum which we decided to visit. Unfortunately most of the texts in the museum are in Georgian and Russian and have not yet been translated into English, so we couldn’t get the full experience, but it did give us a good impression of his rise to power. As Churchill put it; he took the Soviet Union with the plow and left it with nuclear weapons…

Borjomi    

Time to leave the car behind for a couple of days and head into the mountains on a horse riding trip. We booked a 3 day tour with an English speaking guide named Vazha and two horses called Johny and Argento. Vazha trained these horses to respond to voice commands ‘Hatsjoe’ for forward and ‘Drrrrrrr’ for stopping, a reverse was not implemented. So you can imagine Jeroen and Nicolette on horses, constantly yelling ‘Hatsjoe’ to get them going. Eventually we got the hang of it and were able to make an amazing trip through the wild Lower Caucasus mountain range, along steep muddy tracks where the horses kept slipping and sliding. Since this was the 4^th time Jeroen was on a horse he had some hair raising moments (is this possible for him?) as his horse loved to walk right at the edges of steep cliffs.

Vazha was a great guide to us and he always kept us safe. He`s also pretty traditional which means women are considered ‘flowers’ and under no circumstances should they be burdened with hard labor such as collecting firewood or carrying their own backpack. Nicolette wouldn`t have any of this so after a hard fight she was allowed to carry firewood (but only very small pieces), see the picture to the left. After that story Jeroen nicknamed Nicolette ‘Delicate flower ’ at every possible opportunity J  

This was obviously not a border used by many tourists. After the regular passport and car check, we had to get out of the car and were pointed towards the first desk called “customs”. There the hassle began. They didn’t speak English and tried to explain what we needed to do. Although all the desks were within 20 meters of each other and we were the only customers, they didn`t feel like pointing out the right desk. Instead they kept repeating the command ‘Go to the next desk’ for about 10 times with increasingly raised voices switching between Armenian, Georgian and Russian (we think). ‘Next desk’ was the Customs Broker who handles the import of the car. To pay him we needed Armenian DRAM`s (the money, not the computer memory) which we could get at the bank located at the ‘next desk’. So in the confusion we ended up changing dollars at the ‘office’ were you can buy a SIM card making the SIM card salesman very happy. Last thing to do was to buy car insurance from a guy who set up shop in a very simple looking shed of 6m2 which included a desk and his bed, check out the picture on the left!

This border took us 2,5 hours, 110 dollars for customs, car insurance and probably some other things we couldn’t figure out, and many forms with stamps of different officials from 5 different desks. 

We were happy to finally enter Armenia, but the difference between the easy borders of Georgia and the difficult Armenian border already made us appreciate Georgia more. After our border-adventures we tried to find a wild camp spot in a nature reserve close to the border. We found one, but apparently the spot we found had some kind of military importance. Oblivious to this we were busy cooking dinner when out of nowhere 2 seriously looking guys in uniform approached us and started asking us all kinds of questions. 

After a photo-shoot of us with our passports and calling their superior asking what to do with us, they left with a friendly smile and a thank you in Russian. We continued with preparing dinner when they came back for a second visit, including a third guy without uniform. Some more questions and photos of our passports and of us followed, maybe we didn`t smile enough during the first session J. Then in their best English told us not to take any photos of the artificial dam behind us. Well, that explains why they came to see us! 

The next day with our Iranian visa finally in our possession we left Armenia and headed for Iran. 

Because we didn`t want to cross the semi-warzone of Nagorno Kharabakh we took the secondary road to the border, which was a very scenic mountain dirt road, again full of potholes, which took us 2 hours to cover 30 km. Check out the dashcam video for footage of this challenging but also beautiful last leg of our journey through Armenia!