Going out of the Nemrut volcano, we headed north, along Lake Van, passed the Iranian border, then the Armenian border, and crossed into Georgia. The border crossing went as expected, the car was not seriously searched, everything went fine. We set off for our first destination, Kutaisi. Two gps showed two directions, oops. What do we do now? Uh, maybe some would think we made a mistake. But not. So we took a pretty serious road through the Little Caucasus, it is not recommended without a 4 wheel drive. It was a pretty serious serpentine, of course, dirt road and mud exclusively. In addition there was a road construction, where the grabber asked for a few minutes to rebuild the road in our honor. So we climbed up, slowly, and then after crossing the pass, we started descending. Downhill there was a normal path, well we reached Kutaisi.
We ate a good Kachapuri in Kutaisi, we looked at the monasteries, and then the Prometheus Cave. We looked forward to caving, but the cave is not a big deal. It is well lit but not worth the price.
So we quickly set off to the next adventure: 100km of serpentine to Mestia. We spent the night near Mestia under the beautiful sky on the edge of a forest. The next day we hiked from Adishi to a huge glacier. Unfortunately we started too late and did not reach our target, but we could still see the glacier. We could not pass anyway, the river, reaching the height of our breast flooded in the valley where the trail led. We climbed for an hour to avoid turning back and to see the glacier … The other hikers slept there and waited for the next morning to cross the flooded river with horses. Finally, the weather was gracious to us, as the road to Adishu was not washed away by the whirling river beside it, and we were able to drive back. Next day we hiked in a valley surrounded by beautiful snowy peaks.
We then headed for Chiatura, where about 17 lifts were operating due to the mining work in the city. Unfortunately, lifts have become so life-threatening in the last few years that the cable has benn closed. In September last year, there were only two cableways in operation and the last one was shut down last week. It is not a tourist destination, there is hardly any information on the Internet. In principle, a lift is being renovated for the tourists, unfortunately we won’t wait for it it anymore.
40 km ago, I started to feel something was wrong with our left front wheel. The symptoms have intensified, so now we need to thoroughly investigate Crocodile. Yeah, yeah, we named our little Pajero a Crocodile. His land-based performance has already been impressive, but after crossing small rivers over the past few days, it has become clear that our rolling home is truly a giant Crocodile. We will fix his left forefoot and go on!
