Day 25_to_27

Today we decide to go to the mountains, to the Militar Highway. That’s an ancient passage from Tbilisi over the Caucasus to Russia, and an important route for trucks.

Our first stop is Ananuri, an old fortress in front of a lake. It is beautiful indeed.

Next the landscape starts to change. We start following a little river. Grass fields start surrounding us with cows and horses, with its fresh air. It is a great place to visit! Suddenly the road just ends, and our ride becomes an off road ride. It’s fine because we have the chance to prove the new tires before the “Stans”, but also sucks because we are between trucks and they throuw to us so much dust that we can’t see.

Then we start our way up to the mountains, and it gets a little bit difficult. The trucks are so slow… and the drivers so aggressive that we don’t feel comfortable. It takes some time to reach Gudauri and its sky station. The views are breathtaking, we are surrounded by high mountains and alpine landscape. Again, it’s really hot and late, we haven’t eaten a thing since the morning and we have troubles finding the hotel. We walk around under the sun just asking everybody until someone knows it. Those are the views from our window, not bad!

We go to the nearest restaurant, and I got some chicken on a sword! So cool! By the way, I’m addicted to this green beverage, it’s delicious!

We take the rest of the day just to rest. We are really tired, and a big storm begins, so we can’t go walking around.

This morning we’ll reach the Jvari Pass at 2379 m. We take some photos around, the Caucasus are quite impressive. We chat for a while with a Dutch on his way to Tbilisi on motorbike and we start to “descent”. Today is even nicer than yesterday. The temperature is just perfect and there isn’t a lot of traffic.

Once again we pass Ananuri, but at some point we change the road and we head to a Natural Park. It’s just the perfect decision. This part of the country is quite “empty” so we are riding alone on a mountain road. Just perfect! We stop in a special village (Tianeti!!!) to eat some Khinkali (homemade delicious meat dumplings) and a piece of pie before we continue our way to Badauri. We want to be as near as possible to the border for tomorrow.

When we take the main road again the stress starts. It is quite dangerous to ride on this country I’m afraid most of the time. Another thing is that they use the horn A LOT, sometimes they just want to say hello, but almost always they use it to say that we are too “slow”.

We have problems again finding the hotel so we stop to ask to two men. They don’t speak a word in English, but it is a funny experience … They manage to explain how to reach our hotel, and they even invite us to drink wine! When we arrive at the hotel we have a nice surprise! It is also a restaurant and a wine cellar.

As usual at this point of the day, we just need to cool down, rest and eat something light before sleeping.

The plan was to leave the hotel really soon the next day, so we wake up before 7:00 and we start packing. An hour later we find out that it’s raining a lot… So we just rest while we wait.

Finally we depart around 11:00 without having breakfast, so we stop on the road to buy some fruit. It’s just delicious! We are just an hour far from the border, but we have the opportuitiy to see somethig new in our lives. An ilegal race. Yeah, a race on a road full of people, cars, trucks, cows, horsees… At some point a guy makes us stop, we don’t understand a thing, what the hell it’s going on?! The two mercedes stand lined while the guy films it, then they do the countdown and the race starts. It’s that easy (ad crazy).

We cross the Georgian border easily and we find ourselves under a huge “Good Luck” signal in no-man’s land… That’s promising. We skip the line, and we ride to the front of it because we’ve seen two other motorbikes. We can’t believe it! They are a couple from New Zealand riding their motorbikes in their way back home!!! We don’t have to wait too long, the officer let us to pass the first door. Now is when the real custom process starts. They want to check all os our baggage, they ask if we have cameras (and how many), also they ask if we have a dron (for security issues it’s forbidden to fly one on the country). Then we have to wait for some stamps and new papers, they take a photo from each of us, and finally, they say we are clear.

We ride with Robin and Pixie to Seki, they decide to join us and take our hotel for the night. The first impression of Azerbaijan is really good. The people is just welcoming us everywhere waving us! The roads are quite good and the drivers more respectful with us.

It’s really hot when we reach the city, so we take a shower at the hotel. Then we go to search some money and something to eat, And finally…the swimming pool!!! Sorry! that’s a day without photos (we’ve been speaking too much with our new friends)