Road Trip April 2011 Eastern Georgia - Easter Weekend

Easter is kind of a big deal in Georgia as in most Christian places in the world. Public school teachers get four full days off in addition to Saturday and Sunday. At the Police Academy we only got two full days, but it was enough to plan and go on a road trip to the Kakheti province in Eastern Georgia. It was a pretty awesome trip even though the weather and the roads didn't work out so well.

I contacted a car rental agency and found to my surprise an American sounding person on the other end of the line. George was the owner of a car rental company along with his father who have been in business since the early days of renting cars, that is to say a good ten years or so since things got stable and less corrupt in Georgia. To his misfortune, the way he sees it, but to my delight, prices are a quarter of what they use to be and now on the cheap end of things you can rent a car for about $50 a day compared with a couple of hundred dollars only a few years ago.

His selection of cars are the discarded remains of America's middle class. On his lot you will find mostly eight to twelve year old American and European (read: German) cars. Six months a year he lives in New York where he was raised after leaving Georgia with part of his family in 1991 during the end of Soviet rule and the beginning of civil war and six months a year he remains in Georgia to run the family business with his father. We rented a 1999 Volkswagen four door family car which for me was like stepping back in time to my college days because the car reminded me of my first car, a 1995 Honda Accord. The dashboard had a fuel gauge, was in miles before kilometers, buttons big enough for the sausage fingers of a cyclops, and the only digital display was the time and mileage which had a little button you could press to go four zeros to keep track of your Trip A and Trip B distances. By today's standards it was an dinosaur but not a classic.

On the other hand being a fairly old car, there were some things that I would have been common on a new car that this car didn't have. The right hand side mirror was missing, something you don't necessarily need in Georgia as most of the roads are only two lanes, but in Tbilisi there are a few multiply lane roads where you actually need a right hand mirror and signal although the signal isn't really needed here. Two windows didn't work and the back tired had no shocks.

People tend to glide into a turn here and there is no real things as lines in the road except at some stoplights where people jockey for position to gun it when the light hints at turning green only to have to spend most of the time riding the brake as the next light up ahead isn't timed for efficient traffic flow, people are making a break for it across four lanes of road, a dog is in the street, a bus is pulling out, someone stopped to make a call, light a cigarette, is drunk and swerving up ahead or next to you, or the road has a pothole or ten up ahead. Riding your blind spot is a Georgian pastime. It might sound bad but all things considered, the roads are pretty good, the drivers aggressive but aware, and the speed relatively slow so things that can and do go wrong are avoided in time. Considering I haven't driven a car since 2006 ever so briefly when I drove to Alaska from Chicago with a good friend, this would be a welcoming home for me as I lived in a car from 1992 until I left for Africa in 2003. It is true that riding a bike and driving a car instantly come back to you I wish all the foreign languages I learned were so easy to remember.

My American colleagues from the Police Academy and I rented a car and while originally planning to drive west of Tbilisi through a mountain range and check things out, decided against freezing temperatures, snow and ice and drove around Eastern Georgia. Kakheti region is Georgia's wine making region. Most of it sits in a fertile valley with the Caucasus mountains sharply rising on the north side of the region. The vineyards were starting to grow leaves but this being April, there was hardly any grapes or lushness to the landscape yet. This would be a trip of National Parks and going with the flow.

On the way we stopped at an old fortress. It was built in the 12C or something and was currently being occupied by eight drunk men. As is the custom in Georgia, when you do something you should be drinking. This being Kakheti that means nearly everyone makes their own wine. My former roommate being something of a connoisseur of alcoholic beverages partook in the drinking festivities while the rest of us took shelter in one of the corners of the fortress. The bow and arrow was a common weapon back in the day and no fortress would be complete without a spy hole, wide inside narrowing down away from the shooter. Here we ate bread and cheese, drank, and tried in the worst form of broken English and Georgia to communicate but not one person spoke English, so you just drink more. The equivalent of a bottle of wine in twenty minutes is standard. We proceeded to get stuck in the mud and went on our way.

The weather wasn't very good, but we made due. We started at Lagodekhi National Park for two nights. It is located at the base of the mountains near the Azerbaijan border to the east about ten miles away. When we first arrived we saw a broken down fence and a sign that read Lagodekhi National Park. We had arrived. Problem was that there was no entrance and no real park to speak of. We could see it from the chain linked fence but there had to be more or at least we hoped.

After backtracking about three times we asked locals where the park might be, one person actually knew, everyone else looked at us like we were nuts. This happens everywhere I go in the developing world. You go to China are in Beijing and you ask in poor but sufficient enough Mandarin, "Where is Tienanmen Square?" and people look at you like you just spoke like the teacher in Charlie Brown cartoons.

Our man was a taxi driver who also seemed to double as the welcoming party of his small town. We followed him up a road and went the rest of the way into the great unknown alone, about one kilometer down a paved road. Upon arrival we again ran into a fence this one was a serious looking affair with a big wooden door, concrete walls, and a layered rock welcoming blockade on either side. It screamed, "By invitation only." Right away I started thinking we would have to schlep all our gear into the park and not have easy access to the car which makes car camping a breeze. After some investigation we met the park director who showed us around the grounds.

There were two main buildings with nice facilities and right away my brain said, "NGO." Nothing in Georgia is new, well engineered, or thoroughly planned out unless it is a government building, a multinational corporations project, or NGO assisted project. I am not suggesting that engineering is a mess, in fact, when it comes to buildings Georgia is well ahead of the curve it is just that a lot of care was put into the formation and maintenance of the Department of Protected Areas and public schools don't have adequate toilet facilities yet.

The former Soviet countries I have visited, five in total, all have one thing in common when it comes to nature, amazing public parks in cities, and completely noncommercial national parks. You will not even find souvenirs in these places, just a popcorn machine and someone selling beverages under a tree or on the curb, it is kind of great. Bishkek the capital of Kyrgyzstan has a public park running right through its center which calms to nerves immediately, Tbilisi has multiple parks in and around the city center and more economically developed cities like Prague and Budapest have lots of urban sprawl and plenty of casual walking and chilling spots.

Look, we all know that London has some of the world's best parks, if not the world's best parks and Central Park in New York City is the real deal, but these are traditionally cities of great wealth. Bishkek, Tashkent, and Tbilisi haven't had the easiest of developmental times since the Soviet Union broke apart yet they find the resources to maintain urban parks. People almost seem to expect it in these countries and governments recognize that nice urban parks are essential to keeping some sort of peace in addition to places where celebrations, revolutions, and debate can take place. So Lagodekhi National park screamed NGO to me. The buildings were new, clean, and in the style of something you would find in Switzerland, fireplaces, stairs of equal distance, community eating spaces, couches, doors and windows with real integrity, and paths between buildings and roads.

We of course would be camping. It hadn't stopped raining in a week, but that wasn't going to stop us from giving it a go. One of the park employees showed us to a spot where we could camp. We would have to use the buildings to go to the bathroom, get water, and cook if inclined. Our camping spot was a patch of grass up a small hill, about a hundred meters from the buildings. By looking at the discoloration of the ground and compression of flora you could tell that only two places where used by tents and they hadn't been used much since winter ended, probably once or twice a week or a month. Why camp when you can lodge, especially when it is cold and rainy? I totally get it. The tent my old roommate and I rented was a Coleman another tell that it was an NGO project. Coleman is as American as apple pie. The girls had a legitimate 3/4 season North Face tent they borrow from our boss. Now as far as weight and compression is concerned Coleman is not what you want, but for practical use I have to give Coleman credit. It had a tarp bottom, went up with ease, and didn't leak too much. If there was a storm I would have been worried though. We setup and went to town for dinner.

In town we learned that there were only two restaurants, the good one which was closed and the other one. For a country that likes to eat out in large groups this was surprising. The only place open was a hotel. The food sucked. The town was empty which would be a common theme throughout the trip. The church however was abuzz with activity. People mostly attended church and went to villages to be with family members and to visit the graves of dead relatives, a traditional thing to do on Easter in Georgia. The next day we hiked to a small waterfall and it didn't rain the whole time, praised be he. Since the snow was melting from up above and the rains hadn't stopped in weeks the waterfall was powerful and impressive albeit short in height, maybe thirty feet. We knew we arrived at the spot because a rock was painted "FINISH."

After Lagodekhi we drove to the south easternmost part of Georgia to go to Vashlovani National Park only to find the road ended ten miles outside the park. I tried as best I could to navigate the road with three foot potholes and just wide enough track to maybe get a tire or two on it, but when we got to a pot hole the width of the road and depth of a small swimming pool, I had to make a call. The National Park Service Agency I called days before failed to mention that you need a 4WD SUV or Jeep to get into the park. We rented a VW Passat which is basically a four door family car with a foot and a half clearance on the bottom, so we turned around and went to Telavi about a two hour drive on the way to Tbilisi. We only went three hundred feet down this road and it took twenty minutes to get back to the main road. Along the way a decision had to be made about the best way to navigate certain section. High speed and luck was decided down a mud patch that would surely stick us if momentum wasn't on our side. It worked well until the end where a well disguised tree stump was lurking under some grass. I managed to swerve around it, but the back side of the car wasn't so luck and having no shocks, I took out a big chunk of the back right hand side of the car almost severing the brake line. Some duck tape later we were on the road again.

On the Telavi Highway my friend went to pee in an abandoned building on the side of the highway, common in Georgia and post-Soviet countries. Georgia is a great place to be a squatter except in winter. When we stopped a police officer came by. Right away my American raised feelings about police came on and said, "We are not allowed to pee in abandoned buildings. There is some stupid law against that as there is for practically ever human action in America." He saw us, put it together, and in surprisingly near fluent English, offered assistance. Turned out that this Easter weekend the number two police officer in Telavi, one of Georgia's biggest cities was doing patrol. Lucky us, he knew everybody.

He made a few phone calls and got us a camp site. Now, there are no camp sites in Georgia outside of the National Parks but he got us a spot at the old abandoned soccer stadium which during Soviet times was probably a glorious place to watch comrades battle it out on the soccer pitch for mother Russia to witness as its people showed their supremacy. Now the stadium is overgrown, home to hundreds of huge snails, a family of dogs, and empty buildings. Officer Anzor got us in, explained to the groundskeeper what the hell we were doing there, brought us two bottles of wine, and managed a few mattresses and blankets, the latter being for Neal who would make the car his bedroom when we weren't driving. We only had one tent for this part of the trip seeing how Vashlovani was a no go and while not impossible four people would have been a tight squeeze, besides he snores.

The toilet was awesome. Imagine a concrete structure with ten rows of squatting toilets on each side. Now imagine the roof caved in, two decades of foliage fallen from trees and blown in by the wind, and darkness. That was our toilet facility. It wasn't gross because it was so run down, that is, it was like going to the bathroom outside with half a concrete covering and walls. These were the old toilets for patrons of the soccer game. Nature was slowly overtaking the concrete again. It was a cool place to see. Good enough to do your business,perhaps not so much in the sweltering heat of summer.

There were a lot of young people hanging out, smoking, and drinking in the stands where only the most prestigious of people once watched games. I can only assume that it is a making out spot for the young and a nice place to walk around for the old and athletic. In the morning some man drove up and walked around the track a few times while we had an Easter Egg hunt. A stadium and surrounding grounds is a pretty cool place for an Easter Egg hunt as long as the dogs don't catch wind of what you are up to.

The view was spectacular. Georgia is mostly mountains and high ones too. The Caucasus Mountains start and end abruptly. In Telavi we sat at around 1800 feet. Across the valley which sat at 500 feet was the base of one of the mountain ranges. Just the first line of mountains we could see from Telavi stretched to at least 6000 feet. Behind this first line you could see what where pieces of 8000 feet mountains or more. 8000 feet is around the height were altitude becomes a challenge to the human body. It isn't so much the height that is impressive as much as it is the abruptness from which this small but high mountain range begins. There is no lead up to it. You are cruising along at a steady elevation in some valley and then go straight up.

The trip ended with a drive through a small mountain range to Tbilisi. It was a terrible drive for me, albeit only two hours. I haven't driven in such horrible conditions since I took a night drive on CHW16 in BC, Canada on the way to Alaska. This road almost killed me and my good friend. She was sleeping like a baby in the passenger seat and I had white knuckles for eight straight hours. The drive was so bad fear kept me awake.

During Easter weekend the fog was terrible, it was raining, and parts of the road were washed out, I'm talking huge slabs of earth abruptly on the road right in front of you around a bend and parts where the road was gone from sliding down the mountain. Someone definitely pocketed some of the engineering money. New roads are not this poorly made especially in the mountains. We got through it, but we would have preferred clear skies, it must be beautiful. Instead we went to some old churches and wandered around in a few cool forests with the their newly sprouted bright green leaves adding color to the fog and white bark trees.

Upon returning we had lunch at our friend's house where they had a stash of American boxed and canned foods from the commissary of the US Embassy. I feasted on Chunky Chicken Soup and one of those dehydrated Pasta Sides that comes in a bag. These are the same Pasta Sides that got me through rough patches in the Peace Corps. My folks would send me these care packages and I would add my own touch with whatever local ingredients I could get (read: tomato and onion) to make Alfredo, Parmesan, and Garlic Cheese masterpieces, or it seemed that way at the time.

A reoccurring feeling comes back to me time and again in Georgia. Georgia is a small country with a lot to offer to outdoor enthusiasts, it is safe, pretty clean, and functional. It is hard to believe that this is a country where the main form of light was candles only ten years ago. Georgia has come a long way and is changed rapidly. Good leadership has a way of doing good by its people just like bad leadership can destroy things.