July 28 - Georgia, at last!
Sometimes at 2 am I woke up briefly, to finally see some lights on the horizon. This made most of the passengers quite excited, most of my buddies came to the deck - little did we know that we were several hours away.
Batumi at night
The port of calling is Batumi - and it's a bit of mixture between Dubai, Karachi and maybe Naples - somehow I could not really point out a real identity. The lights were glamorous, those of tall buildings, banks, hotels and even a sort of "Batumi Eye", a wheel going around. Our ship was tugged left, it was tugged right, backwards, it was already daylight by the time we anchored. Then came a rather well organized passport control, in our cafeteria a couple of tables were set up with friendly officers, a lady asked me if it was my first time in Georgia, after confirming, the passport was stamped and that was it. I found my bike as I had left it, good thing the pigs did not do anything with it. The town was just waking up, it had this colonial feeling to it, but we did not become close friends. I changed some money (Lari is the name of the local currency), found some breakfast, a kind of a cheese burek, got a local SIM card and did a circle of honour. Ah, I found a Georgian post office, to send the maps (of Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine) back home - the office was quite beaten, but there were 3 young girls (aged just above 20) who all spoke perfect English and helped me with the package.
Batumi early in the morning
The road lead next to the sea - a long patch of pebble beach with a looong promande, where I got scolded by some officer that I wasn't in the right lane dedicated to bikers. All that know me would expect me to go swimming - but neither the rocky beach, nor the gloomy weather were inviting me to do so. One could see mountains everywhere, but they were all covered with clouds...oh well.
Pebble beach in Batumi
The promanade ended abruptly - looked like the sea swallowed the bike path, so I turned
eastwards. The traffic at first was outright horrible, I was quietly contemplating why I had to travel so far, to swallow the fumes of trucks and buses. The outskirts of Batumi were outright depressing, it reminded me of block houses of remote regions Soviet Union (somewhere in Siberia). Luckily, the traffic died down and the scenery changed more to somewhere in Lower Austria. There were even signs for bike tracks.
Well, somewhat shabby...this is just outside Batumi
As I was heading up the mountain, a fellow biker, Chris from Poland, became my temporary trave mate, he had been riding around the Caucasus for a couple of days. We were both tired (I had yet again hardly slept on the ship and was literally falling asleep while biking), so we found a nice green patch next to the mountain river, and dozed off, only to be woken up by a light drizzle.
Down by the riverside - where we camped
We had some really yummy shashlik/kebab with some very fresh salad, the price of Eur 4 was a very good deal, indeed. We then contiued up the road, till we saw a sign leading to some ruins. It was just 2 km away, but the sign also indicated a 15% incline - still, in hopes of finding a good campsite, we decided on trying our luck. Nope, not this time, the ruins were interesting, but nowhere to camp.
Up by the riverside 😃
We rolled back to the main road - as there was a river next to it. As our luck would have it, there was a never-ending set of villages, followed by some dustry consturction site (it was already 9 pm, but there was full activity), so we pushed and pushed further, till Chris located a suitable site, he even made a fire. I was so tired that I was talking utter rubbish in my half sleep - we both laughed at it and then I finally retired to my tent.