Friday, May 31 - Day 11

My host organized a transfer to Juta, the driver of which was one of his cousins (it seems everyone there is a relative), bid farewell to him and I left the nice accommodation at 9 am. We picked up Florian and were off for a relatively short ride. The driver made it absolutely clear he would not go beyond the barrier point, so from there on, we were on our own.

By then, I was a bit under the weather, so I was not all too happy to have to carry a large rucksack on my back and a small one on the front - and of course it was the steep section that was washed out - a gentle incline is usually fine. So I was swearing under my non-existent mustache, this is a Hungarian saying - though loud enough for Florian to hear it. He tried to cheer me and the views were also encouraging to go on.

The was no traffic at this early hour, so hitch-hiking was not an option - well, that was true until the first car came, by that time, we were quite close to Juta. As the car was full, they could not give us a lift, but were kind enough to take the rucksacks up to the end of the road, right to our hotel. Now the going got easier. If I recall, they were from Korea.

We checked in at the hotel, well, it looked definitely better from the outside, than the inside. Renovations were taking place in the large atrium-style building, there being a scaffolding with workers jumping around on it. The room was rather fifties style and very cold, so we asked for electric heaters, which hardly worked. Not the best choice this time., but it was for one night - and we were about to go out anyway. Had we looked a little more in detail, we would have booked one of the cool huts on the hillside, see below.

So, we started hiking, this was on the unpaved road starting from Juta village. The slope was just as gentle as the beginning of the previous day, which was a bit surprising, as we met one pair of fellow hikers, who were telling us how steep the ascent was in some places. Thinking we were following the correct signs, we continued and were talking about "God and the world", this is a German expression, We were lured by the beautiful views of snow-capped peaks, green mountain-side and wild horses grazing.

There were a few multilingual signs saying something about a special permission needed on the road, but these were consistently placed where bridges or pathways crossed the river, so we thought it referred to the opposite bank of the river,. After a bend in the road, we saw a rather large building with the Georgian flag on it and then, suddenly, saw a soldier, unloading his machine gun from his back and wildly waving at us, signaling us to turn around. He held his binoculars in one hand, closely examining our actions, the machine gun (pointing not as us, but the sky) in the other, but it was pretty clear he was not fooling around. You will have long ago realized what we had only then noticed, I took out my Google Maps and it showed that we were practically on the border to Russia. The hike trail we started off on was the correct one, but we would have had to make a sharp tunr just a few hundred meters outside town - and missed that. I´ve had my conflicts with borders on earlier trips - and being in places I should not be, once in Ukraine, once in Triaspol in Transnistria and once in Vietnam, so slowly, but surely, we waved back and turned around.

We then had some admiration for wildflowers.

We went back to the hotel and pretty much by the time we reached back, it started raining cats and dogs (those are eaten in some places in the US by immigrants, as we know after a presidential debate). There we met two young tourist girls from Scandinavia, they were waiting for their guide to show up. As they only carried credit cards and no cash, with an internet outage in Juta, they were a bit hungry, so we offered some food to them, which they thankfully accepted. Their driver (and guide), some sort of a cool guy, showed up and they left, and we had some hearty pasta for lunch, with goat cheese next to it.

It was a great time to take a map, or at least to make an attempt at taking a nap, as the construction workers quite busy - and loud. This rest was quite a welcome gift for me, as I felt a bit ill, nothing too bad though. The rain stopped and we decided to do a late afternoon climb on the path where we should have been on, prior to almost trespassing to Russia. Oh yes, this was quite a steep trail, offering wonderful views. Here, just after forty minutes or so, we found another lost opportunity - a modern, rather hip and chic style touring house, called Fifth Season., highly recommended, if you get there. We met a big group of hikers from Estonia there, we chatted with them for a while.

Well, it was now 6 pm and the end of the trail was still 1.5 hours away, so it would have been 9 pm - and dark - by the time we would have gotten back - plus I was anyhow feeling a bit weak, so I told Florian I would return to our base. We were thinking of hiking to the lake the following day, it would have been an option. Florian decided he needed a bit more action for the day, so he attempted to climb a steep mountainside.

Ont the way back, I encountered some more horses and zoomed in on Florian ascending.

This was pretty much covers the day, I think I was in bed at 8 pm - the workers were just about done with their shift, so it got quiet in the hotel - and this helped me feel better for the following day.