The pause that refreshes

It has been far too long--and we've done far too much in the intervening period--to give a comprehensive update of all that we've been up to since our last blog post. Instead, I'll sum up:

Sam and I toiled away a bit more here in Akhalkalaki in August, working on projects that included his grant-funded English cabinet and my grant-funded women's health peer education program. We headed in to Tbilisi on August 20 to participate in a goodwill basketball tournament (Sam to cheer, me to play) held by the Georgian Ministry of Education. Then, on August 22 at 4am, we took off from Georgia for an 18-day vacation.

We were able to get a free frequent-flyer-mile ticket to anywhere in Europe, so we did the natural thing and went to Slovenia. It was spectacular (see below if you need pictorial convincing; we did lots of hiking, lots of eating of delicious foods and lots of general sightseeing, museum-going and general good times). We followed our brief tour of Slovenia with a few days in Vienna (for more eating, coffee drinking, museums and palaces), then bused to Budapest, from whence we hopped a plane to Cairo for our friends' wedding (and some time in the Egyptian museum, at the pyramids and on an overnight excursion to the White Desert in the Sahara), before coming back to Budapest to round up the vacation (with yet more eating, museums and fun). To allow us to indulge a bit on the length of the trip and the attractions enjoyed, we saved some money on hotels by staying (for the most part) in campsites. All of our European destinations had phenomenal campgrounds, with lots of room for tents or RVs, separate shower buildings and toilets, kitchens and laundry rooms. Really, our "roughing it" wasn't rough at all (all of the campsites we stayed at were more modern and filled with more conveniences than lots of Peace Corps sites). The weather was wonderfully accommodating to our choice in accommodation as well, and we only needed to swap our tent for hotels for one night in Vienna and during our stay in Cairo.

We landed back in Tbilisi at 3am on September 10th, a spectacular way for Sam to start his 28th year, and made our way back to Akhalkalaki later the same day, to finish up with some cake and food with our host family and friends.

Now we're getting back into the swing of things, mercifully a little slowly. The "First Bell" ceremony was held on Thursday, September 15 and book pass-out took place on Friday. Monday was our first day of classes, and after our beautiful, amazing adventures traveling, we're feeling ready and up to the challenges that are sure to lie ahead!

Sam, setting up our tent in Slovenia

Lake Bled and the town of Bled, Slovenia

Vintgar Gorge, Slovenia

Radovljica, Slovenia

Bled Island, Bled, Slovenia

Lake Bohinj, Slovenia

A statue to the first climbing party to scale Slovenia's tallest mountain, a peak in the Julian Alps (just visible at the right of the picture), and an old church in Bohinj, Slovenia

Picking blackberries after a hike outside of Bled, Slovenia

Downtown Ljubljana, Slovenia

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Schonbrunn Palace, Vienna, Austria

City Hall and Parks, Vienna, Austria
Vienna Ferris Wheel (we watched "The Third Man" for the first time in Vienna. If you haven't seen it, watch it! It's a great movie and Orson Welles gives a fantastic speech at this ferris wheel), Vienna, Austria

Although we did camp in Vienna, there is no camping allowed here in this busy street, apparently.

We arrived in Cairo just for the end of Ramadan, and the Eid celebrations outside our hotel window were intense. We were especially lucky to have the fireworks, which were being sold right outside our hotel, tested and demonstrated every 5 minutes until about 4am.

No horses were harmed in this trip to the Pyramids

Great Pyramids, huh?

Karl and Nayla at their wedding reception in Cairo

The reception was gorgeous!

The Sahara desert oasis of Bahariya

Me and Sam in the Sahara

Our trusty Sahara adventure jeep

White Desert, Sahara, Egypt

Beetle!
Our campsite in the White Desert
Rooster rock in the White Desert

Sataplia

The road from Svaneti passes by Georgia's second city, Kutaisi, which happens to be located a few kilometers from the Sataplia nature reserve. The Sataplia nature reserve is famous for honey, forests, caves, and preserved dinosaur footprints, and since traveling with me is a little like traveling with a six-year-old ("Dinosaurs!") and a little like traveling with grandma ("Oh, local honey!"), we made a stop.

The dinosaur tracks were of course the big draw for me. But Sataplia nature reserve itself is a really pretty stretch of hilly land mostly covered by "Colchian" forest and, when we went, shrouded in warm mist.



Our first stop was the dinosaur track pavilion. I'll admit to low expectations; someone had said you needed to use your imagination to see anything. But that made it all the more incredible. These were very clearly dinosaur footprints, so my imagination was left free to design a saddle for my pet dinosaur.





There were a number of signs making mention of some of my best childhood friends -Iguanodon, Stegosaurus, and so on - but I'm pretty sure they weren't the species represented. But then, I am, for reasons that can only be attributed to poor life choices, not a paleontologist.


Anyway, BP has funded a really nice, climate-controlled pavilion to protect the prints from further damage and decay, and I have to say that if a gigantic mega-corporation wants to mask the brutality and destructiveness of the market system, giving me a day with dinosaur footprints is a good (ahem) step.

From the pavilion, we walked through the Colchian forest (featuring very tasteful statues of dinosaurs), to a wooden walkway along a cliff side. The mists were covering what is usually a pretty broad panorama, but on the stone side of the cliff, the guide pointed out the dwellings of the wild honeybees who (he said) gave Sataplia ("Place of Honey") its name.





A bit further on, we came to the entrance of Sataplia cave. Perpetually cool and damp, the cave featured an underground river, semi-translucent stalactites, a variety of different formations, and a famous stone shaped by water to resemble a human heart. I'm a sucker for caves, especially those with glitzy artificial lighting, and this was a good one.






Sataplia is a world treasure. I know I'm 100% the target audience - forested hills, honeybees, caves, and dinosaurs - but this is the kind of thing that I wish everyone could see. It wasn't raw majesty on the scale of Svaneti, but you get something strange running down your spine when you see footprints made in soft mud in days when those mountains from the last few posts hadn't even been born.

Svaneti Trip Day 3, Year 3

After scanning through our pictures from our Svaneti trip once more, we realized that we still had a ton we wanted to show off. Hence, one more blog post, lots more pictures and a few more stories from our trip.

Our last full day in Mestia, August 2, broke once again with a brilliantly beautiful morning. We woke early to try our hand (and our legs) at one more long hike--this time scrambling up the mountain that hugs Mestia to an overlook point at the foot of a giant iron cross before following the ridge up another several hundred meters to a cluster of mountain lakes and views of the big giants from the Caucasus all around.

Just a fraction of the way up

One of the many beautiful mountain wildflowers

Headed the right way

We set out just before 8am, making our way slowly and steadily uphill. We had our moments where we couldn't tell if we were on the intended hiking path or just a cow path, blazed by an intrepid bovine hiker. Soon enough, though, we found our desired red-and-white trail blaze and continued up. There were beautiful flowers all around and not a soul to be seen (except for the cows that kept one-upping us with their feats of climbing).

More flowers

Hiking trail or cow path?

The start of the trail was steep--we climbed up a kilometer over the first 2.5 kilometers. Around noon, we made it to the crest of the first big hill, the overlook by the iron cross. We also ran into a few sets of other hikers who had come up the hill from the other side, our intended route of descent. (These fellow hikers were an interesting bunch. We had some nice conversations with the pair of Czech tourists, met two Poles with whom we jointly cursed the two Dutch girls who got a jeep ride to the top and were skipping happily down past us telling us that the top was only 20 minutes away, and listened to the exhausted panting of the Japanese man who had walked his mountain bike up the mountain upon finding it too steep to actually ride up.)

You can vaguely see the iron cross at the edge of the green hill; we came up from the right-hand side, then went back down along the visible jeep track on the left

I don't think the boys always appreciated my energy levels

A shepherd's summer shack

The views all around were, as was to be expected in Svaneti at this point, absolutely breathtaking and striking. Every direction, every view, everywhere we looked was like a scene for a movie poster or advertisement. We made it up to the mountain lakes (by August, a little smaller and less impressive, maybe, than the hiking tour book made them out to be) and had a picnic, watched over by the towering mountain peaks and a group of grazing horses. We stretched our legs once more and headed back down the mountain, grateful that the clouds had started to fill the sky and keep the strong high-altitude sun off our shoulders for the way down.

And more pretty flowers!

One of about a dozen or so mountain lakes

Another lake, with mountain-climbing horses in the background

Baby horse, making us look bad as we pant and puff our way to the top of the mountain

A beautiful spot for a much deserved picnic

We made it back to our guest house almost exactly 9 hours after we set out. We attacked our dinner with gusto and rested a bit before taking one more evening stroll around Mestia on this our last day in town. It was a good day, one where we went to bed feeling absolutely worn out and grateful for the chance to fall asleep. Our three days in Svaneti were fantastic and just the perfect way, we thought, to celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary.

Happy 3!