Over the Edge of the Wild

"Remember you are over the Edge of the Wild now, and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go."

While we managed to enjoy our weekend in Svaneti without being kidnapped by goblins or chased by wolves, the land itself had an unmistakable rugged wildness about it.  There were no carnival spin rides or hot dog stands in Mestia.  This was not Borjomi.  And while I loved both Borjomi and Svaneti, it can't be denied that Borjomi is like a Class 2 rapid to Svaneti's Class 5.

But before I could fall well and truly dangerously in love with Mestia and Svaneti -- with its mud, its crappy weather, and its bone-chilling cold, the trip was in danger of going south in totality.

This was because, after crawling to bed at 2:00+ the night before, the entire bunkhouse/hostel was awakened at  Seven O'Clock in the Fucking Morning because workers had arrived to lay a new floor in the room next door.

I'm surprised they did not see my mushroom cloud from Tbilisi.

Those of you who've met me probably have an idea of the nuclear reaction currently smoldering inside my sleep-deprived, dehydrated self.  But somehow, miraculously, British Backpacker James was able to calm me down completely by saying something like "If you let this get to you you're going to be in a bad mood all day.  Come on up to the balcony and I'll make you coffee."  And you know what?  That freaking worked.  Day saved.  Thanks James.

Oh yeah, and it was pouring rain that morning too.

Gradually the six of us converged on the balcony, sipping hot instant coffee, last night's leftover vodka, and munching on fresh apples that David One had bought at the market.  We saw some piggies making more piggies.

Eventually the talk came 'round to what exactly we were going to do with a Saturday in Svaneti when the weather was shite.  There was talk of hiking up to The Cross, which -- much like it sounds -- is a big ole cross on top of a mountain, actually visible from our balcony, waaaaay tiny up in the distance when clouds weren't covering it up.  Mark had hiked it before and said it wasn't that hard, that it took about two hours to get up there.  After a lot of back-and-forth, Mark, myself, and the two Davids decided to pile on the layers and make a go of it.

NO idea what we were in for...

Well, it soon became clear that the Davids and I had been misled.  (Thanks Mark, way to actually be in shape and all.)  This was NOT an easy hike, at least for me.  We hadn't even made it to the trail proper when I began wondering if maybe I should join James and Julie in their afternoon of drinking at the hostel instead.  But if one thing can be said about me, I can be really goddam stubborn when I put my mind to it.  And after about half an hour I decided that I was going to make it up to this bloody cross if it killed me.

It did NOT take two hours.  Closer to three, but it seemed a lot longer as pretty much every step was uphill.  Gradually the layers peeled off.  It did rain on us briefly, but mostly the weather behaved.  And as we got higher we began to be privy to some truly spectacular scenery.

I'm not gonna lie.  This hike just about killed me.  I was still hanging on to a bad cough courtesy of Borjomi, and months of strolling along Poti's flat roads had left me woefully unprepared for even a kids' meal portion of what Svaneti can dish out.  But I was having a really good time, and the sheer awesomeness of my surroundings kept spurring me on!

Stubbornness pays off, and eventually we saw the damn thing over the last hill.  We made it!

Proof!

At the Cross, the four of us shared celebratory Snickers, vodka, and homemade Georgian wine.  The view down to Mestia through the clouds made the whole thing worth it, one hundred times over.

We also made friends with the world's coolest dog, who ended up sticking with us (especially Mark) for the rest of the day.  He was awesome!

After this, things got a little... surreal.  See, I was all for heading back down the mountain, to be in Mestia with something hot warming me up well before dark.  But first Mark and then the Davids started talking about going further on... and eventually I agreed.  Mark gave me a high-five. :)

The Cross is right at the treeline, which means that hiking further on brings you well and truly above the treeline.  The landscape was so alien, with everything around us so silent and still.  I felt like we could have been on another planet.

People manage to live here!

Leaving the trees behind...  

Gives "running to the grocery store" kind of a new meaning, doesn't it?

 The afternoon was getting on, so we only made it about 45 minutes further past the Cross.  But we got far enough to pretty much make it to the snowline, which was completely badass.

Mark looks like he's about to see what's on the other side...

We agreed to turn around at 5:00.  I can't speak for the others, but I know I was pretty much coming to the end of my strength.  Fortunately, downhill is easier, right?  Um, wrong.

Mountain snow lit up by the setting sun.

I have crappy knees, courtesy of bad genes and exacerbated by a couple martial arts injuries during my younger, feistier days.  Two and half hours of stumping steeply downhill, among wet leaves, slick mud, and loose stones makes for extremely unhappy joints.  It wasn't long before going down began to suck about as much as coming up, and it didn't help that we were all bone-tired.  Plus, full dark set in while we still had a ways to go down the mountain.  I limped into Mestia using the flashlight on my cell phone to keep from killing myself.

The four of us grabbed a quick, very quiet dinner at a local cafe, then dragged our exhausted selves back to Nest Hostel.  I took a very-much required hot shower, then prepared to join the others on the balcony for another round of drinks and cards.  In fact, I sat on the edge of my bunk for a good fifteen minutes, trying to psych myself up for this activity.  Then I curled up with my kindle and a single drink before turning off the light and sleeping like a stone.  Sometimes I make good choices. :)

The next morning, we woke up to pouring rain yet again.  The plan was to do another hike to a glacier, but the raid plus a body that was not in the least bit okay with yesterday's activities, made this plan unlikely.  Mark, the Davids and I began to talk about leaving that day, a day early.  And then David Two negotiated passage for the four of us on a marshutka full of 12th graders from Batumi.  They were leaving in 20 minutes.

Whirlwind packing, paying the hostel, saying goodbye to Julie who was staying the extra day anyway, and we ended up packed tight into a minibus full of boisterous, singing 12th graders and their teachers.  I sat up front with said teachers, and soon my day was improved with coffee, chacha, chocolate, crackers, and a strange orange Georgian fruit that looks kind of like a pepper but has flesh kind of like a peach.  An hour into the trip, we made a pit stop to look at Archangel Church.

Then, near Zugdidi, we stopped again to take a look at Enguri Edge Dam.  The water really is that magnificent blue-green color.

Only picture of all four of us from the weekend!

And then, not long after that, we stopped a third time to have a picnic along the side of the road.  Lots of good food and many shots of chacha!

We said farewell to the Davids in Zugdidi.  And then, finally, they dropped me off in Poti, less than 50 feet from my very own front door.

I cannot say enough good things about these folks.  To take in four grubby expat strangers, and treat them with such incredible warm hospitality.  There are times when the generosity and friendliness of the Georgian people just blows me away.

And so ended my weekend adventure over the Edge of the Wild.  I loved Svaneti, but also knew that it would very probably be a harder life than I would ever choose if given the chance.  I have nothing but awed respect for the Svans who make their homes and families in such a raw, unforgiving environment.  Svaneti offers tough love, and breeds a tough people.  I hope to make it back someday, and tackle another mountain.

The Edge of the Wild

Two weeks ago, Julie, Mark, and I once again packed our bags and boarded a dilapidated minibus, bound for one of the wildest and most beautiful parts of Georgia -- Svaneti.

Friday, October 14th is a Georgian holiday, so we left Poti on the evening of the 13th with a plan to stay over in Zugdidi Thursday night and leave early from Zugdidi for Mestia on Friday morning.  An evening in Zugdidi meant that we got to check out Amerikidan ("From America"), an American-style bar and grill that two veterans from our Program had recently opened.  Amerikidan is awesome -- excellent vibe and atmosphere, an actual bar with barstools (this is really rare in Georgia), and a comfortingly American menu of pizzas (real mozzarella cheese!!), hamburgers, cheesy fries, chicken strips, and the like.  Their dink menu includes proper cocktails -- with ICE!  We met co-owners Lucas and Damon, and they are very cool people.  I highly recommend checking out their place if you should find yourself in Zugdidi.

Due to the long weekend, it seemed like pretty much every single Program volunteer in the region had decided this was the weekend for visiting Svaneti.  So Amerikidan quickly got packed with expats, and we had a lot of fun meeting some cool new people.  Introducing the Davids!

That's David One in the plaid shirt and David Two in the sweatervest.  They would end up featuring quite prominently in our weekend. :)  We got in some good American dancing and I chatted for a long while with owner Damon.  Eventually Mark and I were ready to go.  Julie was still going strong... so we agreed to meet up the next day and Mark and I left in search of lodgings.  In typical Georgian fashion, earlier that evening a random Georgian man stopped us and asked if we had a place to stay that night.  (I guess our backpacks were a clue.)  He'd given us his number, so Mark gave him a call.  Despite it being after 1:00 in the morning, he met us along the way and escorted us to his guesthouse.  A very... interesting dormitory schoolroom-style room.

Due to the festivities of the evening, a superearly start did not end up happening.  But that didn't matter in any case, as Mark and I ended up waiting about an hour and a half for the Mestia marshutka to fill up so the driver would leave.  To help fill the time, our guesthouse host invited us into his cafe for tea and beer, very cool.  We touched base with Julie, who said she would come with the Davids on a later marshutka.

And then, finally... we were off!  It used to take five hours to bus from Zugdidi to Mestia, but Georgia recently completed construction on a new road that cut the time down to about three hours.  The weather wasn't the greatest, but being as we had waited the longest, the driver let us sit up front which is a marshutka honor. :)  The ride to Mestia passes through some of the most breathtaking countryside I have ever seen.  Our trip was perfectly timed just as the leaves were starting to turn, and the mountainsides were all deep alpine green spotted here and there with bright orange and yellow.  Behind the green hills were the real mountains, impossibly high and already covered with snow.  And waterfalls everywhere, thin as a thread or big as your imagination, snaking down the impossibly steep slopes.  I tried to take photos through the bus window, but due to rain, window glass, and speed, they did not come out well sadly.

Finally around mid-afternoon, we made it to Mestia.

Svan towers in the distance

Incredible mountains through the clouds

 

The bus let us off in the town center, and Mark and I began our wanderings looking for the hostel he had found online.  This proved harder than we thought, but eventually (with help), we successfully unloaded our gear at Nest Hostel.

Without a doubt, one of the most basic places I have ever stayed.  Camping, basically.  But there was hot water, which gave it points over both our Borjomi guesthouse and crappy Trabzon hotel.  The staff were really cool as well, and as an extra bonus, we met James, a British backpacker currently living in Latvia, and taking some extended time off from his own business to explore some of the less traveled regions of the world.  James was instantly a fantastic companion, and we started having fun together right away.

James with Mark

Mark, James, and I got food and wandered around Mestia for a while.  Mestia is undergoing a lot of construction, and in a way I am sad I couldn't get to see it a year or even six months ago.  I think it's excellent that their economy is going to get a boost from more and more people discovering how spectacular this part of Georgia truly is, but of course the inevitable downside of that is that, given enough time and enough rope, tourists tend to turn places into tourist traps.  But I trust the Svans (indomitable, generous, friendly, and slightly scary fierce) to lay the smack down before things go to far.

Downtown Mestia

Serious construction efforts

 We took a walk just outside of town that included walking up a stream for a while.  Thank you expensive waterproof hiking boots.  I knew I'd need you eventually.

Eventually, James took his leave and Julie called to say that she and the Davids had finally arrived.  So we walked back into town and met them for dinner.

After dinner, it was back to the hostel for drinks and cards on the balcony.  Mestia gets COLD.

I took my leave at maybe 2:00, with the party still going strong.  Early start tomorrow?  You know what they say about best-laid plans...

Unsent

Today is the six-month anniversary of my last day at the old DC job.  I know I've talked a fair bit about how awful said job was, but on this particular topic, my powers of description fall short.  It wasn't always so beyond-words horrific, but in early 2009 there was a Change in Management, and my ex-boss ascended to the throne -- the boss which for the purposes of this blog is creatively and aptly known as Ursula.

In what was part not-burning-bridges and part pure chickenshit, I departed the Old Job without saying any of the things I wanted so badly to say.  Without saying things I felt -- and still feel -- should have been said.  I left... on "good terms."

All that aside, I've had some free time recently to reflect, and yeah.  Six months later, I'm still pissed.  So I did something my Mom has always suggested as a means of catharsis and closure -- I wrote a letter that I will never send.  As usual, Mom was right.  Writing it did make me feel better.  But although I will never send this letter, I thought that, in honor of my Day of Liberation, I'd post a segment of it here.  After all, who knows?  Maybe Ursula one day will find her way onto the internets without assistance, and stumble somehow upon this humble blog.  And even though names have been changed and details removed, she'll know it's for her.

Ahem.


To Ursula:

I want to tell you, without malice or exaggeration, that you are the single worst person I have ever met.  I find it truly lamentable that your life is so utterly devoid of joy that you remain consistently incapable of imparting the least amount of human decency towards those you so clearly -- and incorrectly -- consider your inferiors.  One only needs to look at your sad situation to believe the truth of every cliche asserting that money will not, in fact, buy you happiness.  And it goes without saying that neither will power, especially your kind -- the tenuous, crumbling, autocratic power you cling to with pathetic, transparent, ever-increasing desperation.

I would like to believe that someday you will realize that it is simply not acceptable to treat people -- to treat any person -- as if they were shit on your shoes.  As if they were your servant.  As if they had no rights, and were not worthy of respect.  As if you were somehow inherently better than them, and that this natural hierarchy of human worth was something so clear and obvious -- and correct -- that the world should accept it without question or pause -- including and especially the unfortunate focus of your abuse.  I would like to believe that someday you'd see that making other people's lives a living hell does not in fact alter or ease the reality of your own unhappy life that you have so painstakingly crafted for yourself.

But in reality, I know that the chances are far greater that you will never realize anything of the kind.  I know that -- in your own very unique perception of the world -- what you do and how you treat people is not even wrong. 

And even against everything you have said and done to me during the course of our remarkable years together, it is this last fact that I find to be the most astonishingly incomprehensible.

It would be nice to be able to say something fitting and dramatic, something like: 'I erase you now from my mind and memory, and will waste not another thought on you.'  But the fact is I will continue to think of you often.  I think of you every time I want to remember how much I have to be grateful for -- how incredibly fortunate I am to be living my current amazing life, half a world away from you.  I also, perversely, owe you thanks.  If not for you and your daily ordeals, I don't know that I would have had the courage to leave my old life behind.  But most importantly, I will remember you as a hard-learned cautionary tale, illustrating to perfection the person I never, ever, at any cost, want to become.

Yours Most Sincerely,
Me

Home for the Holidays

After more than a month of emails, negotiations, one very important bank visit, and a couple confirmations, I am pleased as punch to announce that I will in fact be leaving on a jet plane to visit my amazing sister and brother-in-law over the Christmas holidays.

Okinawa, I hope you're ready. :)

I haven't seen my sister in over a year and a half.  By the time December 17 rolls around, it will be close to two years.  That is redic.  I haven't seen Brad in even longer than that.

Back in 2008, I spent some of the happiest months of my life sharing an apartment with Eve, and later with Brad as well.  Now, I can be kind of difficult to live with, so it is really important to note how fantastically the three of us got on.  Movie nights and barbecue extravaganzas on my tiny charcoal grill.  Lots of hanging around, talking about music and the environment and politics and Stuff, because that's just how it rolls when you're with people that really get you.  It's the little things that end up shaping your memory -- leaning against the kitchen doorway and sipping a glass of wine while Eve made cookies.  Quizzing Brad from his Flight School books.  Leaving my (very) spicy pasta dish on the coffee table and coming back to find it half gone and a dog who was about to have intestinal problems.  Working in our small back garden by the door.  Finding out we were about to be evicted in ten days due to our landlord not paying his mortgage and getting the house foreclosed on.

Okay, that last bit was less fun, but it was certainly memorable.  But Eve and Brad were about to move to Florida anyway, to tackle the next phase in their lives including getting married. :)

Since then, there have been visits, of course.  Lots of visits while they were still Stateside.  And calls, and emails, and Facebook, and skype.  But damn if that is just not the same thing.

But now, after all this time, I get to look forward to close to a month with my sister and her awesome husband.  Two days shy of four weeks, to be exact.  That is some serious quality time.  I don't want to waste one second of it.

In that way, it does sort of feel like I am coming home for the holidays, despite flying to the opposite end of the world and landing on an island in a foreign country I have never been to before.  Home is where your heart is, after all.  It's a cliche 'cause it's true.

Of course... home can be more than one place.  Home is also, first and foremost, will always be -- HERE.

And of course I cannot be in two places at once, so traveling to Oki over the holidays means I will not be traveling here, to see and hug and laugh with these people:

It will mean that nearly a full 14 months will have passed before I eat my Mom's cooking, pet my dog, cut another piece of wood with my father in his workshop.  It will be a Christmas without the Christmas Mouse, a dilapidated and tattered stuffed mouse that has been part of Christmas every year for as long as I can remember.  When Sparky was a puppy, he got the Mouse and chewed him up, destroying the paper book of carols the Mouse had held (until then).  But despite his new rough edges, the Mouse stayed.  Because he was part of Christmas.

I will miss the Christmas Mouse.  I'll miss walking around my very own neighborhood looking at all the lights, and I'll miss chatting with all our awesome neighbors when my folks have them over for their Christmas get-together.  I will miss the banter between my two incredible parents -- two more opposite individuals you will never find!  These are things Eve and Brad have had to deal with for a couple years running, and they seem to have done pretty well.  But in a year of changes, of growth and experience, this will be one more first.

I feel like I have been living a charmed life since things turned around for me so abruptly this past March.  If someone told me then what I would be doing now, about the things I am about to do and the places I am soon to go... I couldn't have believed them.  Because things don't work out that way, right?  This is real life.  Well -- this is real life.  And sometimes, just sometimes -- they do.

I get to go home for the holidays.  I get to hug my sister.  This is one lucky, very grateful girl, signing off.

Lamazi Borjomi

This past weekend, Mark, Julie, and I had simply the most amazing weekend visiting Borjomi.

Borjomi is a cute resort town and is one of the most popular vacation spots for Georgians.  It's famous for being home to Georgia's largest National Park, and also they bottle Borjomi mineral water here.  (Personally I am not a fan as Borjomi water tastes salty, but it's supposed to be very good for hangovers. :) )  October is most definitely off-season for Borjomi, but despite some cold nights, it being autumn did not affect our trip in the least -- unless you count being lucky enough to see some gorgeous fall colors!

Borjomi is about four hours from Poti by bus, and we were very lucky as a marshrutka does a direct Poti-Borjomi run every day at 2:30.  So after we finished up with classes, the three of us met up at the bus station and settled in for the long ride through stunningly beautiful mountains and countryside.  Once we reached Borjomi, our marshrutka driver offered to take us to a guesthouse he knew, run by his sister-in-law.  It turned out to be perfect -- great room with three beds and a table and couch, right in the center of town, for the very excellent price of 15 lari per person, per night!  We settled in, and then settled right back out again, in search of  dinner.

Borjomi is a really cute town but very sleepy at night, made even more so I would assume by the fact that it is the off-season.  We wandered around for a while, but eventually found an utterly perfect place right near our hotel.  A round of beers followed by homemade black wine, kinkhali, salati with nut sauce, ojahuri, and mushrooms in the ketsi.  SO good!

Texas and Maine, represent!

Mark refusing to stay up late and play, despite peer pressure

 After dinner, Mark pooped out on us, but Julie and I stayed up late, polishing off another bottle of Georgian wine and talking about Stuff.  Good times.

The next morning, Mark surprised Julie and I with an awesome present -- matching sunglasses in different colors. Blue for me, green for Julie, red for Mark.  :)

Our hostess -- also named Julie -- fed us hot tea and bread with butter and jam, and then we set off for the park.  Georgian Julie gave us directions... and I was a little confused because I thought the park was a little further from the town itself.  But we were able to walk to the entrance in only a few minutes, stopping first at a local market to pick up lunch and water.  And cognac. :)

Park entrance

At first, the park was surprisingly commercial, with lots of rides and play areas for the kids, as well as restaurants, cafes, and hot dog stands (all closed due to it being off-season).  We had some fun in a deserted playground, "Fairy Land."

Getting in (and out of) this tiny door was really really awkward.

The weather could not have been more gorgeous and perfect, and it was nothing but lovely to stroll through the nearly-deserted park.  But all of us had come to Borjomi to get into The Nature, and this pristine easy strolling was not what we had in mind.

So it was pretty great when the lamp posts, trash cans, and carnival rides finally fell away into forest.  The trail followed (and sometimes crossed) the path of a noisy river that ended up keeping us company (or guiding us to safety) for most of the day.

"Bridge"

Smiling through my terror...

Only a slightly better bridge

 On the other side of this bridge, the main trail ended in a beautiful meadow that had an awesome mineral bath fed from a pipe going up into the mountain.

Of course we did not have bathing suits, but Julie at least declared her intention of absolutely getting in that pool before the day was out.

Like I said, the main trail ended here at this meadow and pool, but there were several narrow tracks leading up into the mountains.  We picked one and set off.  Very quickly our "trail" became little more than a thread winding through the trees and undergrowth.  Definitely not the easiest to follow but I thought that, with the three of us, we shouldn't have a problem finding our way back.  This kind of thing was more like what we all had in mind for the day.

Tiny Julie surrounded by The Nature

Remains of an old logging road.

Eventually we decided to go no higher (I was all for pushing right to the top, but who knows how long that would have taken), and stopped for lunch in a pretty clearing.  Superb picnic of fresh bread, sausage with spicy mustard, apples and pears given to us by Georgian Julie, yogurt, chocolate, and Georgian cognac. :)

Our lunch spot

On our way back down, of course we lost the narrow tiny trail practically right away.  But we could hear the river down at the bottom of the mountain, and knew that the main trail followed the river.  So we decided the hell with trails, and to blaze our own trail straight down the mountain.  This was fine at first, but then things got a little... steep.

Julie deciding it was easier to go down the mountain on her butt.

Not long after that, "steeply downhill" turned into legitimate cliff.  Julie has a particularly fantastic shot of me flat on my back with one arm over my head, holding onto one skinny lifeline of a branch to keep me from sliding helter-skelter into some kind of bodily harm.  But with teamwork and a lot of good-natured laughter, we made it down to flat ground... exactly in front of the mineral pool and meadow where we started out!  All of us had dirty behinds (and dirt almost everyplace else!) but our off-road adventure could not have ended better.

Julie and our cliff

Mark picking bits of Nature out of Julie's hair.  What are friends for?

 Julie was still completely determined to swim in the mineral pool, despite the cool weather and Georgian boys currently making use of the pool, in their underwear.  So she stripped down to bra and jeans, and took the plunge!

I put my feet in, and trust me that pool was not warm.  Maybe in summer I might have tried it, but in October???  No thank you.  I also would not have been at all happy at the prospect of walking home in the rapidly-cooling early evening wearing wet jeans, but this did not seem to bother Julie in the slightest.  We even took a few minutes to play in Fairy Land some more.

Back at the guesthouse, Julie changed into dry clothes and then we walked around the town a bit, taking in the sights before finding a place for dinner.

At our guesthouse.  They all look so happy!

Tiny market 

Cow on Main Street

Terrifying house

 Eventually we settled into another quiet cafe near our hotel.  Dinner was good but not quite as good as last night, and we were all so tired from the day that it was a very quiet meal.  But after dinner, we wanted to stop into a cute coffeehouse that we'd seen on the way home.  Walking over, we met an Israeli backpacker couple looking for possible accommodations.  We told them about Julie's guesthouse, and they said they'd call us if they couldn't find a spot to pitch their tent for the night.

The three of us found our second wind in the very awesome coffeehouse, and enjoyed a superb dessert of coffee, saperavi, and shared raspberry cake.  We watched 80's music videos on a big flatscreen TV and passed a very fine hour until they kicked us out at 10:00.

On our way back to the guesthouse, the Israeli backpackers Sheila and Amir called.  They'd given up on finding a place to pitch their tent and had found Julie's Guesthouse on our directions.  See, Shiela and Amir had made exactly the same mistake we had, and confused the National Park with the much smaller Mineral Park.  (Hence my confusion earlier concerning Georgian Julie and her directions.)  So we (mostly Mark and his Russian) helped them get a room at the guesthouse, and then they came back to our room for a glass of wine and a chat.  Always so wonderful to meet cool new people on the road!  One of the very best things about traveling.

Me and Julie with Sheila and Amir

The next morning, the five of us had breakfast on Julie's back patio, then said our goodbyes and headed to the marshrutka station.  But... turns out there IS no marshrutka from Borjomi to Poti.  Nor is there one to Kutaisi or even Batumi.  Only in Georgia would they not expect a person would want to get to a place and then away from it again.  So we take a local marshrutka to nearby Khasuri, then stand on the main road hoping to flag one down heading to either of those cities.  Fortunately we see one going to Batumi pretty much right away.  After a few hours, we get off at Ureki and finally catch a third marshutka going to Poti.  This is travel, true Georgian-style!

I absolutely loved Borjomi, and was sorry we only got one real day there.  Such stunningly beautiful countryside... and another trip where pretty much not one thing went wrong the entire time.  I wonder when our luck will run out?  Hopefully not this weekend, when we take our trip north up into the true Caucasus to visit Svaneti.  Stay tuned...