Georgia II - storms, dachas, bridges, mud, yellow cabs, and, well, such!

Another huge blog post from my epic trip to the Caucasus, dear reader(s)!

So, when I left you in order to fold laundry (the folding went fairly well, in case you wonder), dear reader(s), we had just eaten at a crazy restaurant, and had hit the road to the cave city of Vardzia. Now, road conditions in Georgia are, well, varied. Around Tbilisi and the other larger cities, they are great. In the middle of fucking nowhere, they are, well, let us just say, less than great (so much so that the passengers often need to step out of the vehicle so the driver can negotiate the rapid streams of the river (!) that is the road.)

Unfortunately for us, our next destination was, well, in the middle of fucking nowhere. Add to that the craziest thunder/lightning/hailstorm ever witnessed by man, and you have four Georgians (two of which are named Georgie) and one Norwegian stranded - literally - under a bridge, to seek shelter from the enormous amounts of rain and lightning that made the poor car mud-wrestle with the road, and with visibility at, oh, zero.

I am, as you know, pretty easily entertained in these circumstances, and I frankly thought it was one of the most awesome things I had ever experienced, sliding around in the mud in Georgia. The others? Not amused.

Let me again show the difference here: This is me..

And this is Georgie, responding to the same set of external facts. Good times! Anywho, craziest drive and gnarliest weather ever.

The whole reason we were driving in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere was to get to our destination for the night, a good old-fashioned Russian-style Dacha. Dacha means vacation home (or Hytte in Norwegian, for all my dear Norwegian readers), and Zorab, our driver, and his parents very generously let us stay there for a night.

We had an awesome dinner there, which was by the way interrupted twice by lightning striking, cutting off our electricity. Speaking of electricity - note the look on Georgie's face and the object in his hand. A special moment.

Let me use this opportunity to talk a little about Georgian food. Staple foods were white bread, a mozzarella-like cheese (here found in the upper left side) and lots of fresh fruit and fish. I, well, had some interesting food experiences in this otherwise great country that I shall not go into further detail about, but well, be careful what you eat whilst on vacation.

Also, the soda there was really, really strange, such as the green stuff on the right, which was like Sprite with tarragon, which was definitely, well, different.

Anyway, at least some enjoyed the food and the lightning strikes, as proved by this picture, taken during one of the power outages.

Anyway, the next morning, the weather was back to its normal scorching heat, and I had some time to explore the Dacha.

The cool thing about it was that they had a huge, enormous garden, in which they had planted all kinds of fruit and vegetables (including the one that Georgie was so firmly, vigorously and sexily gripping earlier), and even grapes, for making their own wine (which was, well, potent stuff, strong enough to forget 70 years of communism, I'm sure, and more.)

It had a porch that went around the whole building, where the family spent most of their time in the shade. Seriously, it was really nice.

The not-so-cool thing about it was this.

Say no more.

..And this was my fav feature of the house - a huge enormous fridge, large enough to keep a Stegosaurus nice and cool, I'm sure, named MOCKBA, or Moskva/Moscow. Awesome, awesome, awesome!

As I mentioned, some parts of the roads here were bad enough that the passengers had to leave the car and walk, lest their extra deadweight would make the car stuck in a mudhole, or plunge through a bridge. This is one of those bridges.

Again, though, I am pretty easily entertained, and proceeded to take a serious of breakneck stunt pictures that I shall not post here.

When we finally got on the other side, this awaited us: Sheep, goats and modernistic/LSD-inspired architecture!

The Dacha was located in a little village that was, well, kind of Borat, but also really nice, and fun was had. Town rapist is on the left.

It was also full of this kind of stone architecture, in which the rocks make funky patterns on the walls. This is repeated alot around Georgia, and is a way, I guess, to make big walls from small rocks.

Anyway, eventually, we got back on the road towards the mountains.

This, my dear reader(s), is the Caucasus. If you're caucasian, this is WHERE YOU'RE FROM, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE! You should feel at least some homesickness at this point, thank you very much.

En route to our cave-tastic destination, we stopped here, in Borjomi, maker of the soviet empire's finest mineral water. The water was - and I can personally attest to the truth of this, sadly - considered the best cure against hang-overs by the Soviets, and, well, one can say what one wants about them, but they knew what they're talking about in this subject matter. Seriously, it essentially saved my life a couple of days later, after a run-in with Georgian booze, but more about that later!

The town had a Pocer club, which inspired me to pose in front of a Georgian yellow cab:

..And also inspired Zorab, the driver, to pose with his awesome trucker tan:

Then off we went into the mountains, along the border of Armenia. (I hate really posed-up pictures, but this was kind of cool.)

TO BE CONTINUED, like, IN FIVE MINUTES, I NEED SOME FOOD!