Another adventure of last semester and – oh boy – there are more and more piling up from this semester too. So this one weekend in mid November we took the trip to Borjomi and Vardzia, centrally located in Samtskhe-Javakheti, Georgia.
Map of Central Georgia. Borjomi (and the National Park) are on the left side. Click to enlarge!
Borjomi is a town and at the same time name of a National Park by the town and also at the same time the Name of Borjomi-Water, a pretty salty mineral water that is a somewhat universial medicine here in Georgia, curing everything from a cold over headache to hangovers.
Borjomi Mineral Water
So one day we rented a private marshutka from and with our beloved driver Zurab (known from the Svaneti trip), got ourselfes some 5 liter bottles of red and white wine for the tour and took the 9 hour (or so) trip to Borjomi. Over there we picked up Raughley who tricked all of us by saying he wasn’t coming for mysterious reasons that were beyond my knowledge so far, but then randomly walked past the marshutka at a bridge in the middle of Borjomi (town). It was an awesome surprise and we all were really happy to have him with us. I don’t know how he felt as he certainly didn’t get any share of the wine we had on that 9 hour (or so) trip but I guess he was happy to be with us too!
In Borjomi we found a cheap hostel that hosted us for 4 Lari (roughly 1,60 €) each. Despite being under construction, not really having enough beds for all of us and no running water, it was a good deal! After that we went to Vardzia which will be topic of the next blog post. The Borjomi National Park (or a really small part of it) actually happened the next day. We climbed a few funny looking trees, saw awesome nature, a statue, a cablecar and nice mosaics. Also, there is an amusement park in this national park which we discovered roaming around. We ended up climbing huge pirate-ship-ish formed playgrounds and tree climbing mounted into using a dragon seesaw! After that, we got original and hot Borjomi Mineral water from the spring. There is not much more to say about it, so enjoy the pictures!
Paul in Georgia 