My plan was to spend my first full day in Tbilisi going up the Mount and then down through the Botanical Gardens into the Old City. Nature, however, was not being very cooperative. Not only was it still pouring but the all the surrounding hills were blanketed in a deep fog. I decided to try and wait out the weather in the comforts of my hotel room.
Around noon I headed downstairs and ran straight into my Overland crew who had just arrived. This was some what of a relief as the receptionist had told me the day before that she had never heard of Oasis Overland and was not expecting any large groups to be arriving in the near future. The group is certainly varied with ages going from 18 to 70, with the average being around 30. A large number of Brits and Kiwis, a couple of Aussies, one Turk, one Norwegian and one Yank (well 1 1/2 if you include me.) Most of them got together that night to go out to dinner and welcome me into the fold. My original plan had been to try and be a little quieter than usual while I got to know the rest of the group. However, after being plied with Georgian wine I was quickly back to my normal self.
The next morning the sun finally made an appearance and I was able to get a proper look around the city. Accompanied by Doug and Amber, the Aussie couple, and Margrete, the Norwegian, I headed down to the Old City. Doug and I climbed up to the top of the Citadel to get a good view of the city. He is a professional photographer and clicked away happily as I tried not to get blown off the top by the high winds. We hiked up to the top of the hill past the statue of Mother Georgia beforing heading back down into the city itself.
The group meal that night turned into a complete disaster. We tried to go to a traditional Georgian restaurant but they couldn't fit all 14 of us in. We ended up at a Japanese place that was completely unprepared for a group our size. It ended up taking almost two hours for us just to be served our food, by which time half the table was ready to commit hara-kiri with the chopsticks. It was suggested that the place might be a Georgian Mafia front, since it seemed as if the wait staff had never actually served customers before. The only other people in there were two large, unsavory characters sitting at a table in the corner chain smoking for four straight hours.
For our last day in Tbilisi the whole group piled onto a minibus with a guide and drove out to the David Gareja Monastery about 70km south east of the city. The complex includes hundreds of cells, churches, chapels, refectories and living quarters hollowed out of the rock face. It was originally founded back in the 6th century by Assyrian monks. We hiked all the way up the mountain hopping in and our of the caves as we went. Many of the original frescoes are still there as well as some of the stone altars.
Tomorrow we head to a nature reserve on the border of Azerbaijan where I will get my first taste of overland bush camping.
