After exploring Batumi, we had the plan to go visiting Bakuriani in the mountains to go skiing. We had three days to arrive, let’s talk about this trip!
Let’s hitchhike out of the city
As we know by now, getting with hitchhiking out of a city isn’t easy! We were walking, after enjoying for the last time the sea view, in the direction to exit the city. At least we went to a road where it splits and mainly people driving in our direction. Luckily our room was located at around the edge of the city.
While walking out we were searching for gas to do some cooking while camping, but didn’t find any which was quite a bummer.
After reaching the place I was seeing on the map we were standing on the road again with the thumb in the air. For Marla it took a lot of courage to do it again. I can understand it in that situation, it wasn’t the best location to be honest, but she did well and we ended up having a little ride to a way better situation at the end of the city. It was a taxi driver, but he didn’t want any money.
Let’s get into the mountains!
We had a better location and went with another ride to another splitting of the main road, this always eliminates rides which would not ride in your direction.
At this road there was a sign that the road which we wanted to take would be closed. I was asking many people who were walking around there, but they said it wouldn’t be an issue.
Our plan was to check out a waterfall before continuing and sleeping at a mountain lake, at least that was our hope of reaching that place during the first day. We had a really nice guy picking us up and he drove us to the waterfall.
Waterfall
Checking out the waterfall was amazing, it was huge and massive, like you can see on the picture! The waterfall was located in Makhuntseti, not so far away from Batumi. It is a very touristic point, but we ended up experiencing it without many visitors, amazing!
Swimming is usually possible, but couldn’t see how it would be possible, so we didn’t go. We tried out many ideas for taking pictures which was a lot of fun. In general the weather was terrible, but we still enjoyed the day a lot.
In Makhuntseti there was not much to do besides the waterfall and some souvenir shops. Besides those two things there was an old rock bridge, which looked amazing on the pictures online, but ended up being a disappointment during the time we visited. The bridge was interesting for sure, but the surrounding was so sad, the water dirty, but that was probably due to the season of the year. I believe in summer it would have been quite nice, in combination with a great hike or water rafting, but that is sadly not so enjoyable in winter.
You can’t have everything, sometimes you need to decide between tourists or beauty in touristic places.
The road is actually closed, but let’s get local!
While someone wanted us to get into his restaurant he was realizing that we were about to do something stupid, so he stopped us and told that it would be not possible to take the road. The road was closed due to high masses of snow, well with a snow bike it would be possible, but unlikely to receive it, we had to go back to Batumi, half day wasted.
Waiting on the road with massive rainfall, but didn’t have to wait long, the guy who dropped us at the waterfall came back and took us back to Batumi, amazing!
He was such a sweet person, always talking about his son and he was picking him up at his mother actually. When arriving at the place of his mother he insisted that we would get some food and everything.
It was crazy, when sitting down several plates were put on the table and they didn’t stop until the table was completely full. Wasn’t expecting it at all, on the first day hitchhiking, getting chacha and now full meals for free on the second day hitchhiking, probably good for Marla as well.
After a while we went back to Batumi with his son, who was sitting on his lap and was able to take over the car sometimes, his son was like three or four. As long as we arrive without crashing the car I don’t care that much.
Getting again out of Batumi, yeay
This time we thought of taking a bus to the other end of Batumi which wouldn’t work without having a local card. It reminded me of Kazakhstan, I hope it is not getting worldwide spread that would make traveling more difficult.
Some woman was helping us out and booked us a bus, so nice of her, she didn’t want the money from us, so is that hitchhiking? Maybe, I guess.
The bus took us to the railway station, we didn’t even know where we should go for the night actually. When arriving at the railway station we wanted to go further, but the location was very bad actually.
We took a little minibus for each person 50 cents, that was fine. We went to a location where we had three options, driving to the famous botanical garden of Batumi, or going into a national park, or even hitchhiking in the direction of Kutaisi. Two more days before we had to reach Bakuriani, so we decided to check out the botanical garden.
Botanical Garden Batumi
When reaching the botanical garden my reaction was “wow seriously?!”. They wanted the double price for what we paid for two nights in the great apartment, per person per night to put your tent up, such a ripoff. Also the weather was just bad, so we decided to not enter and just checked out the nature nearby.
We’ve been followed by some stray dog as well, who was quite annoying.
The nature was great, just everything wet, usually wet isn’t bad, but this time it is. Well so we found a nice spot underneath a tree with a sea view.
After having sea view the other nights in Batumi, we were spoiled a bit, that we had to have sea view while camping as well!
We had the tent up and the dog making annoying sounds and wanting attention.
There were many orange and mandarin trees, so I went and collected some mandarins after finding out that the oranges were super sour!
The mandarins are looking really bad, same as in all shops in the country, but wow they are amazing. Probably the best I ever had. Took enough for the rest of the trip!
Interesting night
We were having the tent in the location and it was getting dark. We watched some movies and read a bit together which was great. In general nothing special, but then we heard sounds often, it was often the dog but not always.
We realized that when having lights on, you could see us so well, it looked cool, but it was also easy to spot.
Both of us didn’t know it by then, but it is actually legal to do so wild camping in Georgia, how amazing! Still we were a bit afraid and put the lights off. I was trying to stay awake a little bit, to take care if someone would actually come. Same as in North Macedonia where I had to deal it with the dogs, but having actually a human there wouldn’t be my favorite.
Everything went well, nobody was coming and interrupting the night. We went out and continued the journey by walking in the direction of the main road and made a little mistake….
What’s up next?
Read next week how this trip continues, so stay tuned!
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