Batumi, Georgia
A selection of views of Batumi
The dancing fountain, water spurts put to music.
Tuesday 30 April 2024
Sumela Monastery
Sumela Monastery
Those wanting balloon flights had given up hope and had found something else to occupy their time in Goreme. It was a bit galling to discover at 6am as we were packing up camp for breakfast and an early departure, that there was the sound of gas being flared into balloons above our heads. I had been woken up early by a lot of traffic as veicles were driving around town picking up passengers to take them to their take off sites for their balloon rides.
The road followed a valley which we shared with a railway track. It was only a single track and we saw no trains until late morning. At some distance from the road there was a feight train going in the opposite direction.
We drove on into the mountains of northeastern Turkey. Frida struggled with some of the steeper gradients. The road climbed above the snow line at about 1,850 metres. We continued to climb and the few small patches of snow grew bigger until there were whole ribbons of snow filling valley bottoms and piling up on the peaks. We reached a pass with a sign post annoucing that we had peaked at an elevation of 2,190 metres
More snow as we gained height.
We started the descent slowly in a low gear to maintain control. We had descended a long way but we turned off the main road just short of Erzincan to head north and started climbing again. We crested the pass at an elevation of 2,120 metres and started our descent towards Gumushane.
The view from the car park.
Visitors park in the car park and had a choice of either climbing hundreds of steps or taking a minibus up the valley to the upper car park. Visitors cannot drive themselves but have to either walk of=r take the bus. A view back down the road.
The river at teh bottom of the vlley.
Another view of the river.
A view from the gateway into the monastery of the courtyard.
The highly decorated church.
The entrance into the church.
A view of the ceiling.
One of the buildings inside the monastery.
It was getting late in the day and we turned off the main road along a dirt track to find a bushcamp. We were nelow the snow line but still high in the mountains. Therre was plenty of wood for a fire to cook supper but it would be another cold night camping in the mountains.
In the morning it was another two hours drive to Macka. The road has had some significant investment with viaducts and tunnels to reduce gradients, distances and to improve journey times. We also went through the longest tunnel to date at 14.5 kilometres long.
At Macka, we turned off the main road and headed up a narrow road up into the mountains. We stopped at the Sumela Monastery, buolt on a mountainside beneath a massive overhang.
The only entrance into the monastery, up a steep and narrow staircase.
A view looking up at the overhang which protects half the courtyard.
We had a truck lunch and then set off again via Macka to return to the main road to Trabzon on the coast. The last time I was travelling along this road, it was countryside and the dual carriage way was being built. There were construction sites and fields and nothing else. Now it is a major road with ribbon development all along the valley bottom from Macka to Trabzon.
We drove along the coast past tea gardens and tea processing plants to Rize where we drove into the mountains for an hour to find a bushcamp. It was another cold night in the mountains.
In the morning we left Turkey and crossed the border in Georgia and stopped at our hotel in Batumi.
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