Turkey Day 2 Vardzia and border crossings

Day 2 May 29, 2007

Akhaltsikhe, Georgia to Ardahan, Turkey

Having gotten almost no sleep because of the relentless barking of the packs of street dogs, getting up at 7:00 was a piece of cake. We swigged the remains of the previous day's Coke for our morning energy boost and went to the street to meet Levon. At 8:00 there was no sign of him. At 8:15- still no driver. It seemed like our travel luck was finally fading. Finally at 8:20 we walked over to the other taxis at the corner to begin the negotiations again. This is VERY difficult in a language that has NO common alphabet or even sounds like ANY other language on the planet. And sadly neither Mike nor I speak any Russian. But as luck would have it, again- one of the drivers spoke a spattering if German. So we negotiated a deal and headed out of town. We were a little baffled as to why Levon hadn’t shown up. He stood to earn a pretty easy 85 Lari (that’s the Georgian currency- its about $60) We were discussing this in our new cab when I looked at the clock on the dash which read 7:20. I thought, as with most clocks in cars, it probably wasn’t right, but it kind of bothered me especially since Mike had asked me yesterday if we changed time zones. I had kind of laughed and said something to the effect of ‘no, silly- we didn’t change the time when we came to Georgia in the winter!!” So I asked the driver for the time- and it was indeed 7:20. And then we realized the Georgia must not observe daylight savings!!! Now we were in a bit of a sticky situation. Do we keep going and stand Levon up? Do we try to explain the complicated situation to our new driver with our limited communication ability, and leave him without this ‘big job”?? We decided to try to explain everything and go back. We both would have felt really bad all day knowing that we had gone without Levon. So I tactfully tried to explain that we had to turn around because we got the wrong time and that a friend was going to take us at 8:00. After a few minutes the man understood and wasn’t upset at all. He even offered to still take us if Levon didn’t show up.

So at 10 to 8 back in front of the hotel- Levon pulled up in his white Lada and we started our journey to Vardzia for the second time that day. The ride was very beautiful, but extremely bumpy. The road just deteriorated as we got closer to our destination. On the way we stopped to look at a castle on a cliff one of many ruins on and in the bluffs overlooking a river on our route. After two and a half hours we finally reached Vardzia. And it was well worth the ride. It is an immense monastery built into an entire cliff face. Since it was only 10.00 we were the first and only tourists at the sight. We meandered through the chambers, kicking ourselves for not bringing a flashlight- DUH! Oh well... we did the best we could with Mike’s cell phone.

We took one wrong turn and had a brief encounter with some of the residents of the monastery. They weren’t as keen on talking with us so we apologized and continued on our way. There was no guidebook or signs, which I found visually quite appealing but it also hampered our
learning about the site. There was a tour in Russian at two o’clock but that wouldn’t have helped us either. We were left to just imagine what all the rooms were used for. Back it the car, we returned to Akhaltsikhe and then sojourned on to Turkey.

The road to Posof-turkey was also less then ideal. We bounced through an extremely run-down mining village and then past an Armenian memorial that Levon wanted us to photograph because he was Armenian. At around 1:00 we reached the border, said our good-byes to Levon and walked through the gate into the great void between Georgia and Turkey.
All went smoothly until we arrived at the Turkish side. The computers were down. It was going to take about an hour. We also had to get our tourist visas, which was no problem and to our delight, when we looked at the clock on the wall we realized we had gained another hour- the time changed back again in Turkey. So we didn’t really loose an hour at the border. Unfortunately we also learned that there were no more mini-buses from Posof the little Turkish border town, to Kars, our planned final destination for the day. We would have to wait until morning.
Slightly frustrated, especially after having such travel success the day before. We had even talked the previous evening of trying to get ‘ahead’ so we could have more time on the Black Sea. Our hubris was observed by the god of public transportation. It looked like we were stuck for a while at the border and then for even longer in Posof. We asked if there was anything going to a town nearby- Nothing.

Finally our passports were ready and we could leave. And the wheel of fortune swung in the other direction! The only other person crossing into Turkey was a semi-driver who had heard about our problems. He was heading to Ardahan, a pretty big town on the way to Kars and offered us a ride in the cab. We were so excited with our luck!! We might get ahead after all!! And we got to ride in a tractor trailer!!!

It was a good thing he was there because we soon realized, after leaving the border area, that Posof was a NOT within walking distance from the border- it was probably 10km, up hill! When we arrived near Posof we were stopped at the first of MANY military checkpoints we would encounter on our journey. All over the roads in Eastern Turkey-especially Southeastern Turkey- there is a HUGE military presence and periodic road blocks and passport checks. We pulled over, the driver handed over his papers and we handed over our passports. We waited a few minutes and then we were asked to get out of the rig. We were greeted with 4 or 5 men with machine guns relaxed but in ready position. We tried to speak in what I hoped was a Turkified Azeri (the languages are very similar). After some minutes they had us get our bags out of the truck- it looked like we were going to be waiting for a while. We had no idea what was going on.

Then after an hour or so the captain of the whole unit came over to talk with us. Thankfully he spoke good German so I could explain who we were and what we were doing there and he was able to give us a small clue as to what was going on. Apparently there was nothing wrong with us, but there was something wrong with the driver. He assured us that if another transportation opportunity came along we could go on our way. He was very polite and friendly but our passports were still in their possession. So we waited, and we waited, drank tea, and soda ate the last of our food, and waited some more. We made small talk with the other soldiers and we observed all the bustle around the truck. Officials came to inspect. Photos were made. More military with more machine guns showed up and finally the police came and arrested the driver! At around 4:30, after we’d been there for over 3 hours Mike was fed up. He decided that if we didn’t get our passports back by 5 we would call the US embassy in Turkey. I was definitely more for the “lets not agitate the guys with machine guns –approach” but I was sick of sitting around for no apparent reason, as well. The soldiers hanging around with us detected our agitation and not long after we were summonsed to the captains patio where we were given more tea and cookies and a more detailed account of what was going on. The captain was very apologetic and kept repeating that there was no problem with us but with the driver. It turns out they had found heroin in the trailer of the truck!! We had suspected that, especially after we saw the police come and haul the guy off, but we didn’t understand why we weren’t given back our passports.

It must have just been an ‘oversight’ because they again said that there were no more buses out of Posof but we were more than welcome to stay at the military base. This was another exciting twist. We figured it was a good option if nothing else came along. But then another officer offered to flag down every car going by and see if they were heading to Ardahan or Kars. After about a half an hour we got a ride with a group of geologists traveling to Erzurum, the largest city in the region and on our way. We hopped in glad to finally be out of that horrible town!!! In retrospect we were really lucky. We could have been arrested right along with the driver just by association. 1st travel tip of the day: don’t accept rides from strange truckers.

An hour and a half later we arrived in the small city of Ardahan. The geologists dropped us off right downtown and wouldn’t accept any money. We found a hotel for a reasonable price across the street from a newly renovated mosque. Starving we found a decent restaurant and then now thoroughly exhausted went straight to bed. Right about 10:00 as we were about to fall asleep we were jolted back into consciousness by the prayer call blasting right in our open window!! We burst out laughing!!! Travel tip number two: when in a Muslim country choose hotels wisely- preferably ones NOT directly across the street from mosques!
We listened to the praises of Allah two more times that night and we were up before dawn to start the next days adventure. All we could do was laugh at ourselves.