Since Hannah and her husband plan to spend most summers in Georgia, they decided to ship a car over from the States. We got the call that the car had arrived so Hannah and I headed over to the Port, six hours away. After collecting the car we spent the night with her host family from her Peace Corps days - eating an obscene amount of food while “giving toasts” accompanied by drinking home brewed vodka and cognac.
This is the Georgian way of life!
After a brief visit to the town of Gori, home of Stalin, we headed back to Tbilisi. The following day I set out on a 2-hour road trip with Hannah’s husband Austin, and their Georgian friend Nino, to a place called David Gareja - a Georgian Orthodox monastery complex built into the rock. We spent a great day exploring and on our way back to Tbilisi decided to take a different route so we could stop by to see Nino’s aunt.
David Gareja Monastery
Driving through the countryside on very remote roads, close to the border with Azerbaijan, we realized that we were lost and were quickly running out of fuel. We had two options: turn back and hopefully make it to the main road without running out of gas or keep going and with luck find the road that would take us to Nino’s aunt’s house.
We kept going… and as we were swerving to avoid the potholes in the road we somehow ran into a big cement block hidden in the tall grass. We hit it so hard that my sunglasses flew off and my head hit the ceiling. We immediately got out to inspect the damage and realized that the front wheel was bent meaning that the car would not and could not move forward.
Stranded in the middle of nowhere!
We were stuck in the middle of nowhere, not sure where we were, and the sun was starting to set. Lucky for us Nino’s aunt lived in the vicinity and we had cell phone access so Nino with the help of her aunt, was able to coordinate a search party. The men who came to get us told us that we were actually really close to town but had gone left when we should have gone right. We all crammed into their tiny Russian made Lada, and headed into town to wait for Hannah.
Since Hannah was the only one listed on the insurance policy she had to pretend that she was the one driving the car when she was not even there! After traveling for almost 2 hours on a bus from Tbilisi she met up with us. The guys in the Lada had offered to take us back to the car so all of us (6 full sized adults and one kid) crammed into a space the size of a small economy car. Talk about an uncomfortable ride!
Back at the car we finally made the call to the police so that we could get an official police report to satisfy the insurance company. Waiting for nearly 2 hours on a dark, deserted road in the middle of nowhere was a little unnerving. To pass the time and keep our minds from thinking about all the bad things that could happen, we sang songs.
The police finally made it to the car at 11pm, charged Hannah 200 Lari for hitting the cement block and having to write up a police report, and the tow truck loaded the car onto a flat bed. After taking care of all the paperwork at the police station we were finally allowed to head home at 2:30am! Since there was not enough room for all 4 of us plus the driver in the tow truck the police told two of us to ride in the back of the car, which is illegal, but we were told by the police, “Lie down so you don’t get caught. If you do get caught we’ll all go to prison... but we the police will go to the nice prison and you will go to the ‘other’ prison”.
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