After a great nights sleep in warm beds as a storm blew outside we woke up feeling well refreshed. We came down in the morning to something bad: news that the pass we hoped to cross today had been hit by a big dump of snow during the storm last night and was now closed. But also something good: Lilyanna was baking fresh bread in the stove and served us up a great breakfast of tea, fresh bread and meat dumplings. After a great feed like that we were well ready to head off.

As we were packing up Lilyanna had been on the phone to her friend who, presumably, spoke English as she came out to us with a few sentences, first ” Welcome”. Then “I love riverdance.” And finally “tell your mother to come here”. So mum, you are invited to visit Nodzari and Lilyanna in Georgia. Their house is very warm and Lilyanna is a great cook.

 

 
  
We waved goodbye to the two of them and set off in the late morning. Arriving back in Batumi for the third time we followed the coast road out of the city. The road followed the train tracks for a while by the flat seaside before turning up into the hills for a some time. Back to the coast and through the town of Kobuleti where we picked up lunch from a small bakery. Took the inland road out of town, passed a hitchhiker waiting for a lift and after asking some road workers for directions followed the route towards Ozurgeti.

 

  
We didn’t make it to Ozurgeti before the end of the day. We’re still getting used to the days getting shorter and we found ourselves in more hilly terrain as the sun was starting to set with few good camping spots. Eventually found one, an old overgrown dirt road that led to nowhere overlooking a small valley that provided just enough flat ground to camp on.

 

 
As we were setting up the tarp an inquisitive kid who lived nearby approached on his bike. He watched my bike as Finn tried to entertain him by showing him the map, so,e of our photos and pieces of gear. In the end we found out his name was Kiga and he had a great time helping us out the tarp up. He was a smart kid, picked up on how to tie the knot we use to attach the lines to the pegs after one show and then he wanted to make sure it was set up perfectly on all sides. After he sat with us for a while until some of his friends came over and called him back for dinner.

 

 
It had gotten dark by now so we settled back under the tarp to eat ourselves until, maybe 20 minutes later a whole crew of kids and teenagers came over to us for a chat. One of the older guys invited us back to his place and if we hadn’t got everything set up already we would have come with him, but trying to express this to him through gestures and simple English was difficult to say the least. He ended up calling a friend of his who spoke English to communicate.

After a while they left, we figured they got bored of us after all the easy to convey information about ourselves had been given out, but soon the older guy who had invited us (his name was Tengo and was 20) his younger friend and Kiga returned. Tengo had in his hand a plastic bottle of a sort of pale, yellow liquid that was some of his homemade wine. Chatted for a while, Tengo’s friend had a smattering of English and translated while Kiga listened. When the bottle was finished and the temperature dropped they waved us goodbye and went back home and we retired to our Bivvys.