After a breakfast of bread, jam, cheese and coffee at Likani Guesthouse, Ruby, Riza and I readied ourselves for our day tour of the cave city of Vardzia in southern Georgia. From the guesthouse, we walked the short distance to Georgia’s main East-West highway (E60) where we hailed a marshrutka (minibus) that plies the 49-km. route from Borjomi to Akhaltsikhe, a small city in Georgia‘s southwestern region (mkhare) of Samtskhe-Javakheti. The fare was 4 GEL and the trip took about 50 mins. Along the way, it started to snow, my first time to see such an event.
Akhaltsikhe
Riva, Ruby and the author at Akhaltsikhe
Akhaltsikhe, the most direct land route between Armenia and Turkey, has been around for at least 800 years. It was a regional administrative center for the Ottomans from the sixteenth century up to the Russo-Turkish War. Until the 20th century, Akhaltsikhe’s population was mostly Armenian but, today, unlike most of the province, it is mostly Georgian.
Bus station
Taxi stand
Upon arrival at Akhaltsekhi, we had the option of taking another marshrutka to Vardzia but, as the next bus was to leave after lunch (1:20 PM), we instead walked from the Akhaltsikhe bus terminal to the taxi stand where we negotiated with some drivers who could drive us to Vardzia. With one driver who drove an Opel Astra wagon, we finally settled on the amount of 40 GEL. He would wait for 2 hours while we explored the cave city and then bring us back to Akhaltsikhe.
Filling up with LPG at a gas staion
Rabati Castle
Before leaving the city, our driver had to fill up with LPG (Liquified petroleum gas) for his car at a gas station but, before doing so, requested all three of us to alight, something unheard of in an LPG station in Manila.
Qatar Airways has daily flights from Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (Clark, Pampanga) to Tbilisi (Republic of Georgia) with stopovers at Hamad International Airport (Doha, Qatar, 15 hrs.) and Heydar Aliyev International Airport (Baku, Azerbaijan, 1 hr.). Website: www.qatarairways.com.