Georgian food, wine and mountains Pt3!

Hi - sorry, I am quite far behind with this now as I am now in Azerbaijan but I'll try and get as much of it done  tonight as I can - that may mean less photos though as that's what takes the longest.  I'd rather get it more up to date though.

So where did I leave you?  Ah yes, we had done 3 of our 5 night bushcamping and were starting to get a bit whiffy!  With the help of baby wipes and some dry shampoo we were semi presentable again and we were off back down that military highway -  perhaps even scarier on the way down.  Next stop was Telavi, the wine region in Georgia.  Georgia claims to be the home of wine, believing they were the first to make it. Not sure how true that it but hey, we were happy to try it out.  We had been sampling a lot of the local wines with mixed results - in Batumi it was nice, in Mestia and Kazbegi.  The main advantage was that it was definitely cheap!  Anyway, we got to Telavi around 5 and set up camp in a farmer's field.  The local farmer came to join us and his chainsaw came in handy for cutting firewood.  He also gifted us some mushrooms and goose eggs.  We were also a sight for a number of the local kids who joined us in the field and had arm wrestling and press up competitions with some of the guys...

Phil with the farmer

Alex arm wrestling

James with his press ups

Andy

Unfortunately it was a very wet camp and it was the first time we had to put up the 'party tent' which we can all fit in to stay dry - but only if we're all standing.  It was a happy camp despite the rain as the next day we were off wine tasting which was an included activity and one we were all looking forward to :-)

We set off the next morning to first stop at a local monastery then we were off  for lunch and wine tasting.  It all started well, with the monastery being nice and fairly easy to find.  Here are a few pics...

 

 

 (we had to put a skirt on to enter the monastery)

Funniest thing was though that someone noticed that there was wifi at the monastery - check out the name of the network (top one)

 

 

 

After that tings started to go wrong, as our local guide had no idea where he was going - we ended up driving about for hours trying to find the wine tasting places.  In the nick of time we found the first place as there were some grumpy and hungry travellers who were keen to sample the wine.  This place was fairly decent and we had some lunch then sampled the wine - the white was horrible but the wine was quite nice even though I don't drink red normally. 

 

 

A slightly happier and tipsier Odyssey lot got back on the truck to head to the next place.  We had high hopes for it as Teresa and Simon had been before and told us the wine was nice.  When we found it to say we were disappointed was a bit of an understatement!  Where the first place had been slightly rustic with the wines in the floor vats etc, this was more commercial.  We could have overlooked this if the wine had been nice but the first white we tasted was met with screwed up faces from everyone.  The second was slightly more palatable until someone pointed out that there was maggots in it - yuck!  Some red was tasted by some and after a while, we made our polite goodbyes and left - most of us slightly disappointed that the day had not turned out as expected.  One the plus side, the winery was run by a very lovely old couple who were really friendly and happy to see us!

 

Bex trying to give away her maggot wine (now fondly remembered as Magwine)

Bex with her magwine, Kelly cringing and David laughing!

Jo with her wine before the maggots were spotted!

 

The day wasn't a total washout, we did laugh about it all and had a bit of a singalong on the truck on the way back to the campsite - with Andy leading on guitar!

 

 

 

We were determined not to give up on the wine tasting and so Mary and Kelly found a local winery that also did Georgian cooking classes, we got our guide to give them a call and we were happy to get a trip there arranged for the next day for 16 of us :-)

 

This was a resounding success, with the family there teaching us how to make the local aubergine dish, as well as bread and Georgian Snickers.  Also, the wine was lovely - I even bought some to take away with me.

 

 

We then headed back to Telavi but we had happily moved on from our bushcamp to a lovely homestay where we were happy to get showered and cleaned up from our 5 days of dirt!

 

That's all for now, one final Georgia post to come before I head to Armenia and Azerbaijan!