It’s been a good few months since my trip with my son to the country of Georgia, and I still haven’t finished writing about it—but this is the last post! (I still have to write about our time in Cyprus the next day, though.) But finally! This ADHD of mine makes it hard for me to complete projects, and finishing writing about trips I’ve taken is something I actually kinda suck at.
But I digress.
One of the things Georgia is most famous for is its mountains, specifically its ski slopes. Every time we go abroad as a family, if it’s possible to see snow, we try to see it. (We even went to the mountains in Cyprus to see snow—and Cyprus is certainly not known for that.)
So I looked into where we could see snow in Georgia, and then compared that to the map of where we’d be going, and there was nothing close to our route. Additionally, figuring out the timing was a bit complicated. The day that worked best for us was our last day in Georgia: we’d start in Tbilisi, go to the snowy mountains, and then drive to Kutaisi, where we’d sleep before our flight to Cyprus in the morning.
The two closest options to Tbilisi were Gudauri, approximately a 2-hour drive north of the city, and Bakuriani, almost 3 hours west of Tbilisi. Kutaisi, being our final destination, was another 2.5-hour drive from Bakuriani and 4 hours from Gudauri, which made the choice a little more complicated since it was 5.5 hours vs. 6. (It would have been shorter if you could drive directly from Gudauri to Kutaisi, but alas, that area is occupied by Russia.)
Going to Bakuriani also meant we could visit Borjomi, a place I’d read a lot about that also sounded beautiful, and it was one of the places I wanted to visit if we had time. That helped make my decision. The two places are a little more than half an hour apart, and you have to drive through Borjomi to get to Bakuriani.
One thing that sucked was the following.
I tried to find places to snowshoe, since I had such a nice time doing that in Austria, and I’d be less likely to get injured doing that versus skiing. But most places I saw offering snowshoeing advertised 3-day intense hikes with guides. I did find one place in Bakuriani that rented out snowshoes, but they only opened with the start of the ski season—which was December 10—and we left Georgia on December 9.
So we decided we’d go to the mountains, enjoy the scenery and snow, and if there wasn’t snow, we’d go on a hike in the mountains, which were supposed to be beautiful. I didn’t have an exact location for hikes, but I knew each mountain with ski resorts also had hiking trails.
And there was always Borjomi to see as well. It has famous parks that have naturally carbonated Ekaterina mineral water springs. There are hiking trails and cable cars.
Then there’s the Borjomi sulfur pools, outdoor naturally heated mineral springs, that are very cheap to go to. As I wrote before, Georgia is known for its sulfur pools, but most of them are either expensive private ones, or public but divided by gender (and often filled with naked people), and I didn’t think either was appropriate for me to do with my son. The Borjomi one, though, was mixed gender. Since we went to the Vani sulfur spring, if we didn’t get to the Borjomi one that was fine, but I thought it would be nice to do as well if we could.
But the trip to Bakuriani was a lot longer than originally expected, since certain stretches of the highway were closed for construction, so we needed to be rerouted along country roads, which made it take much longer.
When we got to Borjomi, it was already later than we wanted, and we didn’t see snow anywhere, so we decided to drive further to Bakuriani, hoping we’d see snow, and if not, we’d check out what was in Borjomi.
As we drove on, it got snowier and snowier, but we didn’t know where exactly we were going. I just saw the snowy mountain ahead and decided to see how close we could get there.
We turned off the road to an area with some small cabins, a creek, and a lot of snow, with the snowy mountain in the background.
We had fun playing in the snow…
Walking around, eating icicles, etc…
In addition to all the snow and ice, there were also lots of muddy areas, so I had to walk very carefully so I wouldn’t fall and get hurt.
My son wanted to walk closer to the mountain, so I let him run on ahead, and then he came back to me and told me excitedly that the ski lifts up the mountain were working and you could ride up to the top.
We went back to the car and followed the road until we got to the ski resort (turns out the village we were walking through was probably for tourists to rent as well) and found out how much the ski lift cost. It was about 50 GEL, or approximately 20 dollars, for the two of us to take the ski lift (round trip).
It turns out that the ski resort we’d gone to was actually already open and you could ski, but it was too late in the day for that by the time we got there, and we didn’t have the proper clothes with us—but oh well.
At the top of the mountain we took in the view and enjoyed the fresh air.
From where we were we could see something that looked like an alpine coaster on the next ridge over, which they told me was called a toboggan. (So many meanings for that word. Many places call sledding toboggans. Tobogganing in Cleveland—where I grew up—meant going down these icy chutes in a multiple-person toboggan…) If you want to go there (we didn’t; again, I didn’t know anything about it until that point) it’s part of the Didveli ski resort and costs 10 GEL (about $3.75) per person. It is open both in the winter and the summer.
People who worked near where we were suggested that we walk all the way up to a scenic overlook, but I didn’t have the right shoes for that, and I was afraid I’d get hurt since I slip so easily, so I sent Ike up himself, and he said it was a nice climb with a beautiful view.
Just for these pictures it was worth it.
Absolutely gorgeous. Some of my favorite from this trip.
In the meantime, I sat in a café high up on the mountain and got myself a drink while I waited for him. (I learned that what Georgians call lemonade is absolutely nothing like what we Americans call it.)
After that, it was getting late and I knew we had a bunch of hours to drive, so we decided to head down the mountain and back to Kutaisi.
I wish we had more time to actually explore everything I read about in Borjomi, but we did have a nice day regardless. I just wish there were fewer detours on the way.
The way to Kutaisi was even more problematic than to Bakuriani, that in addition to highways being rerouted to country roads, there were also roads that were closed but unmarked on Waze or Google Maps, so there were many parts where we were literally going in circles, despite asking multiple people for directions. I think what should have been approximately a 3-hour drive ended up taking closer to 5 hours.
Finally, we got to our accommodations for the night. Well, for a few hours anyhow, since we had to be out the door before 4 in the morning to make our 6 a.m. flight. Since it would be so few hours there, I didn’t really care what the accommodations were like, so I booked the cheapest Airbnb I could find, which literally was only $14 for the two of us for the night.
Surprisingly, the accommodations, while sparse and not so aesthetic, had everything we needed, including Wi-Fi (though if we’d wanted to shower it was a weird one).
We slept well, and in the morning headed back to Cyprus for our one day visit there. But that is for another post.
Have you ever been to Georgia? What did you do there? Ski or something else?
Do you enjoy snow? Would you also walk around in the snow like we did?
Or if you’d gotten there late in the day, would you have chosen to do what there is to do in Borjomi instead of Bakuriani?
