In December, my son Ike and I went on a frugal trip to the country of Georgia.
On the fifth day of our trip, we woke up in the morning after our day on our self guided tour of Kutaisi, and it was time to make the 3 hour drive to Tbilisi where we would be spending the next two nights.
As I mentioned in my previous posts, when traveling to different countries, I like to see things that are unique to that place and can’t be seen just about anywhere. (That’s why we went to the rain forest in Georgia and why I went to the EU parliament in Brussels, Belgium.)
Therefore, when I heard about a bear sanctuary not too far out of my way, I knew that was unique enough that I needed to put it on my itinerary.
In a town called Tskhvarichamia, about an hour north of Tbilisi, is a place named the Zoological Center, which predominantly is a bear sanctuary.
About 15 years ago, a man named Soso Jikurishvili ended up caring for a 1 kilo bear cub whose mother had been killed. After no zoos would take this bear cub, Soso started a bear sanctuary to take care of it and other bears that needed help, including ones that had been illegally kept in captivity.
(These bears aren’t returned to the wild because once a bear has been in captivity it won’t know how to look for food but will turn to humans to feed them, which is dangerous.)
Entrance to the bear sanctuary is 5 GEL per person, about $1.80 per person. They are open from 11 am to 7 pm or sunset, depending on where you read.
Supposedly there are a bunch of different animals there, including wolves, but we didn’t see those.
We saw two large enclosures with bears in them. At first we couldn’t tell how many bears there were because there was a shelter inside the enclosure.
You’re encouraged to feed the bears, and they sell bruised apples at 5 GEL per box. This is a little expensive; you can buy apples at Carrefoure for 2-4 GEL per kilo, so we ended up using apples that we had brought with us to feed the bears.
You toss the apples into the bear enclosure and bears will go and eat them. Once we started tossing the apples, more bears came out of the enclosures to get them. If enough bears are paying attention you might witness a bear brawl over the apples. We got to see who the dominant bear was, because he would growl at the other bears if they went after “his” apples.
I’d recommend if you go there to cut your apples into little pieces, because it is enjoyable to interact with the bears by tossing them apples, but if you toss whole ones you’ll run out of them quite quickly.
They have metal fencing around the enclosure and a rope fence outside of that to keep you from getting too close, but if you’re going with children, I suggest you keep a close eye on them to make sure they don’t get too close to the bears if they approach the fence, since the rope is very easy to climb under.
We went in the winter, so there was snow on the ground, but not everywhere, so the rest of the area was pretty muddy and I almost slipped a few times. I would suggest bringing shoes that can handle mud if you go there during the winter or after rain.
In addition to the two bear enclosures we also saw an enclosure with horses and donkeys, with a few dogs inside as well.
In the fenced in yard around a house, probably where the owner lives, there were chickens, turkeys, and geese as well.
And in the distance, there were these A frame cabins, which I found out were rented on AirBnB, for a stay right in the middle of the Bear Sanctuary, which is pretty cool for people who really like animals.
After this, it was time to head to Tbilisi.
Have you ever been to a bear sanctuary? Does this look like someplace you’d visit?
