Sunday, 23 July, 2017 --- Day 06 -- From Arhavit To Batumi

ΚΑΤ’ΕΜΠΟΡΙΑΝ ΚΑΙ ΘΕΩΡΙΑΝ

ES MUSS SEIN

CARTAGO DELENDA EST

Nos perituri mortem salutamus

Sunday, 23 July, 2017 --- Day 06

From Arhavit To Batumi
Stats
Day dist: 54.98 km
Riding time: 3 hours 50 mins
Avg speed: 14.32 km/hour
Max speed: 25.82 km/hour
End day odo: 1918 km
Dist covered so far:218 km
Coordinates: 41.639282N 41.634090E (Jessis Hotel Batumi)


Had Brekfast and left at 11:52

Otel ozay

Arhavi

Today’s goal is Batumi, in Georgia, that is, I will spend the night in another country. I’m about to leave Allah’s dominion and enter Christ’s.

For a change, the weather was not as rainy today, that boosted my spirits and rode on with vigor. Iarrived at hopa, the last major town before the border

Hopa from a distance

After a short gaz stop, I contiued riding towards the border. A couple of kms later, actually at km 17 of my ride, there it as a huge line of trucks on the right side of the road that streched for more than 2 kms..

Trucks lined up

Crossing the tunnel with the trucks along the side was not as scary as when they are not lined up. Simply because there are no trucks driving.

I crossed a couple more tunnels – plenty of mountains, plenty of tunnels.

One of the tunnels, however, was unusual. I was half way into the tunnel when most of the lights went off. It turned pitch dark. I could see very little and most importantly the drivers could not see me. Still, I survived it and Spithas and I exited unscathed.

Half a mile after the dark tunnel, I found my two new friends, Dea k Chris, stading on the side of the road. They were the first bikers I met on this trip. They were also headed in the same direction so we did the natural thing and rode together.

As we approached the border there were more lines of trucks piled up along the road

Dea k Chris riding

I arrived at the border a little ahead of my fellow riders and stood on the side to wait. There were lots of people, cars, and commotion and a cop waved at me to move. As I did not, he got upset and came up to me and asked for my passport. After he checked it out, though, he smiled and asked me where I was headed.

Turkish side of the border.

It took a while to cross and the line was very long on the Georgian side where people kept cutting it.

Georgian side of the border

First short stop in Georgia

There came along a backpacker whom we had already seen waiting in line at the border. He had actually walked all the distance from the border. He stopped and we chatted. He had come from Poland walking and hitchhiking. He had spent last month in Turkey and , what caught my interest was that for a good deal of that time he was at a Sufi camp.

Thomas k Dea

We biked on

Road to Batumi

Georgian style car parking

Chris had been here 3 years ago and knew the shortcuts. So, he took us from another way, which proved to be really beautiful.

Bike road to Batumi

The area got touristy after a while.

Here you can see communist and post-communist era buildings juxtaposed

Batumi Beach front.

Chris and Dia had booked a room over the internet. So we rode to that place in the hope that they would have a room for me too. As there was no extra room available, however, we ended up sharing the room.

After we settled in and arranged our stuff, it was time to go out. So we went on a rather long walk in search of food and to watch the dancing fountains.

We were back by 1:00 o’cklock

ΕΙ ΘΕΟΣ ΥΠΕΡ ΗΜΩΝ, ΤΙΣ ΚΑΘ’ΗΜΩΝ; Προς Ρωμαίους 8:31

IF GOD BE WITH US WHO CAN BE AGAINST US? Romans 8:31