Made it to the Caucus Mountains

We had a fairly early start (by Georgian standards) in order to catch a mashruka (minibus) to Kazbegi. The bus station was a bit of a zoo with markets and buses and taxis, but we managed to figure out which mashruka to take. It was a fairly harrowing, but beautiful ride to Kazbegi. I'm not sure our driver had a strong sense of self-preservation.

Once we arrived in Kazbegi we proceeded to try to find the place we were staying, but there wasn't a sign saying it was a guest house, so we just walked in (but definitely felt like we were breaking into someone's home. But, once we got things sorted out, it turned out to be great. We have a comfortable room with a cool view of the Gergeti Church.

We decided to go for an easy hike to some waterfalls, however negotiating with different taxi drivers proved to be too exhausting, so we decided to go for a hike from town to a small church through and beautiful valley. A local gave us some funky directions by telling us that walking along the road would be very confusing, but that we could just go straight up through the forest to get there. Well that ended up being interesting - we figured it out though with the help of Google Maps. 

The church was very small. It was fun exploring the area which had horses, beautiful wildflowers, big mountains everywhere and offered us a beautiful spot for us to sit and chill.

On our way down from the church, we chatted with a friendly guy from France - he helped us understand that the dividing line for Asia and Europe is the Causcus Mountains (as he learned it in school), so part of Georgia is in Asia and part is in Europe. So today, when we drove over the pass, we went from Asia into Europe. Next, we headed off to another awesome dinner. The tomato cucumber salad was so good that I ordered another one after I finished the 1st one. We will not be going hungry on this trip, that's for sure. The food is so delicious!

We wrapped up the evening with a family photo (or the closest I could come while on this trip). Fallon is shocked by how quickly I fall asleep. Tomorrow is a big day as we are heading to the Gergeti Church and Gergeti glacier.