We decided that today would be an easy day with a not-to-difficult hike and then a movie. But, first we ate a yummy breakfast at our guest house. Then, I bought some traditional "puri" in which a local dog had a keen interest. It was cool to watch it being made.
Next, we headed to meet the German men as they were going to hike with us. Turns out, only Oliver joined us. For today's hike, we cheated just a little bit - we took a chairlift up the first section of the hike (the second chairlift was not working). Unfortunately, we did not use our brains very well after this because we went straight up the ski slope to the top rather than take the time to figure out how to find the actual trail up which made our "easy" hiking day quite a challenge. The ski slope was steep, had difficult footing, and had pricker bushes and other plants up to our necks. By the time we made it to the top, we were beaten up and had soaking wet feet. To add insult to injury, we discovered there was a road all the way to the top when we saw a bunch of mountain bikers and a car at the top! The mountain bikers were a biking group from Israel who had coffee, tea, cookies, and general revelry on the deck of the closed restaurant deck. They offered goodies which, in addition to the incredible views, helped dull the memory of the not-so-pleasant hike up.
Next we had a dreamy hike across a ridge to the summit filled with wildflowers and views of gigantic, snow-capped mountains surrounding us. We made sure to take time to smell the flowers. The views were jaw-dropping at every turn.
We made the way down exciting because we tried to find a different trail that was on our map, but after a wild decent down a section of the mountain, we decided to loop back to the trail we took out to the summit. We complimented ourselves about how much smarter we are getting in our old age. Oliver entertained us with his hilarious stories as we hiked. Then we found the actual trail we were supposed to take down the ski mountain and made it to the lift with 30 minutes to spare before it closed for the day. Despite a few missteps, we concluded that it was a great hike of just over 10 miles.
After our excellent hike, we went out to Cafe Laila for our best meal yet - so delicious and colorful. I was hungry so I ordered a lot of food!
After dinner, we went to see the movie Dede. It was showing in a small place (kind of like a house). The room where you watched the movie was filled with bean bags and cozy places to sit/lay down. The woman running the theatre is the twin sister of the movie director. The film actually won lots of awards at film festivals such as Cannes and Sundance. It was filmed in the remote town of Ushguli in the region of Svaneti which is the town we are going to next. Plus, many of the actors are from Ushguli. So cool! Tomorrow we are going to stay in the town and maybe we'll even bump into some of the actors.
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