So this whole Mongol Rally thing is turning out to be a lot more exhausting than we expected -- enough to make us very, very bad about writing blog posts. Most days we're simply too tired to sit down to write a post after 10-12 hours in the car. Also, when free wifi is available -- well, it's not even a choice. Our lack of writing does not mean nothing has happened though! In the past week, we made it through stage 2 of the rally -- Turkey and the Caucuses.
After spending a day with our parents and Ernest in Istanbul, we said goodbye to them and took off to traverse Anatolia, Turkey's Asian heartland. The first day we made it to Samsun, a town we thought would be a quiet Black Sea village but was instead a bustling port of more than half a million people. After getting some very perplexed looks from local Samsunites who wanted to help us but had no idea where we could camp in this expansive metropolis, we gave in and got a room at the Hampton Inn. The rally is turning out [this week] to be a bit more luxurious than we anticipated. The next day we took off early for the Turkish-Georgian border, which we had heard nightmare stories about. It was indeed a nightmare -- a 7-hour line that snaked along the coast hundreds of meters away from the border. Our supreme boredom was mitigated by the presence of other Mongol Rally teams who had also made the mistake of trying this border (future teams: go for the middle, mountainous border -- other teams who tried this got through in half an hour) and by a courteous young gentleman from Baku who helped push our car to the border.
We finally got through to Georgia at midnight and made our way to Batumi, a Georgian seaside city. After struggling with our map and waking up the hosts of our rented room with some terrible Russian, we collapsed into bed around 1 am. Sleeping in rejuvenated us. After saying bye to our lovely hosts, we walked around old Batumi, a lovely area that reminded us of Cartagena or Havana. We got some Georgian food, some much needed wifi, and soon were on our way to Tbilisi, a 6-hour ride through the mountains, harrowing not for the roads but for the truly terrible Georgian drivers. Tbilisi was wonderful. We were received by my good friend Tamta's family and friends, who treated us to a delicious barbecued meal in their backyard, complete with homemade wine. We ended up spending three nights in Tbilisi, doing some sightseeing, fixing up the car with Tamta's father's help, and hanging out with Tamta's friends in Old Tbilisi. Throughout it all, our hosts were generous and gracious -- we will miss them.