After a 3hour wait at the border to get into Georgia, we were free from Turkey.

As we drove into Georgia the scenery is pretty ghetto. Cows are everywhere just walking around down the road.

Batumi

We drove straight to Batumi which is a major city. It seems pretty developed on the boulevard, but as soon as you leave the beach area it turns into a major ghetto. This city is Georgias up and coming
beach resort. Even Donald Trump has invested in the area and is building a huge building block there.

We tried to get booked into a 5 star hotel which only cost £35 a night per person! However they were full… so we had to settle for a 3 star but we did manage to get our own suite for the night and was offered “dancing and women” by the owner.

We spent most of our time in Batsum sitting at the top of a cafe on the beach enjoying the view and eating their local food. Food was delicious.

In the evening we met up with an Italian couple who were doing the rally. We did some bar hopping with them and ended up drinking beer until 1am with them in the cafe. Turns out their car was totally screwed, but they’d manage to order a part they needed from a near by town and had a mechanic waiting at midnight for it to arrive so it could be fitted. At 1am they were off to the mechanic and wanted to drive through the night.

Tiblisi

In the morning we headed off to Tiblisi, which is the capital… a huge city. We found a wicked hostel online which was given the thumbs up by other rallies, so we headed there. Once we checked in we met the guys we met on the ferry in the same hostel.

At around 11pm the owner of the hostel very kindly drove us to the center of town where we could eat and drink. We feasted at a local restaurant and then went bar hopping.

We found this posh cocktail bar where each cocktail cost £10… In Georgia! So we sat around getting drunk and smoking strawberry shisha.

We spoke to the barmaid and she told us its a £25 fine if you’re caught kissing in public… but that she’s never paid a fine!

The next day we had to make it to Russia, so we headed off early and hit the road. We had to drive up through the Georgian mountains to reach the border with some of the most intense roads ever.

It was almost total off roading with the amount of pot holes around…. not to mention the huge drop off the side of the mountain on one side of the road and the cows to avoid. I loved it, especially driving in a convoy with the other car.

When we reached the Russian border there was again another huge wait. 4 hours. The Russians have a interesting way of queueing, it’s essentially drive to the front and push in. If you can’t push in, threaten, shout and bump other cars.

I wasn’t having any of it! There was some huge 4×4 next to me trying to push in….. and he kept moving closer and closer expecting me to move aside. Little did he know we didn’t give two shits about the condition of our car, so I playing a game of chicken with him and steered my car in his path. When he realised I was totally up for scraping the side of his car… he backed off.