Ureki Break
Some very kind young friends recently allowed my wife and I to have an actual vacation, as opposed to a required dash from one end of the country to the other for funeral reasons. They offered to come and look after the cows, chickens and house while we got away to the Black Sea for six days. One could hardly refuse such a generous offer, and we certainly accepted with huge gratitude.
Once the four were up to speed with milking and other necessary chores, we felt free to pack up and head off into the sunrise to Ureki, perhaps a less known but still locally popular alternative to bustling Batumi and Kobuleti. We were staying in the same hotel which had hosted us for a TLG training event some two years earlier.
A few more interesting place names on the way, which I've translated as: Holy Water; Or Lacking (meaning "or not all there")and Magnetite, for which see below.
The owner had extensively renovated the hotel and its grounds, so returning was a pleasant surprise. Much landscaping and greenery, several new swimming pools, new bedrooms and dining room awaited us. Plus, we were a bit earlier in the year this time, still in plenty of time to make some use of the beach and the sea itself, which we did. Ureki was having its last tourist fling before school begins on Sept. 15, so the place was quite busy, but we still felt that there was space for everybody.
Ureki and neighboring Magnetiti (original home of X-men foe Magneto?) are famous for their curative dark gray sand, which is somewhat magnetic and supposed to be very good for the bones if you allow yourself to be covered with it from neck to feet for half and hour or so a day. I dug my wife in, and at least I can say that she emerged none the worse. The water was really pleasant, the slope of the beach gentle enough to give you some wading distance before you decided to dive. And sand, even if it's not yellow or white, beats Batumi's rocks any day!
Other choices of entertainment ranged from a pulled banana boat, jet-ski, 4x4 beach car, horse rides, and even para-sailing, also pulled by boat. The sun and sea, however, were enough for us. Really, this is all that's lacking for me in our mountain home, and I suppose that the few hours' drive away which it is makes it all the more special, giving the real holiday feeling when one makes the effort to go.
I finally had my question answered about the eerily still and empty new amusement park between Ureki and Kobuleti. Why have I never seen it running? It seems such a sad waste, obviously not old. Was there a curse on it? A legal dispute? Something unsafe in the area's environs, discovered tragically too late?
None of the above: the whole park only opens and comes alive between 6 pm and midnight! It's all lit up, and I've never driven past it during these hours, so I wrongly assumed that it was abandoned. Instead, it's more like the nocturnally powered travelling circus in Ray Bradbury's novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes! Well, that makes me feel better. Seriously, I must get there after dark sometime with camera and tripod and make some slow exposures of lit-up things whirling. Could be magic.
This was all a good reminder that Georgia's geographic diversity, for such a small country, allows you to experience a huge range of landscapes and climates in a very short distance and time. One of the country's many great advantages, and one which I intend for us to make more use of (once we settle the Cow Question), given our newly returned mobility.
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 1300 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri:
www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
Tony Hanmer