Georgia On My Mind: The Ride From Tbilisi to Kutaisi

The Katski Pillar. One of the main reasons why I wanted to visit Georgia.

Serendipity day.

I had not made arrangements for traveling from Tbilisi to Kutaisi before the trip. My hope was that I could hire a driver at a non-outrageous price to drive me there with stops along the way for some of the more interesting tourist sights, such as the Katski Pillar (!) or the old mining town of Chiatura with its rusted-out network of cable cars. I was told it was not possible. Until I asked the right person at my Tbilisi hotel and, voila, within 10 minutes it was arranged. At the aforementioned non-outrageous price of 1000 GEL.

We skipped the first sight -- an early man site not too far outside of Tbilisi -- because it was raining hard. So the first real tourism stop of the day was Chiatura.

We skipped the monastery (or is it a convent) at the top of the hill again because of rain.

After 30-plus years of living in Las Vegas have I become a rain wuss?

Chiatura is an old mining town. They used to mine coal and manganese. The cable car, a.k.a. "ropeway," network used to take the miners from town up the mines.

To call these old cable cars "rust buckets" would be a wholly accurate description.

Even though the mines closed many years ago, until fairly recently, you could ride in these buckets o' rust. It was a tourist attraction.

But someone, at some point, decided that these were a safety hazard. OSHA spoils all the fun.

So this is the closest you now can get to riding the old cable car system.

But not far away is a sleek new cable car slash ropeway that you can ride. It does not have the same tourist pizzazz as the old rust bucket cable cars. But it is safe by all appearances.

It just doesn't have the same charm as the old rust buckets. But at least the promise of enhanced safety was realized.

These cable cars are functional transportation, going from the Chiatura downtown up to a residential neighborhood. You pass over rows and rows of ugly Soviet era apartment buildings in varying states of decay. But at least your transportation is not a state of decay!

At the top of the hill there is a little to see,

It smelled even better. The area smelled like baking bread.

Sorry that I can't do a "scratch and sniff" here in the virtual world. But the smell of bread was awesome. Or maybe it was Georgian khachapuri, the national dish that involves bread dough and cheese and (sometimes but not always) an egg.

Overlooking Chiatura was this building:

It was nice that the sun came out for the Chiatura part of the tour of the Georgian countryside.

The next stop was the Katski Monastery building:

I could not pass through this door because my knees were uncovered.

Long pants only for us men to be able to enter an Orthodox church in Georgia.

This is as close as I can get.

Well, I can lean in for a photo without crossing the threshold:

This being Georgia, there was winemaking facilities on premises:

The grounds were well-maintained.

But one does not come to Katski for the monastery, nice as it may be.

One comes to Katski for the Pillar.

This was one of the major reasons I wanted to come to Georgia and definitely the major reason why I wanted to see Georgia outside Tbilisi.

What is the geological name for these sort of features? A monolith? Yes, I googled. It is a monolith, which is defined as "a geological feature consisting of a single massive stone or rock." Only this is a monolith with a monastery on top.

It used to be that anyone who climb this "ladder" could visit the top.

That's not the case. I had heard that it was limited to monks only. That too is not the case. But you did need the prior approval of your local bishop of your local Orthodox parish.

I did not have one with me. Let's call that the reason why I did not climb the climb today.

Here I am about to climb the staircase and ascend to the top of the pillar when, suddenly, I realize I did not have my bishop's seal of approval with me. So, respecting the local religious tradition, I decided to forgo the straight-up ladder climb.

There also was a small museum on the premises, which you did not need a recommendation from your local bishop to visit:

I bought a refrigerator magnet because that's what I do. There's only two types of souvenirs I buy when I travel internationally: the local booze and refrigerator magnets. And the monks were not selling booze.

We then reached the destination city of Kutaisi. And we kept on going.

We kept on going to Sataplia, the final tourism stop of the day.

Sataplia is primarily known for dinosaur footprints.

Apparently the boys at the Slate Rock and Gravel Company were pouring cement and a T-Rex walked through the wet concrete leaving its footprints there in perpetuity.

Here's an artistic rendering of the creature who left some of the footprints.

If you look closely, it looks like the dinosaur is wearing some sort of medieval executioner's helmet.

These are much smaller footprints. Almost bird-like.

Birds are the dinosaurs that survived to the modern day, so that would make sense that there'd be bird like footprints here.

The other thing Sataplia, on the outskirts of Kutaisi is known for is its karst cave.

Let's have a walk through.

The temperature within the cave is a permanent 14 degrees Celsius, which is around 57 degrees in real temperature measurement. Good thing I brought my pullover jacket.

This cave is inside something called "Bee Mountain," but it's OK. It's Bee Mountain, not Bee Cave.

Observation about Bee Mountain:  Georgians do love their honey. It's source of national pride. They love their Georgian honey ALMOST as much as they love their Georgian wine.

The good news was this was not a claustrophobic cave. You could be a claustrophobe and come to this cave and have a good time.

The cave is very popular when the summer heat hits Georgia. As one would expect, given the cool temps inside.

Oh and one last thing about Sataplia. They have animatronic dinosaurs.

I did not film, but they do move their heads (menacingly!) and make a growling noise that sounds like stomach distress. Which is quite frightening in its own way. Anyway, it was day of serendipity as, at the last second, the plan I hoped to have come to fruition came to fruition, as I got a tour of Georgia west of Tbilisi and transportation to Kutaisi in one swoop. Vacation magic!