Meanwhile, far to the east...

I thought this was the Brendan and Ashley travel blog. Who is this guy? Why is he here?

I'm Brendan's long-lost brother, Conor. I've been living in the Republic of Georgia as a Peace Corps volunteer for the last two years. But as of today I'm finished, and I'm going to link up with the other two in Istanbul tomorrow. 

I lived about 200 miles from the capital, Tbilisi, which meant that getting there for my final medical tests and paperwork required a 7-hour ride through the mountains on a crowded (17 seats, 29 passengers) and hot marshutka (which is what a minibus is called when it's in Eastern Europe and operating as a shared taxi). That wasn't enough for me, though, and I decided to prolong my marshutka fun by taking long detours to Sataplia and Vardzia. 

Sataplia

The land of honey.

'Sataplia' literally translates to "the land of honey," but I didn't see many bees there and no one tried to sell me honey. But then I didn't go for the honey. I went for the dinosaurs. 

I was told that there would be a menagerie of animatronic, life-sized dinosaurs at the park, and I'd sit through a thousand lifetimes of smelly and stifling marshutka rides for that -- who wouldn't? But once I got there, it didn't take me long to realize that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. 

Yeah, they were about three feet tall with no moving parts. 

Luckily, there were some actual dinosaur tracks there. 

Sadly, not left by walking robotic dinos. 

My friend Susanna came with me, and we went for a hike in the Sataplian woods, where she found a cool wolf skull that she put in her bag and took back with her to America. 

Vardzia

Vardzia is a 12th-century cave city in southern Georgia. The 12th century was the height of the Kingdom of Georgia. Georgia and its client states covered most of Transcaucasia, and today a political map of that period is on the wall of every Georgian classroom, instilling ethnic nationalism into impressionable young minds. The cave complex was built by the powerful Queen Tamar for an order of monks who were apparently into the trog lifestyle and in any case really liked wine. 

It was a bit of a trek up the mountain, and the first sign of civilization that I encountered was actually this:

which I took to be the hovel of an Orthodox ascetic, but turned out to be an outhouse.

Okay, there we go. Cave city. 

If you've ever seen the Anasazi ruins at Mesa Verde, this city is very much like that one, except that the architecture is unmistakably European in style. 

Here's the church: 

And here are some medieval Byzantine-style frescoes on the exterior walls of the church:

I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside, but as you can imagine there was a lot more art in there. 

A little while later I found this cool tunnel:

Who wouldn't want to go inside?

The power was out -- I saw electric light fixtures in there, but I think the monks keep the power off to make money from selling the votive candles that most of the people that I passed were using as a light source -- but I was able to make my way around using my phone's flashlight. Here's some of what I found in there:

Finally, as an indication of how the monks used to make a living before the tourist trade, here's a vessel that contained a huge amount of wine:

And spaces for many more of them:

And finally a picture to prove that I didn't just get this from a Wikipedia article:

See you in Istanbul!