“Armenia 🇦🇲 ~Long Journey and Eating Penicillin Cheese!”

• December 24, 2020
• By Pen
• 0 Comment

The internet is a wonderful tool, but googling works very different from one country to the next. Gathering proper information is quite difficult in many cases. Though our intel is lacking on many occasions, we don’t usually let that stop us, unless it’s a safety issue.

Everything I could gather on getting to the mountain of Ararat, from a directional issue, made zero sense. Our starting point was Khor Virab, and “by way of the crow flying,” it would take a few hours only, if we could drive, due southwest into Turkey; BUT, we did not get to drive directly to the mountain. Instead, we took on the almost 10 hour drive!

Fact gathering, before we left on this journey was limited. Had we planned on a quick trip in Armenia, we would not have even entertained the idea. But, with time on our hands, and the love for adventure, off we went!

Obviously we did not make our destination, though we tried! While we do have google maps in most of our country visits, it is very limiting for border info, when driving. We had no idea we would have to cross into Georgia 🇬🇪, then into Turkey 🇹🇷, to get to Mount Ararat, but we had a suspicion, based on the hours of drive time, and the totally “out of the way “ direction we had to go.

The Georgia 🇬🇪 land border is closed to driving across for foreigners, and we knew this in advance. This rule is not a COVID19 rule. It’s just a rule. During this Pandemic, at this time, we aren’t allow to fly into Georgia, either. The plan is to wait out out borders opening in Azerbaijan and Georgia, while hanging in Armenia. It’s anybody’s guess if that’s a good plan or not 🥴

Anyhow, the guards were very nice at the Armenia/Georgia border, so it was no big deal to have gone there. It might be our only chance to go to Georgia! So, we got turned around, and knew our drive to Mount Ararat would not be happening.

Next up, since we were so far north, we tried to make another attempt to get to Lake Apri and the National Park. We did well till the final hour of drive time, where we had to leave the better road, onto a side road. The snow and ice blocked this attempt, again! From there, we had no choice but to find a place to spend the night, as temperatures would be dropping. By no coincidence, we found this remote hotel/restaurant on the way back from the Georgia Border. It allowed us a stay in the rural area, thus avoiding going into the city of Gyumri, which would be snowy, but dirty, “in the city snow,” with no peacefulness.

We liked this no-name hotel with a restaurant, so much, we decided to stay a total of six nights at $6 per night to enjoy our White Christmas, like we had hoped, and stay low; since traveling is not best, due to holiday closures of just about everywhere.