in the legendary land of Kolchis

After almost a week in and around the resort town of Borjomi we moved west yesterday, into the legendary land of Kolchis. According to Greek mythology, this is the land where Jason came with his 49 Argonauts to heroically retrieve the Golden Fleece from a ferocious dragon, with a little help from his lovely lady friend Medea.

Today Georgia's second largest town, Kutaisi, dominates this fertile, almost sub-tropical valley just a few dozens of kilometers inland from the Black Sea. Compared to Tbilisi, Kutaisi seems years back, with its rusting Soviet industrial belt, the terrible state of its roads, and its electricity and water cuts. Saakashvili has certainly not arrived here yet to have the parks redone, as he has in Tbilisi.

But let's get back to Kolchis. A wonderful tribute to this past is the nearby town of Vani. Here excavations have brought wonderful finds of the 8th-1st century BC to light. In the small but rich archeological museum we saw amphores for cereal, ceramic plates and cups, bronze and iron swords, nails and statues, stone catapults. A small statue of the world's first tamada (toast manager) as well as a collection of wine amphorae prove the fact that Georgia is indeed the cradle of world-wide wine culture. Not any surprise to those familiar with the Georgian culinary culture...

As we were just to leave the museum the policeman-cum-ward showed us into a secret room, perfectly hidden behind a curtain. Huge was our surprise when we discovered originals of the gold finds from the excavations in the burial mounds in Vani: gold necklaces, diadems with hunting scenes, earrings, coins, ornamental buttons, all beautifully decorated and perfectly preserved. Gold making was obviously a specialty of the Kolchis people, based on the abundance of gold in rivers here. The tradition of putting sheep skins in the water to retrieve the tiny gold particles is a proof for some scholars that this is indeed the land where Jason came to find the Golden Fleece...

A tour to the excavation sites by one of the archeology assistants rounded off our day trip to this fascinating site.

Tomorrow we will take a marshrutka to Svaneti, hoping the weather will return to the sunny and dry state we had in Borjomi so that we can go hiking and finally use the tent Christian is carrying around in his backpack since mid April... But now back to our guest house where Giorgi & Mariana are waiting for us to have dinner and teach us how to play dominos. Nakhvamdis!