4Runner Roadtrip – Armenia

Our plan had been to spend several weeks or even a month in Tbilisi but the doctor visits weren’t panning out and the nice ‘center of the center’ apartment was booked solid for the next month. So we decided it was time to road trip around Armenia for a while.

The border crossing was a bit of a strange affair. When crossing in a vehicle, all of the passengers (not the driver) have to get out and get processed inside which we had never done before. As Shani is in charge of all of our important travel documents and has them in order for the officers I was now on my own with the documents and Sebastian.  And he goes nuts when the officers are looking around the car and I have to open everything up. There was every opportunity for things to go sideways but fortunately for me they went relatively smoothly.

When you enter Armenia with a foreign vehicle you have to have the customs inspection and then pay a road tax. This involves taking your passport and car passport (vehicle title in our case) into a separate part of the border offices where you wait for a long time for the one clerk to process all of the paperwork. In my case, not speaking Armenian or really understanding what was going on, it took over an hour to pay the tax at the tax man, go to customs again and get that paper processed and then finally take my paperwork in triplicate and exit the border crossing. This was all after it took Shani 45 minutes to cross and keep all of the line cutting guys in check.

So after all of that you can imagine how thrilled I was to start the 4Runner and be off on the adventure. You can also imagine how deflated I felt when I turned the key and the car didn’t start. It turns out that when you leave your EcoFlow battery pack plugged into the car 12V to charge and someone who is in the car waiting for me to get processed and pay the tax keeps turning the key over to Accessory mode to roll the windows up or down it kills the car battery.

With the slimmest of hopes we waited for more than an hour to see if it would rejuvenate and have enough juice to fire but it didn’t. In the end, it took Shani about an hour to finally find a couple of helpful Armenian guys in a tiny car. They had some pretty dilapidated jumper cables and just barely enough juice to get our rig fired up. (We did not have jumper cables, a situation that has now been remedied.) With a lesson learned and a new protocol in place for when we stop the car, we headed towards Alverdi. Alverdi is conveniently located near Sanahin Monastery and Haghpat Monastery, both from the 10th century. Described as a “masterpiece of religious architecture and a major center of learning in the Middle Ages”, Haghpat monastery, together with Sanahin Monastery, was placed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1996. (Wikipedia)

We ended up with quite a bit of rain on our visit to Haghpat but we sheltered under an arch and were really able to enjoy the surrounding landscapes. At the Sanahin Monastery one of the local venders was very helpful in getting us a parking spot and now Shani has a new pair of wool slippers.

From Alverdi we were headed south to Lake Sevan, the largest body of water in both Armenia and the Caucasus region. In the 5 days we spent a Lake Sevan we couldn’t be bothered to break out the damn paddle boards even once. Too many bugs and unpredictable weather. Shani did get in another monastery on the peninsula, so all was not lost.

One of the things in Armenia we were really looking forward to was the wine. As the Caucasus region is considered the birthplace of wine and our experience with both Turkish and Georgian wine had been very positive, we were curious to see how Armenia stacked up. And so we headed to the Armenian wine country and a town called Areni.

After leaving Lake Sevan you take one of the most scenic roads in Armenia as you head towards Areni. This road is also a part of the ancient Silk Road. Along the route is the Orbelian Caravanserai, built in 1332 for weary travelers and their animals.

Areni is home to the earliest known winery, the Areni-1 wine cave which is over 6,000 years old. There was a small hic-up in our plan to visit the wine cave, Sebastian was not allowed! We only learned this as we were buying tickets but once we tucked him into his bag, “No dog, No problem.” And so we all got to visit the caves!  

After our cave visit we took a side trip up a lovely dirt road to…you guessed it, another monastery. Sebastian and I stayed in the car this time. In the year 301 Armenia became the first nation to adopt Christianity as its official religion thus the abundance of churches and monasteries to visit.

We had a very lively lunch next to the wine cave; a group of teachers were celebrating the end of the school year we think. They turned the music WAY up and turned the joint into a dance party. They even pulled Shani into their dance circle! (She was quite embarrassed by the way)

Later that evening we had scheduled a wine tasting at the Momik WineCube. It was just a few kilometers from the guesthouse we were staying in and our host graciously drove us over and then came to pick us up.

The Momik winery is in its 3rd or 4th generation and they make some really good wine. The WineCube is like a tasting room that gives them a place to prep the appetizers and wine for tastings. This we found out was partially funded by USAID – finally our tax dollars hard at work! We had a lovely table out in the vines under some trees to sample the white, rose and red wines they produce. Narine (one of the winemakers) even made Sebastian his own appetizer when she learned he loves carrots. She even grabbed her sister to see the spectacle of a dog going nuts for carrot.

After the wine region we were headed further south to the town of Goris. We stayed at a lovely hotel called the Popock. A word to the wise, it is a pretty steep walk down to the center of town. That being said we took the trip up and down the hill more than once.

One of the main reasons we had ventured down to Goris was to see the cave dwellings on the outskirts of town. That ‘easy’ hike was a bit more than we bargained for. The cave dwellings date from the Mediaeval times but the area around Goris has been inhabited since the Stone Ages so it isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine they were occupied much earlier. We packed a lunch and hoofed it for a few hours doing a large loop up and around the caves.

If you look closely you can see the tram in transit in front of the cloud.

Leaving Goris Shani wanted to do a little side trip to try and see Tatev Monastery, this one you take an aerial tramway to access or a difficult 4X4 road. This was one of the other main reasons for visiting the Goris region. In the end she decided it wasn’t worth the fright of taking the aerial tramway (and Sebastian and I waiting for several hours in the parking lot) but we did drive a bit further trying to get a glimpse but that never happened.

We then had to decide where to go next. There was another guest house in Areni that accepted dogs called Wine Art and we spent one night there and then decided to skip Yervan but head that direction anyway to see another…monastery! We also got to see Mt. Ararat from the other side.

The route around Yervan was supposed to be an E road (a classification like a highway) and it was for a ways and then it just ended even though Google told us differently. We ended up on side streets and through what might have been a city dump on some very bad roads with huge pot holes.  In the end, we did join up with the highway again and ended our day in Dilijan where we spent a couple of uneventful days. We then spent a night in the Lori Valley and crossed back into Georgia.

Sometimes we find ourselves in very interesting accommodations.

Stay tuned as we spend a few days back in Tbilisi, I finally get a hair cut and then we drive The Georgian Military road high up into the Caucuses mountains.