Today's program was to wake up early, take a marshrutka to the village of Sagarejo from where we would hire a taxi to take us to the cave city of Davit Gareja.  Then, we would cross into Azerbaijan and by night fall make it to the Silk Road center of Sheki.  We did implement the first part of the plan: we woke up early.  After breakfast, as Shelly was finishing packing, I went to the ATM to withdraw money in order to pay the hotel without tapping into our precious reserve of US dollars.  It didn't swallow my card.  A passerby deciphered the message as: not in service (probably out of cash).  I went to the other ATM I knew about, with the same fortune.  Then, I made the mistake of getting in a cab, and saying the word bancomat while pointing at my card.  With usual Georgian kindness and desire to help, the driver spent the next hour taking me to every ATM machines in Tbilisi, profusely inquiring after each failed attempt, and insisting that the next would work.  Whether he gave up or he realized that I was saying the word hotel louder and louder, I don't know.

When I arrived at the hotel, Shelly was very mad and hardly spoke to me for the whole marshrutka ride to the departure point (not Didube this time).  We boarded a crowded microbus and an hour later were in Sagarejo, a much bigger village than I had expected.  Along the way, the beautiful landscape of rolling cultivated hills interspersed by nice little villages with chickens, cows and pigs walking freely on the street, softened Shelly's anger.  Our plan to visit the cave monastery complex of Davit Gareja soon crumbled: what our guidebook seemed to describe as a two hour excursion would have taken half the day according to the locals, preventing us to reach Azerbaijan that evening.  We decided to skip it.

Then, we had to take another marshrutka to the border town of Lagodekhi.  We were pointed to the stop and we waited, trying to match the first and last letter of the sign on every incoming microbus with the Georgian characters for "l" and "i".  Nothing.  Meanwhile, the cab driver who offered to take us to Davit Gareja had moved his car nearby and seemed to be looking at us with the stare of a vulture waiting for its prey to die.  The locals confirmed that none of these buses was going to Lagodekhi.  At a certain point, while Shelly was buying something to drink, a friendly chap approached me with a booklet written in some 30 languages.   To my astonishment, he was a Jehovah witness on a conversion tour: ... even in rural Georgia!  Anyway, he was very nice, and spent the next hour with us looking at the sign of every marshrutka coming by.  We were getting cold and a little bit dishearten.  At a certain point, he signaled a microbus (which did not seem to have Lagodekhi among its written destinations) but the driver did not seem to notice.  It stopped 200 meters further, probably to get something from one of the stands along the road.  The Jehovah witness sprinted after it with Shelly behind, and had it back up to the point I had reached dragging our backpacks.  It was the right minibus, and we were grateful to be on it: it would have been several hours to the next.

The hills around Sagarejo soon became steeper and covered with thick forested and we soon made it through a pass over a small mountain.  The potholes on the road became bigger and the villages more rural, although I wouldn't call them destitute.  The views of the Caucasus, with its snowy peaks and Europe on the other side, were magnificent.  We then crossed a flat alluvional valley and as the foothills of the next range approached, we arrived in Lagodekhi.  The border was a couple of kilometers away and a 5 laris cab rid took us there.

Now the border crossing formalities.  We were imagining already nasty guard extracting bribes from  us.  We plunged into it with a deep breath.  The Georgian border guards were instead very nice, offering us peanuts while they were registering our passage on a booklet.  We crossed the border, a bridge over the dry bed of a seasonal river and handed the same passports to the Azeri officer.  He was curious to see tourists on his border, probably the first in months, and promptly registered us on his booklet and stamped our visas.  The  directed us to the small circular customs office, where the officers went through the same ritual, and even arranged a taxi to the next town for us.  We were walking to the cab, commenting on the unexpected kindness and professionality of the border officials, when a voice called us from a trailer.  The sign said something about sanitation and quarantine.  Two men in civilian clothes asked us for our vaccination cards and were dismayed to see us pull them out.  Nice try!  Yet they didn't give up: the senior of the two pulled a filthy thermometer, but ended up just touching my forehead when I started laughing.  He then passed a beeping instrument on Shelly's backpack.  The meticulous fever and radiation check amounted  to $10 each.  No: we vigorously pointed at our visas and the "price" dropped to $3 each.  Pointing to the customs building reduced further it by half.  Having proudly bargained the bribe down and eager to get out of there, we paid the $3 in laris and jumped on the cab.

For 20 laris, he drove us to the next sizable town, Zaqatala, some 15 or 20 Km away.  From there, we wanted to catch a bus or a marshrutka to Sheki.  Along the way, we attempted some small talk, but the language barrier yielded poor results.  He stopped shortly after the border in the bazaar of a little village where we had the opportunity to exchange our few remaining laris, although not exactly at a bank rate.  In Zaqatala, the driver inquired for us about buses to Sheki: Baku yes but not Sheki today.  He drove to the marshrutka stop and did the same, with a similar outcome.  We were almost ready to pay him (probably a fortune) to drive us all the way to Sheki.  Then, to our surprise, he flagged a truck down and arranged the ride for us.

The huge trailer truck looked brand new.  It didn't appear to carry any cargo at first.  The young driver in a checkered shirt came to us smiling, cut a plastic bag open and lied it over the mat on the passenger side, and invited us to climb into the cabin.  Shelly sat on the spacious berth behind the seats, while I took place on what felt like an armchair on the passenger side.  The truck started rolling softly, absorbing with nonchalance the pot-holes on the road.  Abdullah was Turkish, from the eastern sea port of Trabzon.  He was transporting three British steel plates (that we did not see initially) between Turkey and Baku where they were to be used in some new refinery construction project.  He was very nice and did everything he could to make us comfortable.  Communication happened, in spite of the lack of a common language: he was very impressed by our trip and soon publicized it on his cell phone.

The ride was gentle, except for the few deeper pot-holes that Abdullah did not manage to avoid (he was taking a great care of his truck, of which he very proud).  Azerbaijan looked cleaner and tidier than Georgia.  Even road side chickens were a rarity.  The most impressive constructions were the luxurious gas stations that added color and shine to even the smallest of villages.  Yes, "luxurious": I have never seen gas stations like that in the US or anywhere else.

At a certain point, he stopped and there we discovered that that another truck from the same company formed a little convoy to Baku.  The other driver was the recipient of the phone calls.  The stop turned out to be a simple but delicious dinner of pickles, thick yoghourt with dill, and two varieties of grilled meat  (one with bones and the other with garlic).  We wanted to invite him and his colleague, but they refused, treating us instead.  We were back on the road for another hour or so,  listening to music, trying to communicate, or simply looking at the long shadows projected by the setting sun.  At a certain point, Abdullah pointed to countless lights on the flank of distant hill: Sheki (it sounded more like shechie).  A few minutes later, he stopped at the intersection to those lights, arranged a taxi for us, and refused any form of compensation.  We thanked him profusely and still marvel at his extreme kindness.

The cab ride was another story.  The decrepit taxi made a first stop at the sparkling AZ Petrol station, and got just enough gas to make it to town.  The ride took about 20 minutes during which the driver stopped several times to ask for directions.  Eventually, he let us down at the top of a steep road in front of our destination: Sheki's caravanserai.

The beautiful brick building was a materialization of my childhood fantasies from the Thousand and One Nights: past the small door in the huge wooden portal, a big dome opened on a courtyard flanked by two stories of arched balconies, the caretaker's office was behind more wood and a yellowish glass, shortly further a spiraled stone staircase brought us upstairs, there long arched corridors lead to the rooms, each introduced by a wooden door and a small windows behind a wrought iron grid on either side and each facing the central courtyard.  The darkness highlighted by the feeble lamps made the place even more mystical.  The rooms were actually suites consisting of a relaxation room with a sofa, a coffee table and a television (not original) and a separate bedroom.  A wood stove was there to offset the bitter cold  inside.  The walls showed exposed bricks and were otherwise decorated with drapery and paintings.  The furniture was simple but functional, and each room had several plants.

We had the choice between normal rooms for 60,000 manat ($12) and "lux" rooms for 150,000 (about $30).  The difference being  hot water and electricity (which, as we later understood, meant a TV and a small fridge, not lighting).   Hot water made us opt the lux room, even if  it was a bit more expensive.  The search for a common language to discussed all these things settled on Arabic: like Shelly, the caretaker had lived for some time in Cairo, and this made them best buddies.  We  took possession of the room as a helper was lighting the fire.  We then went to the the restaurant for a glass of wine before retiring.  There the linguistic link was German: one of the very friendly waiters, Vugar was fluent in it and had sometimes to repeat things over and over before I would get them.  He offered us a bottle of a local Port, which was very good.

I was up for another half an hour or so writing this journal  before the lights went off: black-out or curfew, it was bed time.