Deborah Semel Demirtaş

When Harun and I planned our Road Trip to the Republic of Georgia, well, as Lou Reed once said, “those were different times”. I know I promised (you and me both) that I’d keep up with the story of the road trip, including photos during and artwork after, but what with coups, bombs, witch hunts, elections, more bombs, even more bombs, and a few mass shootings for good measure, well, it really is hard to concentrate, whether we’re in Turkey or the United States. In an effort to wind up the Georgian Tale before it becomes just a vague memory, let’s move on from Kobuletti to Ureki.

And let me say this: Ureki is better than Kobuletti.

Ureki has magnificent magnetic black sand that is supposed to be good for you.

Ureki has an Azeri kebabci who has his sheep meat shipped in daily on a bus from Azerbaijan to Tbilisi (and who uses fresh coriander in his salad, which is good news for those of us who don’t have the “makes-coriander-taste-like-soap” gene).

Ureki has cheap and cheerful Georgian wine in plastic bottles sold on the street and outstanding wine in real glass bottles available at the corner markets, of which there are many.

Ureki has hotels where instead of a sign reading “no food or drink from outside allowed on premises”, you will most likely find a very large refrigerator where hotel guests are expected to store all the food and drink they’ve purchased from outside and brought onto the premises. (As the best of our hotel’s Georgian Cuisine consisted of what I can only call gruel – although it was damn good gruel – this is a very good thing. Another good thing was that in addition to gruel, our hotel came with a caretaker who spoke rudimentary Turkish from her erstwhile days taking care of old people in Ankara, and she came with a sister just a phone-call away with even better Turkish, since the phone call was to Ankara, where she was still taking care of old people.)

Ureki has touts on the main drag who will help you find a hotel. (This was helpful for us, considering we were among the masses of non-Georgian tourists for whom the Georgian alphabet is very curly – although it would have been more helpful if we had a better command of Russian, which is the language of Georgian tourism, which leans heavily on cars full of families from Russia and Armenia. We managed with “da”, “nyet”, finger-counting and a phone call to a Georgian health-care worker in Ankara.)

Ureki has a parking-area-cum-campgrounnd that is shaded by sweet-scented pines and is right on the edge of the beach. (I can recommend it highly for parking, but less so for camping. Let’s just say that when we decided to make use of its camping potential – along with a number of others with TR plates in amongst the RUSs and AMs – we were treated to a bit of all-night entertainment from a few friendly Georgians who managed to strategically place themselves next to our tent and endulge in a rather boisterous, vodka-fueled party; they were even more friendly in the morning, once they had taken up their hotel-touting positions on the strip – greeting us with a “Good morning, Turk! Perhaps you would like to stay in a hotel this evening?”)

So, now, here are a few lovely photos from the beach at Ureki. (You will notice, I took a few liberties… )

Photo 38 (Ureki No. 1): Green Umbrella

Picture 39 (Ureki No. 2): Black Sand (and Parachute)

Picture 40 (Ureki No. 3): Beach Boy