Abkhaz nightmare: tourists from Russia “cursed everything in the world”

We got to Goryachiy Klyuch and got stuck in a traffic jam in front of the bridge for 2 hours. 40 degrees overboard, stinking and greyhound trucks, cameras, local scorchers. Accident? No. Blocked? No. Just four lanes after the bridge merge into one towards Dzhubga. And then there’s the traffic light. Red. And there is a traffic cop standing right there, watching so that they don’t go into the oncoming lane.

No, of course, they do not regulate traffic in any way – for example, depending on the time of day and weekends, the sporadically changing flow of cars – people go from the sea, people go to the sea – and does not organize any reverse lanes so that at least instead of one there are two on the most problematic section of the road. Not! He just stands and quickly waves his wand in a circle. Like, hand leads. And so – one lane through the mountains and valleys up to the border with Abkhazia.

We had a little fun and picked up speed in Sochi itself. But pleasure cannot last forever.

The border point with Abkhazia is complete trash here! Like a transit prison. Abkhazians calmly pass through their section of the border, and let our people through without any problems. But domestic border guards …. Car drivers present documents without leaving the car. Passengers, on the other hand, are “marinated” in a gloomy iron sump for hours, in a crowd. They check the documents on the computer, on the database.

Civilization has obviously not yet reached the checkpoint of our border with Abkhazia. And this is all in modern Sochi, on the road. (By the way, we literally got to the border with Abkhazia by two in the morning – despite the fact that we left Rostov at 12 noon). Darkness – at least gouge out your eye. Where to go is not clear.

Is this a border? Where are the border guards? We rush from one stall to another. Where did you go?! You can’t come here! And you can’t come here! Some uncle came up in the dark (he seems to look like a border guard) and says confidentially to our crowd of 10 people – follow me. They believed it, went through some storehouses, along a winding path among huge trucks with lit lights and not turned off engines, through some pallets – in short, everything, like in a fruit and vegetable base.

She became a leader, she decided to quickly escape from this hell, otherwise they would drag her into a truck like a gaping lamb. My husband is not around – he has long passed the border in a car and is waiting for me on the other side. “Will it just wait?” – pulsating panic thought, so I’m the first. I dared to ask the silent guide – where are we going? Where there are fewer people and no queues. Reassured.

We got there – a corral made of iron gratings “sky in a box”, everything is divided into sectors and there are border booths, and a lonely light is burning there. There is a silent girl in uniform, in trousers, I ask – is this a border point, here to give a passport? Where to go? Silent and does not blink. Is it alive? She stuck her passport out the window. And – about a miracle! – escaped straight to her husband, into the car.

Do you think it was easier on the way back? Do you think we were given a piece of paper that needs to be filled out like on an airplane, at the entrance, they will put a stamp on it on arrival, and then at the exit – you just give the piece of paper? Wrong!

Three in the morning and more trash. Only still with suitcases. And no queue. Both sick and without masks. And in a stuffy little unventilated room. And very leisurely girls-border guards in the windows. Dear. And for three hours. But we got up early in order to get to Rostov faster, without traffic jams. Dreaming!

Joy has been replaced by indifference

The inhabitants of Abkhazia are now completely different from what they used to be. A few years ago we were in Pitsunda – there was so much hospitality and desire to receive tourists as dear guests! At the same time it is unobtrusive.

On our current visit, we were nostalgic about foreign service – even in Turkey, managers and managers tried to fulfill every whim. If you don’t like the number, we’ll change it! Sea view? Pay extra 100 rubles of ours – and it is yours for the whole holiday. Here is a bungalow hotel – 4,500 per day in Ldzaa, with cows, like in India, on the way to the sea, with puddles, ditches and pits, and just an incessant stream of cars.

Mountain people love fast driving, and without rules. And without dismantling the pedestrian road. Yes, she is, in fact, not. There is only one road – for vacationers, and for cows, and pets driven out of the yard (such a number of thoroughbred shepherd dogs, spaniels, pugs, roaming the garbage dumps in search of food, have not been seen anywhere else), and for proud autodzhigits.

In the picture of the rented hotel, everything was fine – a separate entrance to the room from the garden. But the room turned out to be a corner one, practically in a technical room, and the view was not towards the garden, but towards the switchboard and laundry room. “Change! Beside, he was freed.” Never. “Make a discount – the room is in the service area.” Never! “Go, swim, woman, stop disturbing everyone. Look how beautiful. Myusser Reserve!

I was pleased with the sea – clean, blue, white large pebbles, like in Greece, and the Pitsundo-Myussersky Reserve, which is coolly polluted. However, there grow (among toilet papers and bags of chips) unique lemon-colored dune flowers, similar to our daylilies. Fragrant. Give your last for this smell.

Towards were lovely Abkhazian old women in black, with such a nice bouquet of these flowers. As it turned out, these are not just flowers, but rare, protected by law. And tearing them is strictly prohibited. But I didn’t know, there isn’t a single sign in the reserve – I plucked one. And she deeply regretted it. A whole family of visitors to the reserve – father, mother and daughter – practically attacked me with fists: they shouted, took pictures, said that they had run after the police and disappeared into the thicket of trees. I looked at the rare flower with regret. I learned about its protection only from these not quite adequate nature lovers.

We were unlucky with the weather – out of two weeks of vacation in mid-July, it rained for a week. Caught a bunch of infections. They got sick with everything they could – first rotavirus, then coronavirus. We arrived in Moscow – we were sick for a month.

The coolest thing is that in the same Ldzaa there are a couple of so-called club hotels and villas for rent. Along the line of the beach, but not with a view of the sea, as it is closed by a pine grove along the entire coastline. If I say that there are 10 thousand rubles a day, I will be very mistaken. 20 at least. But is it necessary? For such money – everything is the same as for 4,500, and for 3,000, as soon as you step out the gate: dirt, crowds of vacationers, stray hungry animals, second-rate shnyaga sold in shops and stalls …

Fruit is more expensive than in Moscow

The only thing that pleasantly surprised us was that literally for a penny, cheaper than in Greece, excellent olives in jars from Turkey are on sale. Dried, in olive oil. And salty goat cheese.

Otherwise, there are practically no tasty local products at all, perhaps you need to know the place, but we did not find them. The stores are full of GMOs, strange milk and fake sausages. I have never seen real local khachapuri. “Khachapurov” as the locals say. Those that sell bake slowly, lazily, and for no less than 700 rubles. This is the dish of the day. Which few people dare to take for such money.

All fruits and vegetables are more expensive than in Moscow, and everything is brought, well, if not from the base, then definitely from the only Pyaterochka in all of Abkhazia on the Sukhumi highway. The supermarket pleased us with its beautiful view. Just Wolford! Kind aunts-saleswomen in the meat department, such pleasant Abkhazians – cleaned sausages for me from the film for a flock of hungry, ready to devour each other, dogs thrown out by people.

And the cat was cool. Sandy-red, sitting at the entrance, waiting – maybe even today one of these two-legged, coming out of this sausage paradise with huge bags of food, will buy him a bag of cat happiness for 25 rubles?

I could not feed the cat in any way, because the dogs quickly figured out the sausages and tried to do the same with the red competitor.

And then the cat and I understood each other. They pretended we left. And they themselves met not at the entrance, but on the side of the Pyaterochka. And quietly ate everything. Actually, we had “cat” dates whenever we drove somewhere along the Sukhumi highway. And since it was raining, we only did what we drove on it. Either to the New Athos Monastery, then to the caves with stalactites (they didn’t hit right away: crowds of restless vacationers, tickets are snapped up), then to hot sulfur springs with some kind of dirt. Ridiculously, a local security guard told us the way. To our copros, where are the sources, where to go – he waved his hand:

– You see, there are dirty, grimy ones, if you want to be the same – focus on them.

Developing the theme of “Pyaterochka”, I note: local merchants from the village of Ldzaa, obviously, buy goods in this very supermarket (15 minutes drive) and sell it on the shore at exorbitant prices. They sell everything that is bad at home in the barn. Just not the soles of old boots.

Crowds of people who have come in large numbers with inflatable geese and crocodiles whistle and process – there is no other word for it – everything in a row. The smell of sheep is poured into a portion of pilaf in the form of oily slurry and sold for 300 rubles. Pasties in black boiling oil scatter. They drink a variety of multi-colored bourda by hecalitres, which the locals made and sell under the name “wine” in stalls on the way to the beach in huge glass bottles. We were also unlucky. In the so-called wine boutique “Apsny” and “Lykhny” sell for 350. We decided – let’s take the author’s. For 700! A bummer – the same “Isabella”, only in a box …

“The partner broke his spine”

What is a beach without masseurs? Volodya from Rostov posted an ad on the Web. They called, offered a job on the beach in Ldzaa. Agreed. On the day, the owner of the beach (and there is one!) Gives half the proceeds. Prices are standard: 1 500 – hour. He does not cheat, he scrupulously writes down all clients in a notebook. Time, price. Is in demand.

“One working?” – we ask. For now, yes. The partner broke his spine during the rafting. Professional sportsman. In a vest, in a helmet. It was thrown out of the boat on a powerful rift, like a blade of grass – and under the water. And the stream is stormy, and back against the stones. Everyone who was with him remained, and he was thrown out. Three months downtime. Gives him a massage now. Volodya is going to move to Moscow: the season is closing.

Results. The main shock of the trip is the myriad of vacationers, compared to what it was two or three years ago. Kemerovo, Vorkuta, Irkutsk – and further down the list. Normal Russian cities. But tourists – as if from a time machine that returned the country to the USSR – all in crampons and curlers, for dancing – in a frill and stilettos. As if they were pulled out of old chests, shaken from the dust a little bit and urgently, on a voucher, sent to Pitsunda to rest in a sanatorium.