Days 21-23: Living the Pawrent life 🐶🐾

The drive up to Yerevan was looooong and more stressful than any other drive I have ever undertaken! Shya is a very chill dog, but he got very car sick. He vomited the largest amount of vomit I’d ever seen (he’d had a good breakfast and lunch at that point) onto the backseat and down into that space between the seat and the door (it seems he tried to not vomit in the car but had no choice). We felt soooooo bad for him - motion sickness sucks! 😮‍💨☹️😰

We couldn’t really do anything for him - we were in a big bulky car that was doing a good job at shielding us from a lot of the bumpiness, etc, and we were going pretty slow most of the time, but the roads were still winning in that respect. They’re just so bad! Even if there are no potholes, it’s still a shit road! It’s like they don’t flatten the ground underneath first, they just plonk the tar down on the natural bumpy land! And as the driver, you cannot lose focus at any point because a pothole (or a series of potholes, sometimes as big as an entire lane) big enough to ruin your tyres and make you crash your car might be just around the corner. Also, a car on the other side of the road might be on your side of the road, even though they can see you coming, and you’re just meant to get out of the way! Oh, and the cars behind you will be up. your. ass, until they’re able to pass - not in an asshole way like it would be perceived in NZ, it’s just what is done here - if someone wants to get past you (everyone wanted to get past us lol), in general, it’s understood as a valid position to hold for them to be right up behind you. From a safety perspective, this isn’t great (especially when you have to slam brakes for an unavoidable pothole), but from a lack of road rage perspective it’s awesome! There’s hardly any road rage here (well, that’s how I perceived it), because people just do what they need to do and they’re willing to risk death for it 😅

Upon reaching Yerevan, we had a few things to do before heading over to where Shya would hopefully be staying. 1. We had to buy him flea & tick spray, 2. We also had to get him some deworming tablets, a harness, and a lead. And 3. We had to find a place where we could do those treatments before taking him to meet the other dogs. Ben found that the accommodation we’d booked for that night said pets were welcome on request. Again, we doubted that that would extend to this big dirty fluffball, but we asked if we could bring him into the garden for an hour - which was accepted. Yay!

Finding this accommodation was a mission. First off, the drive through Yerevan was pretty stressful, but not as insane as I’d expected (probably because we didn’t go into the city centre). Second, we came to two different places on the map, neither of which were our accommodation. Please bear in mind that we are now driving around on small, potholed, sometimes paved sometimes dirt roads in a massive car, after a looooong day of driving. The third time we came to a place, I felt really tired and stressed, and I didn’t feel like having to try to talk to locals again about whether or not there was a b&b here. So, I asked Ben if he could do that this time. This weakness of mine turned out to be costly! We had the backseat window 1/3 down, and when Ben got out of the car, of course Shya attempted to follow - he’s terrified of being abandoned, this was clear even in Tatev. We have no idea how, but he actually got out of the window - and scratched up the outside of the car door in the process 🫪 Shya was happy again, however, being reunited with Ben 😅 We, on the other hand, were now exploding with stress - other dogs had started barking, Shya was now worried about those dogs barking, locals were curious, we couldn’t find our accommodation, driving sucked, we were running out of time to do the tick and flea treatment, and our dog had just scratched up our rental 😮‍💨 Deep breaths! 😮‍💨 We were also very hungry, having not really eaten all day.

Turns out, this time we’d found our accommodation - omg! Hallelujah 😅 After greeting our hosts, we got to work defleaing and deticking Shya. We rewarded him with treats and kisses - he was having a big day, and it was about to get even bigger 😅 We realised we hadn’t organised dinner, and we therefore didn’t have much food for Shya…all we really had for him was bread. He’s used to receiving small bits of bread, but after having vomited up his breakfast and lunch, we felt bad for missing that detail! Especially considering we’d just been in a pet store! But oh well, not much could be done - at least he wasn’t going entirely without. We also imagined Gayane would have some food to share with him later on 🤗

Another 30 minute drive later, we pulled up outside Gayane’s “dog hotel”. Gosh, we were nervous! We didn’t think Shya was aggressive at all, but he would be scared, which could lead him to be aggressive… Gayane had said a bit of growling, etc, was alright, it was just if he was outright aggressive we’d have to take him away. We had all of our fingers and toes crossed that Shya would cope, even after already having had such a topsy turvy day!

We could hear the many dogs at Gayane’s barking. This freaked Shya out a bit, and we had to use a treat to coax him out of the car 😅 When the gate was opened, we saw three big, excited, fluffy faces waiting for us. Ben picked up Shya (who wouldn’t move otherwise) and we went inside. Shya was fine whilst in Ben’s arms, and the other three big dogs went about trying to sniff him and us. After a while, Ben set Shya down, and that’s when we realised just how scared Shya was. He growled a heap at these other three fluff balls every time they came too close, but he wasn’t aggressive. Ben snuggled Shya to try and reassure him he was safe! The three fluff balls that had been chosen to meet Shya first were all female, and all extremely friendly. Eventually, Shya became a little curious and starting trying to sniff these dogs in return, and after a while he was relatively comfortable.

That’s when Gayane decided to bring out one of the big boys! She said he’d wear a muzzle so that if Shya bit him, he couldn’t bite Shya back. Turns out it wasn’t Shya we had to worry about in terms of biting - upon seeing Shya, this dog (Gríg) just went for the attack and lunged at Shya. Thank god he was wearing a muzzle! They scrapped and Shya cried (but didn’t bite Gríg), and then Gríg was pulled off of him.

This freaked us out! Gayane reassured us that it’s a male dog hierarchy thing, that Gríg is the big boss, and that he will wear a muzzle until he calms down with Shya. Obviously Shya was extremely scared after this, and barked his higher pitched bark a lot whenever Gríg came too close (when dogs bark with a higher pitch compared to their normal bark, it means they’re scared / stressed / overwhelmed). Eventually, Gríg was taken away, and another big male dog - Crum - was brought out. Again, Shya was very freaked out and barked (well, more like yelped) a lot, but Crum was more interested in us and was actually really clever with Shya. He stayed away for a time playing with toys and running around with the little dog, Archie. After a while, Crum started testing Shya, and when Shya would start growling Crum would turn around and move away. Eventually, Shya was more or less okay with Crum and allowed him close enough to check him out - Shya even sniffed Crum in return - thank heavens 😅 After that, Shya calmed down quite a lot and even went on a little sniffari around the fence line. He was too scared to do any toilet business, however, even though we knew he needed to 🥺

So that was largely that. Gayane said it was okay for Shya to stay until Wednesday, and they’d see how he went over the next couple of days. So Ben and I organised that we’d come to visit again then. We said a big goodbye to Shya, who was concerned about us leaving, but Gayane gave him treats as soon as we left, so we imagine he was alright. He was also given a big dinner! 🥰

When the gate closed behind us, Ben and I just looked at each other like 🫪, communicating without words “bloody hell! That was intense!”. Upon getting in the car we breathed a sigh of almost but not quite relief. Apparently that had gone well! 😅 Gayane was confident Shya would be fine to stay however long, but we’d still said that if anything happened to just let us know and we’d come and get Shya. Driving back through Yerevan to our accommodation in the dark was…not fun 🤩 but we made it - we even stopped to get kebabs on the way 🤗

The following morning we were faced with a dilemma - how do we get all of Shya’s fur and dirt out of the car? Luckily the seats were a leather material, so they were easy to clean. The floor on the other hand, where Shya had taken to lying at times, was not so merciful 🤪 Some solid elbow grease and a vacuum cleaner (loaned graciously by our hosts) later, the car looked like Ben, myself, nor Shya had ever been inside it 😇

We spent that day stocking up on things we’d need for the second half of our hike - more gas, a new (warmer) sleeping bag for Ben, more food, etc etc etc. We also picked up a big bag of dog food for Shya! Then we had to drive the car to where is was to be returned, which was an incredibly stressful experience. The car had to be returned in the city centre, and we must’ve chosen a peak traffic time to return it (all the timing for that stuff is different here), because oh my lord was Yerevan heaving with traffic! Cars were coming from every direction and there were people e v e r y w h e r e. When we finally got to the road the rental office was on, there was no street parking, and all of the roads down to a paid car park were so small and sooo busy! We were also running out of petrol (they gave the car to us on empty, so we were returning it on empty). We ventured down busy side roads in our search, and at one point we did find a car park, but I had to parallel park…I’d never parallel parked on that side before, it was a huge car, and there was no real space to manoeuvre, so of course I got it completely wrong. A random man came over and tried to help, but this unfortunately just made me explode with overwhelm - I burst out crying and drove off 😅😅 Please consider/remember I’d done a heck of a lot of driving under high stress over the last 24 hours 🤣 She was t i r e d ! I was 100% ready to be rid of that car and never drive here ever again!!! After that we thankfully managed to park almost right outside the office as there was now a lot of parking space there 😮‍💨 Thank goodness for that! I was having conniptions about never being able to get rid of this car 🤣🤣🤣

For those wondering, yes we had to pay for the scratches Shya made on the car, but it ended up only being $300NZD, which, compared to the $750 we were expecting, seemed alright 🤪

We then went for dinner at an incredible Japanese restaurant called “the dragon garden”. We ate a delicious meal of baked aubergine with chicken - yummiest thing I’ve ever had in my life 🤤, raspberry chicken, vegetable fried rice, edamame (obvs), sushi with butterfish and crab, and a jug of homemade mint tea 🤤 After eating what we could, we made our way back to our hotel to get comfy and hopefully have a good sleep. 😴

The following morning we had the immense pleasure of visiting Shya again! Ben and I were very excited to see how he was getting on. On arrival, Shya was incredibly excited to see us! He cried a fair amount. He isn’t a barking dog, really…the only times we’ve seen him bark are when he’s scared or trying to be scary. Otherwise he’s a very quiet boy 🥰

Shya is doing really well! He has started learning how to play, and even did a bit of tug of war with Ben! He’s friends with all dogs but Gríg, who he is still terrified of. Hopefully that improves - Gayane isn’t worried, so that’s reassuring. She says they’ll calm down in time. So that morning it was confirmed that Shya can stay there until October or whenever he is ready to go to Sweden! 🥳🥳🥳 So, Shya has been microchipped, his name is officially Shya Krebs, his birthday is October 23, 2023 (#libradog), and Ben and I are officially his pawrents! We are soooooo excited for this chapter in our lives to begin come October! I mean, technically it’s already begun, but you know what I mean 🥰🥰🥰

After saying goodbye to Shya and promising to be back in 3-ish weeks, we got in a taxi and sped (literally 140km/hr) to Gyumri. Here, we washed all of our belongings and really got organised for Part Two of our hike. We’d like to go back to Gyumri for a proper visit - it seems like quite a cool place. Depending on when we finish our hike, we might have time to go back and spend some time there!

Now, we are at Lake Arpi. Lake Arpi is situated in a large national park (that spans Georgia, Armenia, and Turkey), and the TCT officially starts at the tourist centre here. It’s almost as though we are back where we started a month ago - in a snowy, brown, leafless landscape! And it is ssooooooo cold here! When we arrived here we were met by a man - Hrant (sounds a bit like Grant) - who seems to manage the tourist arrival side of things here. He was very knowledgeable about the various species of bird, flower, fish, plant, and animal that live here! He also explained that swimming is not allowed in this lake because it is too swampy, and people just sink into the mud 😰

We explained our hiking plan to Hrant, and he informed us that the mountain range between here and Stepanavan is still deeply under snow and he doesn’t recommend hiking it. Buggeration! Because of this, he suggested we hike around the lake for a couple of days and then get a taxi to the other side of the mountains. So, we set off to do that. We made it almost 2km before a massive hail storm arrived - much to Ben’s delight! It sent the temperature plummeting even further. The weather was looking unpredictable this afternoon with thunder storms, which has lead us to change plans and stay in the guest house instead of camping - much to Ben’s disappointment. This little house is more like a NZ DOC hut, but with electricity and blankets! It’s not very clean, but it’ll do 👌

Ben is currently out running around the lake, and I am tucked up by the heater 🤭 Tomorrow we are getting a taxi to a town called “Katnaghbyur” (I can’t help with the pronunciation of this one, sorry 🤣). From there we hike to the outskirts of Stepanavan, which will take us back down to 1400m 🤩

Peace out, peeps! Hope you’re all having a wonderful time. Missing you all loads 🤗🩵 I’m actually a little homesick at the moment 🥺 Being in a country that largely doesn’t speak your language and has an entirely different culture and way of life has definitely brought up the homesickness a few times! 🩵 I am having an awesome time, obviously! Just…yeah…missing my humans and pups back home 🥰🤗

Aight! Onto Part Two… 👀Read more