Day 28: First contact… 👽🛸👾

Our hosts served up a wonderful breakfast this morning! The omelette is genuinely one of the best I’ve had - it had this kind of sausage in it that made it soooooo tasty! 🤤 Breakfast in Armenia typically comes with black or herbal tea, and they do this delicious thing where they mix (what we think are) sugared fruit preserves into the tea… This concoction, seemingly no matter the fruit flavour, is genuinely one of the best things I’ve ever encountered! I’ve never been a huge tea drinker, but pair tea with this fruit preserve stuff and I will drink an entire pot 😝 IT IS SOOOOOO YUM!!!!!!!! 😍😍😍 We will definitely be bringing this idea back to NZ and sharing it around!!

We really took our time getting ready to go this morning. Today was only going to be 12km, and the terrain wasn’t going to be arduous - aside from the first 4.5km climb out of Odzun. It’s so lovely when days like this occur, when we can really slow down and appreciate the littler moments - like the tea in our cups 🥰 Also, after doing 3 x 21km days in a row, being faced with a 12km day feels like nothing, so there was no real rush 🤣

In saying that, the climb out of Odzun did feel laborious 😅 Before we’d even left the town it started raining lightly on us, but even so it was still really warm. Halfway up the hill, I actually took off the bottom half of my pant legs, so I wore shorts for the first time since leaving NZ! My legs felt wonderfully free, and much cooler 🤗

Once that initial climb was out of the way 😮‍💨, our path moved into the forest. Again, this forest was very pretty and full of life! It took us almost all the way to Hagvi, but before descending to the little town we crossed a large paddock that had a group of shepherds in the middle eating lunch. We walked over and said hello, and in reply to their enquiry, let them know we were walking to Sedvi and then tomorrow to Sanahin. The shepherds asked if we had enough food and water. We assured them we had enough to continue with, and said our goodbyes. How lovely! Their lack of concern about our walk to Sedvi told us that we probably didn’t have to worry too much about sheepdogs, etc. So that was also nice!

As we were passing through Hagvi, Ben and I commented on how different the towns are in the north of Armenia compared to the south. There’s not nearly as much dilapidation here north as there is south! And a lot of the towns are paved - Odzun even sometimes had footpaths!! 🤯 Luxury!! 💅🏼

THEN, two people appeared before us - walking - who also had packs on their backs. *Jaw drop* - had we really stumbled across some other hikers?! 😱 As they got closer we called out hi, and I exclaimed “you are hiking!”, to which they said “yes!”. We then explained that they’re the first actual hikers we’ve seen in the month we’ve been in Armenia! We were so mindblown! Also it was so lovely to have a conversation in English - turns out these two guys are hiking Armenia for 10 days, 160km total, and this was their second day. How epic! We let them know we were hiking the Armenia section of the TCT, which they seemed really excited about! It’s so lovely connecting with people who “get it” 🤗 They were both really enjoying Armenia so far. Tonight they are planning to camp at the monastery ruin just below Odzun! How cool! They said there’s a young English woman a few kms back (or ahead, for us) who is solo hiking that they’d bumped into…apparently she’s really lovely, too! I don’t think I could solo hike here, but I’d love to chat with her about her experience.

Soon after that we found a picnic shelter and stopped for lunch. It had the foundations for a table, but no top, so Ben fashioned one by hauling a big flat-ish stone over. It worked pretty well! Helped us chop up our salami and tomato more easily than usual, anyway!

Then we were back into the forest again. This time there were heaps of these red beetle-like bugs, and they appeared to be engaging in what looked like orgies 😅 We saw so many groups of them just…connected together? Some of them moving, others appearing not alive. I took a photo of one of these groupings and asked google what they were up to. Apparently when it’s cold, these firebugs huddle together to keep each other warm!!!!! This behaviour is actually also an orgy, however, as this grouping thing is also done to speed up the process of fertilising the female’s eggs, so that it takes several hours as opposed to several days 🫪 W h a t !!!! 🤣🤣🤣

Soon we could hear the rushing of water. Turning a corner we saw that the track ended at the bank of a river crossing. It didn’t look too deep, but the water was moving fast so it was hard to tell. The shoes came off, and we slowly made our way across, using our hiking poles to test the depth for our feet. The deepest it came to for Ben was to his knees, because he is silly 😝 I took a route where I could see shallow rocks the whole time, so the deepest it was for me was just over my ankles 🤪 so no issues there. They’re an interesting challenge, these river crossings, as the water is largely snow melt, so it’s bloody cold! This makes you want to move quickly, as the longer your feet stay in the water, the more painful it gets, but because the water is rushing so quickly, you have to go slowly so as not to lose balance! So…it’s interesting having these two instincts internally fighting with each other and all the while you’re trying to find the next best place for your foot to land! 🤪

On the other side of the river we found ourselves in a grassy meadow of dandelions, either side of which was covered in trees. It was so beautiful we delayed putting our shoes back on so we could just soak it in - I almost dozed off, it was so relaxing and warm under the sun! But we weren’t going to camp here, so it was back on with the already smelly socks and shoes and onward! 🫡

From here the path curled up and around a steep hill, at the top of which we could see the crumbling rampart of a medieval watch tower. We ascended the first slope coming to a flat area with some pretty great views up a valley to our north. Ben proposed setting up camp here, but a quick check of the map said that a little further on was a designated camping area, so we kept on. We could always come back if the other spot wasn’t as good 🤷🏼‍♀️

During another shoeless river crossing I had the misfortune of my bare foot stepping on some of that plant Ben has dubbed “Armenian death laser weed” because of the intense stabbing pain it causes even from just a quick brush… Perhaps because I stepped into the freezing river water straight afterwards it didn’t effect me as much as it effected Ben the other day! Phew! Would’ve been hard to walk otherwise!). Then we arrived at our designated campsite - or, rather, where it used to be. Now there’s just a collection of old little dilapidated shelters which have mostly been reclaimed by the forest. There are little fire pits strewn about, and even some concrete pits that look like they used to be ponds - or baths! All this was surrounded by fence poles with no wire.

One of the structures was in a little better shape - a raised sleeping cabin. Inside we found some ancient sleeping matresses. We considered sleeping in there rather than setting up the tent and even spent some time using big leaves to wipe away years worth of cobwebs and shoo out some moths, but despite our best efforts it wasn’t going to be a nice spot to sleep. So, we found the flattest ground around (which was not very flat) and pitched the tent.

Then it was time to explore!! Another benefit of short days is when you get to your campsite, you actually have energy to look around!! We ended up walking up to the ruined watchtower, ‘Sedvi castle’. We wandered along the path and had to cross yet another river before climbing up the final part of the slope to reach the top. It was epic! There was a big flat grassy area with a huge stone slab, and a little further along among the trees rose the tower itself - well, what’s left of it. It would’ve been an impressive tower back in its hayday! From up at the tower we had beautiful panoramic views of the area in all directions. We looked over Odzun below us across the canyon, to the mountains south east of us (our path in a few days 🫪🫣🫣🫣🫣🫣), and way to the south more snowy peaks. As we stood around the tower, Ben and I imagined back hundreds of years ago this tower being used to help protect and guard the area. The stone slab back in the grassy meadow may have been used by medieval warriors as a table as they drank mead and traded stories…

Way below us we could make out our tent on its little patch of grass. We then decided up here was a much better spot for camping, so we walked back down, this time leaving our shoes at the riverside, picked up our bags and belongings as well as the entire tent (without packing it down), and carried everything back over the river and up the hill. This time the river crossing was even more cautious as we had some precious and very not waterproof cargo, but we made it safely and only a little while later had our tent set up in a truly spectacular position…quite possibly our coolest camp spot yet, with the ruins of a watchtower right there and panoramic views of the surrounding area…

Since then we’ve had a very cruisy evening. For a while we lay under the sun on the stone slab (which we have decided is the very same stone table that Aslan was sacrificed on in Narnia!), watching the clouds drift by and the light slowly shift into dusk. At one point a very fluffy (and therefore probably poisonous to the touch) caterpillar made its way up the side of the slab and onto the top. I applauded it - this feat it had just undertaken was probably the equivalent to us climbing up the canyon yesterday 😝 I put a leaf in front of it, and it promptly crawled under it, curled up in a ball, and seemed to go to sleep. It was sooooooo cute, but huh? Up to bro? To me this didn’t seem the smartest move for this caterpillar to have made - it was set to start raining and the leaf could be blown away, leaving this caterpillar exposed. What had I done?! I’d made the caterpillar think it was safe under thisesf 🫪 So I took the leaf, got the caterpillar on to it, and placed it down on the ground, sheltered under the rock…surely it could sleep better there 🤪

We are now holed up in our tent after a downpour of rain, and we are currently being treated to a truly epic lightening show. It must be a hundred miles away, though, as we can see the lightening but can’t hear the thunder - and it’s only lighting up one part of the sky. It’s incredible! This lightening storm has been going on for over half an hour now and the lightening is happening in very very fast succession…so it must be a big one! Very glad it’s not where we are!!

Today has been another wonderful day. Ben and I have once again exclaimed to each other how lucky we are to be doing this hike - how epic it is in so many ways! It’s so so beautiful here! 🥰

Tomorrow we make our way to Sanahin. It’s another shorter day (14km), but a bit more difficult in terms of terrain. Weather is looking similar to the last couple of days - sunny cloudy with a chance of thunderstorms! 🌩️

Hope you’re all going okay! 🩵🥰👽Read more