Day 31: Bulls & Stallions 💅🏼

Last night, our tent was lashed with rain and at times hit by some reasonable gusts of wind. Because of this, we (particularly I) didn’t have the best sleep. It was loud, and for a time I worried that the wind might become too much. Thankfully it didn’t, and it died down some time in the early hours!

We got up this morning to weather that was very gloomy with a lot of lowwwww cloud. But…the weather report had forecast good weather??? What was going on? 😂 Everything was sssooooo w e t! Not much could be done about it, however (we were just thankful it wasn’t raining right this moment), so we went about our usual breakfast and pack down routine, hoping we’d be able to dry the tents out later 🫡

From camp, we marched up and up - further still than yesterday!!! We even went past some bits of snow 🫣 The views were beautiful, as per usual, we just had swirling ominous clouds threatening to unleash on us - until they finally did! And just as we were about to step off the 4WD track and onto a sheep’s trail that would take us around the mountain (instead of continuing up), that’s when the crazy wind started! So at that point and for quite some time after, we had horizontal rain and wind battering us on the mountain slope 😅 I didn’t much enjoy myself, but Ben had a fabulous time 😝🤪 We finally went over a ridge and found ourselves sheltered from the elements on the other side 😮‍💨 And then it cleared away! Almost completely! Huh? The weather really said PSYCH 🤪🤣

After that we enjoyed looking at the cloud formations around the mountain as we walked, and of course the views that were returning as the cloud lifted - so wonderful! We both had a lot of fun, then, taking epic photos, looking at the views, and enjoying the sun that had started peeking out! ⛅️

So we’d climbed up, and now we had to head back down. As we descended under the increasingly warm weather, we came to a valley-like area. All over this valley were herds of cows! We nervously made our way across the plain - watching for any signs of dogs. Eventually we came to the conclusion that there were no dogs, only cows - breathed a sigh of relief there 😮‍💨 Moving over the hill, we came to a group of bulls - these are the first bulls we’ve seen in Armenia. I was surprised to see so many! I thought usually farms just had a few bulls, as you don’t need many males to create many babies 🤪, but this one had about 20+ bulls! So maybe I’m wrong, and my thoughts came from seeing a smaller cattle farm 🤔 If you know, please let me know 🤗

So…bulls are a bit more temperamental than cows 😬 As we stood at the top of this hill looking over them, every single bull had stopped what they were doing and was staring at us. As they were standing on and around our path, we decided we’d give them a wide berth. They just kept staring - the whole time we were walking by - just stared and stared at us! It was a little nerve-wracking! Looking back we saw the farmer standing atop the hill we’d just departed, watching us…he was either making sure we didn’t get trampled, or he was ensuring his bulls were safe…or perhaps both 😂 We made it over to the top of the following hill, however, which is where we chose to stop and have a snack.

After that we descended further, and hiked across more farmland. We felt amazed we hadn’t come across any dogs, and wondered why they’re not with the cows? We spoke too soon, however, as we then came to a little farm village that had multiple dogs that were extremely unhappy about our arrival. The first one wasn’t too bad, as a woman came out to shoo it away pretty quickly after it started barking and growling at us. The second group of dogs, however, 😮‍💨 were interesting. The huge dog immediately got up and started barking and growling and snapping, but it went around to the back of us - which was confusing, as its house/village was in front of us. Did we keep moving forward? Perhaps it went back there as it was slightly uphill? Then another dog came running up, barking and snapping and snarling, too. Ohhhhhhhhmygodd 🫣 This one circled us quite a bit. We kept moving forward, but we felt really unsure what was the best thing to do, as forward was towards more barking dogs - our arrival had literally set them ALL off 🫣 Finally, another woman came out of the shack on the corner and shoo’d the dogs away 🙏🥹 they took a little motivation to go away, especially the second dog that had run over - he seemed really keen to continue the fuss 😅 Once the dogs were thankfully out of the way, we quickly scooted down the drive, said thank you to the woman, crossed the river (not minding if our shoes got wet, we just wanted to get away ASAP), climbed the hill on the other side, and got around the corner so we were out of sight. We kept up a good pace until we felt we were far enough away. Far out man! These dogs! Bloody hell! It’s extremely unpleasant being threatened by aggressive dogs SO often. What we learned from this was that it’s (at least currently) not the herds of cows we need to watch out for, it’s the little villages 😩

Eventually we came to a little shelter by the river. It had a bird carved from stone sitting atop a memorial water fountain - how interesting! We decided we’d stop here for some food, as we were coming up to another little village and we thought perhaps it would help our stress responses to any dogs if we didn’t go in hungry 😅 For lunch we enjoyed yet more lavash with salami, cheese, and tomato. We’ve taken to carrying a fresh tomato with us - it makes such a difference! The salami over here is delicious, too! Can’t get enough of it - puts NZ salami to big shame 🤣

After some food, we thought we’d better get the next village over and done with. However, while this village did have a dog, it looked at us and didn’t care that we’d arrived…huh? How unusual. We walked gingerly by, and then someone called out HELLO from inside the main shack, and a shepherd stepped out. He invited us in for coffee, which we accepted. While the black coffee is gross, it’s lovely to connect with locals and have a chat - perhaps we could even ask what to do when we come across their dogs! However, this shepherd had to go back to work pretty much as soon as we stepped inside, so we were left with his friend/colleague, who didn’t speak any English (and we had no reception so Google translate wasn’t an option), and who seemed relatively unenthused at having to entertain guests 🤣 So it was a bit of a quiet one. We were served large helpings of both coke and coffee (Ben’s soul left him 🤣🤣🤣), which was nice.

Waving goodbye we made tracks again, this time up through a beautiful forest. You really can’t beat forest! Being up on ridges with all the views is cool, but being in a forest just hits totally different. We find we breathe easier and are able to calm down a heap and just be present in the moment. The beautiful forest soon turned to beautiful flower-covered meadows, and the terrain continued undulating across the landscape. Eventually we came to a team of horses. The male horse in particular seemed to be quite defensive. He came over near the track where we were walking and stood, watching us, tail swishing. I don’t know anything about horse body language, but he seemed to be saying “make one wrong move and you’ll be sorry”. We just did our best to continue climbing up the (very steep) hillside!

Eventually, we came to the spot we’d designated as our camp on the map. However, we were so full of (coffee) beans, that we decided we’d continue on another 4km to the next water fountain. So we continued climbing up and up, past more cows. We came to another team of horses, but thankfully at this point it started raining again which drove them away into the trees - didn’t have to face any more defensive males!! Eventually we got over the hill and found a stunningly beautiful place to pitch our tent, on some ground that was mercifully flat and rockless! At this point it had stopped raining again, and the sun was trying to peek through, so it we had a good time setting up tent and readying dinner, etc, with the epic view we had before us!

Can’t believe we’ve been doing this hike thing for a month already! What a wild time.

Hope you’re all going well back home! Lots of love from us, as always! We think of you all often. 🩵Read more