Located in central Georgia, this church is known as the Green Monastery. Locals told me a story about how it was once attacked by Arabs and all the monks were killed, causing the river to flow with blood and stain the rocks red. On the left is an example of one of the stained rocks, supposedly cursed.

The Green Monastery is located in the forested areas of Georgia known as Borjomi, also dead center of the country. This was a great place to go hiking, where you have a chance to come across a lot of wildlife that even includes bears. The mountainous terrain has a lot of great scenery in the summer time, and aside from natural beauty Georgia’s believe Borjomi water to have a spiritual if not medicinal value to it.

I visited Borjomi in late August and was surprised how green everything still was. Normally back home in Virginia, plants start to darken towards the end of summer but here it almost looked spring like. While hiking in the forest I spotted a giant owl that flew out of a tree only a few feet away from me. Unfortunately I didn’t come across any bears, but maybe I should return on a camping trip.

Here are some last pictures of Georgia, still in the Borjomi mountains. Above is a some more scenery of some of the steeper mountains which probably offer great rock climbing. The hole in the ground I assume is the remains of some house or outpost. Below a man takes water directly from the source, and even though I didn’t get to see a bear with my own eyes, I did find this tree which a bear had dug into with his claws in order to mark his territory.