Our visas for Azerbaijan begin on the 26th of July. Leaving from Tbilisi on the 26th our goal of crossing into Azerbaijan, spending the night along the way, and arriving at the port city of Baku on the Caspian Sea was in easy reach.
Finding our way out of Tbilisi took some time as the directions we received were sparse and unclear. Adding the usual lack of street signs adds to the confusion. We finally left town on a secondary road which took us in an Easterly direction. We arrived at a border crossing at approximately 4 P.M. We think we are at the one we planned to go through. We pulled behind two transit vans only to be asked to go to the end of the line with other cars when we reached the head of the line. At the head of that line, I am asked to walk through customs inside as I am a passenger in the ambulance. After the customs agent is finally convinced that I am the person in the photo in my passport, I have to exit the building and wait for Robert in the hot afternoon sun with everyone else standing around. There is no place to wait inside the building, and I can't go back to the ambulance as I am now officially in the country. The one entry allowed on my visa has begun. Three hours later, Robert appears only to be sent back for a two inch square of paper that is his pass out of the customs area.
Customs now is claiming that Robert's ambulance with right hand drive isn't legal in the country. He is only given a three day stay for the ambulance in the country or be subject to a $2,000 fine. We now have to try and sort this problem out in Baku as the freight ferry to Turkmenistan doesn't run on a schedule that has it leaving every day. We may have to be in Azerbaijan longer than the 3 days now being allowed by customs.
We spent the night at a small "Truck Stop Motel". No one spoke any English. We just pointed at what others were eating that would be fine with us for dinner. After dinner, I took a shower, put on bug repellent (mosquitoes - I had already begun my malaria medication sequence the Sunday before), and went to bed.
The next morning at breakfast we met a family going to the funeral of the father's 90 year old brother. They ask us to join them and share their food with us. The father was originally from the Eastern part of Georgia (A Muslim area even though Georgia is mostly known to be Christian.). The daughter and son spoke wonderful English, and were born in Azerbaijan . The daughter is a doctor, and the son works in finance at a bank. The family's warm welcome only shows us again that there is so much hospitality all over the World.
We reach Baku in the late afternoon and commit the sin of trying to drive in the city during rush hour. Our Belgium friends had alerted us concerning rush hour driving in Baku. Robert had made a hotel reservation in the city months earlier in order to have an invitation to Azerbaijan for our visa processing. Robert asks a cab driver to lead us to the hotel as we have no address with us. (The address is with Cloud Computing".) After many stops for directions 1 1/2 hours later, the cab driver and his cabby friend find the hotel. It turns out that it is not the hotel where the reservation is at, but the reservation for the original hotel is for tomorrow night as we are one day ahead of schedule. We decide to stay where we are for the night. I must have been in the shower 20 minutes because of the very hot driving during the day.
Match The Captions To The Photos:
-New Friends Along The Way.
-Nice Melons.
-East Meets West.
-Disney World 2015.
-Eastern Greyhound.
-My Favorite Patrol.
-Every Parents Dream.
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