Eventually we booked tickets to Cyprus. From Georgia we could find some cheap tickets with Pegasus Airlines, which will bring us from Kutaisi in Georgia, via Istanbul, to the Turkish part of Cyprus. With the tickets in your pocket, we travelled from Baku, via Sheki and Zaqatala to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. We have experienced Azerbaijan as a very nice country, even though we had previously heard from other travellers that it would be an unfriendly country. But we have to say that these other travellers were mainly travellers with their own vehicles who encountered a lot of problems with corrupt traffic police. But we had absolutely not a bad experiences at all in Azerbaijan. The people were extremely friendly and we would recommend anyone to visit this country. Especially Baku is a beautiful and atmospheric city and it will undoubtedly develop in the next ten years into a popular city break destination (see our photo impression of Baku). The only problem until now is the necessary visa and the expensive airline tickets to this Caucasus country. However, the tickets are becoming cheaper. With budget airlines like Pegasus and WizzAir it is possible to fly cheaply from Europe to Georgia, from where you can travel by train of bus to Azerbaijan.

We didn’t stay long in Georgia. We visited this fantastic country already last year when we stranded with our Toyota Land Cruiser at the closed border between Georgia and Russia (landslide closed the border for months). So after a week in Tbilisi, we travelled by bus to Kutaisi, from where we flew with a night flight to Lefkosa on the Turkish part of Cyprus. At the border we had some stress when the Turkish Cypriot immigration officer put a stamp in our passports. We read everywhere on the internet that this Turkish-Cypriot stamp could lead to a big problem at the border when you want to travel to the Greek part of the island (see also our article on the border crossing). The Greek Cypriots see the Turkish part of the island as occupied territory and therefore consider an arrival on this Turkish part of Cyprus as an illegal way of entry. With all the consequences. But fortunately that time passed. Relations between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots continue to improve, which means that the panic which prevailed when the Greek-Cypriots noticed when somebody entered Cyprus on the Turkish part, is history. We were able to cross the border with our Turkish-Cypriot entry stamp without any problems.

The weather is fantastic in Cyprus. It is between 22 and 26 degrees Celsius and most days its wonderful sunny weather. The high season is over which means that it is very peaceful on the island. Also, the prices have fallen dramatically. You can already rent a nice car for 15 Euro per day, and for a fully furnished apartment including kitchen, we seldom pay more than 25 Euro per night. We will stay here until November 8 and then we will fly to the cold northern half of Europe. To Poland to be exact. We have to renew our passports, and because we have emigrated from the Netherlands, this is more convenient to do abroad. So we do it in Warsaw. While waiting for our new passport we hope to visit Belarus and Russia (Kaliningrad), and by the time we are back from the Russian territories it will be time to go back to the Netherlands for the Christmas holidays.