It was Saturday, June 14. No sign of the ferry which reportedly takes about 14 hours from Baku across the Caspian Sea to the port of Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan and reportedly another four hours to get through customs. Our five-day transit visa through Turkmenistan would begin on Monday, June 16. It wasn’t looking good. Well, you know what they say about making lemonade from lemons. With our truck safely parked in the guarded customs compound, we walked out and caught the bus into town.

The clock was ticking again as we arrived in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan and the port where the infamous ferry departs for Turkmenbashi, across the Caspian Sea to the country of Turkmenistan.

“AZERBAIJAN BORDER—GOOD LUCK” read the sign as we rolled slowly towards the big entry gate. The name Azerbaijan has a magical mystery sound to it. We’re familiar with country names like Italy, Spain, Turkey, even Georgia, the country we were just leaving. They all sound familiar, but Azerbaijan? Where is it?

If you pick up a handful of dirt in Los Angeles or a handful in Istanbul, it’s the same stuff. Part of what makes travel fascinating for us is the people and their lives in the unique countries they live in. But there is something else interesting about these individuals, whether adults or children, regardless of religion or politics. Let me tell you a quick story:

Years ago when we traveled in Mexico, we used to laugh at people coming south with their motorhomes or campers full of canned food, on the assumption that people in Mexico didn’t have anything to eat. Now, as we travel through some of the most remote countries in the world, some may wonder how do we survive? What’s for dinner?

Our friend Tom Hughey back in California loves to read about our experiences, the people and the interesting places we visit but being a practical kind of guy, he was wondering, about the local infrastructure, so we started photographing items of different nature.

While visiting the Numisi Winery in Velistsikhe, Misha, the Russian husband of Nunu, invited us to tag along to visit their farm where he wanted to pick up some fresh milk.

Happy Thanksgiving!   If you have food in your fridge, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep you are richer than 75% of the world. If you have money in the bank, your wallet, and some spare change you are among the top 8% of the words’s wealthy. […]

We had been looking forward to Georgian wines since we had our last sip of Italian Nero d’Avila. To our disappointment, most of the stores in Georgia stocked plenty of beer, vodka and juices, but rarely wines. Much of the table wine we found in the country was either homemade or produced by wineries and sold in 5-liter plastic containers. It was invariably on the sweet side. This was not Napa Valley, where there is a winery every couple of miles advertising their wine-tasting rooms, tours and picknick facilities.

Crawling up a 14% grade to the Ikalto monastery we found a comfortable flat parking area overlooking the upper Kakheti valley, famous for its Georgian wines. Visiting the church and its grounds, it appeared that wine production had been important from a very early time.