Tour Day 1. A very long, great day. We didn’t get back to our hotel until 10pm so if this schedule continues my blogging efforts will certainly suffer!

My tour with Wild Frontiers consists of 3 couples and 5 singles; 4 of us North American and the rest Brits. We’ve just over two weeks to explore the highlights of 3 countries of the Caucasus region: Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.

First of all, the weather today was miserable. Pouring rain with standing water in the streets. Fortunately 1/2 our day was spent inside and for the other, well, we mostly managed to avoid the heaviest rain….

First was a hours bus ride south to view ancient, as in 30,000 – 6,000 year old petroglyphs at a reserve called Qobustan. 50,000 years ago this area was a lush savanna teeming with animals, and therefore hunters. For some unknown reason the ancient peoples declared these hills a sacred site and for millennia carved images into the soft sandstone rock. There’s no evidence of any habitation so it must have been purely ceremonial…

Next we returned to Baku, fighting the horrendous traffic caused by the road closures for the upcoming Grand Prix, for our 4-course lunch. Sophie, our guide, said it’s the Caucasus way to feed their guests as much as possible, or something to that effect. A trio of salads, soup, then chicken & lamb dishes, followed by a sweet and black tea. I hope we have some exercise planned on this trip!

After lunch we had indoor activities. First was the famous Zaha Hadid–designed Heydar Aliyev Center and museum. The exhibits were small; the real attraction was the building!

Back into traffic our poor driver maneuvered our massive bus (for 12 pax!) down to the carpet museum (what I called the cannoli building yesterday). Our local guide, Shorad, kindly explained the architecture of every building we passed, to add to all the historical info he imparted earlier. In a nutshell: modern Baku is built on oil money, especially in the last 150 years or so. The wax & waning of Soviet domination had a huge impact on infrastructure, language and religion during that time too but recently their relationship with Russia is becoming fractured.

I must admit I paid little attention to the carpet museum although our guide tried enthusiastically to interest us. It was already 5:30pm….

Time to eat again! Dinner was at an amazing Azerbaijani restaurant with lots of courses again, including flaming beef pot and a birthday cake for David!

The final hurrah was a trip to see the flame towers at night. They’re lit up in 3 different patterns: the national colors, a waving flag, and dancing flames. A fitting send off to a great first day.