Subject: Post: <p>Our first attempt in exploring the mountains was not that successful. The car for sure is nice to drive on bumpy muddy roads, but with the current configuration it was no good for climbing the iced snow roads to the mountain.</p><p>The car itself would be excellent for that, but.. The rental company had happily equipped it with all-terrain tires, which are definitely NOT proper winter tires. That despite the fact that we told them we would be going to Ushguli and other mountain areas, which at this time of year have a lot of snow. I also requested them to equip the car with snow chains. Also, the car started having the common Land Rover problem "The Three Amigos" already in Kutaisi, meaning three warning lights about braking system. So, it had ABS, Traction Control and Hill Descent Assist all disabled due to some sensor failure, and all of those would have been needed today.</p><p>We climbed first 10-20 kilometers towards Ushguli and came across a bit steeper hill, which we ended up sliding back down backwards. We decided to put on the chains, and soon realized it was not that easy. Group of Ukrainian and Georgian people were on the way skiing from the top of the mountain, and they stopped to help us with the chains. Together we realized the car company had packed wrong size chains for us.. Too small to fit properly on these tires.</p><p>We got the chains somehow attached and started our way down. First one of the chains slipped off the tire and we continued down with one chained tire, or.. Well, thinking so. An hour later we realized the second chain had also dropped off, and happily we climbed back up the mountain to retrieve the missing chains. :P</p><p>Iryna sent a rather angry email to the car rental company, who apologized the problems and promised to provide us an another car with proper winter tires tomorrow morning here in Mestia. Looking forward to that and our new attempt to explore the area.</p><p>Otherwise we didn't do too much today, just drove around the city and visited the nearby Hatsvali ski resort for some food. The ski resort just opened today and it was still missing a bit snow, so we decided to skip skiing for today.. Also there were no ski school as it was a small resort, and Iryna would need one to survive.. :)</p> Latitude: Longitude: Security Code:
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