Waterfall - Ջրվեժ

This last Sunday I went on a little voyage with my new, quickly becoming good, good friends, and not only because they are the only other Americans here in the southern extremity of the country, although that’s got something to do with it. Also invited was my friend and fellow-teacher at my village school, Yeghish, who is our Phys Ed teacher and also the man behind the great spectacle that is “morning exercises” mentioned in the below post.

Our objective for the day was to find a very pretty, secluded place, a waterfall to be exact, near the village of Lichk, which is about 28 kilometers to the north. And we did find it, eventually, but not before having a few misadventures first.

The morning began cool and calm. I woke up around 8 am, ate breakfast with the host fam, called the girls to see if they were ready for the trip—they were— and then called Yeghish to see if he was ready to meet up at the time we had determined the day before, 9am. He wasn’t answering his phone, though. An hour went by, and we still hadn’t heard from him, so we decided to just go without our missing Armenian friend and at 10:30 we called a cab to take us north to Lichk.

We arrived in Lichk at around 11, and took in the majesty of the place – a village of some 60 residences sitting in the midst of sheer mountains, homes and cottages balancing on the slopes, forest and greenery climbing up above the village until stopping abruptly at the visible tree-line, and then bare, stunning rock-faces continuing up after that. We took a peek into the local Khanut (shop), which, in small villages like this, are the social epicenters of the community, and were greeted by the owner, his friend Harutyun (I always love meeting Armenians with this name because it literally means “the resurrection”) and their friend Benik. They were delighted to meet these four Americans who had come to visit their home and who could also speak Armenian pretty well—Shayna and Ruby in particular, who have been serving for a year and have some serious chops. Around this time, Yeghish finally called, was for some reason shocked that we had already left, and promised that he was on his way, in his Dad’s Lada, a couple buddies in tow.

Waiting for him seemed no problem, especially since the gentlemen at the store were now in full Armenian hospitality mode, having busted out a box of chocolates, some peach juice and a bottle of cognac from the store’s shelves. Toasts were said, to our health and one I think to friendship between our two countries. Soon a few more village men started to come up to the store to see what the commotion was about, including one who I think was the mayor and another dude who showed up on a horse, wearing a long blue jacket an old-military cap and seemingly fully aware of just how cool he looked. At this point Benik also stepped outside to bring over his horse, which was tied down just behind the shop, and which he had apparently ridden down before we arrived. At this point also, Yeghish called once again. Apparently, the Lada wasn’t working today, so they’d be taking a cab. Once again, he promised to arrive promptly. It was now about noon.

So now Yeghish was sort of pissing us off a bit, and we were anxious to get to the waterfall and spend some time relaxing at this–so we had heard—very beautiful place. The resurrection offered to take us to the waterfall, and we had no idea when our friend was actually going to show up, so we decided to take him up on it. If Yeghish did show up, he could just meet us at the waterfall anyways, or so we figured.

Harutyun, however, proceeded to lead us on a fairly ridiculous escapade, to the wrong waterfall. We walked along what was at first a fairly doable path which ran alongside the river, until that path became non-existent, and we were pretty much scaling up and down an increasingly treacherous riverbank, every moment doubting more and more this man’s foresight in guiding us. The scenery was great, and there were actually some small waterfalls cascading down the river up ahead, but it was becoming clear that this was not the way to the calm, relaxing place we had heard about. He led us onward until we finally arrived at an a very large, seemingly impassable boulder, which Harut, a 48 year old man, decided to try and scale anyways. Hannah and I watched in mild shock as he began climbing up it, made it almost to the top, and then suddenly lost his footing and plopped feet first into the freezing water below. He muttered a few Armenian curse words that I had never heard before and then briskly climbed back onto the riverbank. Fortunately he was no worse for the wear, except that his pride may have taken a slight blow, and also he was definitely bummed that his cigarettes were now soaked through.

This was the last straw for our day’s first adventure, and we decided to turn back toward the village and abandon whatever it was that Harut had intended to show us. I don't mean to slight Harut in any way here, he was a really nice man seemed to have good intentions, I just don't know where he was trying to lead us. This is Harut, picking some Masur for us, a red berry that grows wild here and that, although a bit tart, is pretty tasty:




Now on the way back, we called Yeghish and found out that he had arrived, and was waiting to take us to the actual waterfall. We met up with him about a half hour later, on a nice wide and well-tended path that Harut had for some reason thought we wouldn’t want to take earlier. We continued on it until reaching an old abandoned church that we were told dated back to the 17th century, and stopped inside to check it out. Such places are a fairly common site in Armenia and are beautiful to take in.
Here's photos of the church's entrance/interior:















After this, we continued upward past a small open area with picnic tables, khorovats pits, and of course grazing cattle until the path became narrower and more wooded. Fifteen minutes later we stopped at a resting area in the woods with cool rushing water to rinse ourselves and boulders to sit on. Another of Yeghish’s friends was waiting here for us, and we stopped to build a fire and make our own khorovats. A great thing about Armenian khorovats is that it can be prepared anywhere, and this is probably my favorite places I’ve seen it done so far. We let the fire burn down to coals, prepared the meat and vegetables on the skewers Yeghish and friends had brought, grilled it over a few logs, and then proceeded to chow down. It was quite the feast.

Our bellies full, we finally headed out on the last leg of the trip to the waterfall, which was about another 15 minutes up the path. When we arrived, we were not disappointed in the least. Water cascaded down a beautiful, mossy rock face into a very tranquil looking pool that had stepping stones for one to cross back and forth on. It was the sort of removed, beautiful zen-like place that you usually hope to find on hikes but rarely do, and I definitely felt now, if not after that fantastic khorovats, that the trip had been completely worth it.

Unfortunately the peaceful moment passed a bit too quickly, and I began to take notice that Yeghish and friends were now pretty aggressively hitting on the three American girls that had come with me. We perhaps should have seen this coming, and honestly the place we were currently sitting in was up there on the romantic scale - high in the mountains, secluded, etc. Also, there were three of them and three American girls. The dynamics were no good. After exchanging some strange looks and a few muttered agreements in English with the girls, we got up to head back to Lichk and cut the party short.

The 40 minute hike back down to the village was filled with more advances from the men — arms around the shoulder, giddy whispering and joking around, etc.—which at first seemed funny but by the end of the hike became downright obnoxious because of how absolutely persistent they were. By the time we reached Lichk again and our taxi had arrived, we were grateful as hell. We said goodbye to the now downtrodden trio, and also to the men in the Khanut who had so warmly welcomed us in the morning, and headed back to our sites. It had been a beautiful, eventful, and enlightening day.