Georgia trip/Acharitskali

Adjariskali is the main river of the region Adjaria where we spent a few days. This area forms the border with Turkey, rivers are snow melt dependent and run mainly from early season towards mid June. We inspect the upper part at Khulo from a cable lift, a big unrunnable rapid looks scary even from high up...
According to Egor, the upper ressembles the Middle Otz at high water, Ward and I do not need much more convincing to bottle out...
We put in on the more mellow section below Khulo and paddle somewhat 16km to Shuakhevi, nice and bouncy WW which turned out to be much more fun than expected. A few rapids hint grade IV and especially a small gorge that cannot be inspected stands out with 3 nearly river wide and quite munchy stoppers.
Nothing to troublesome for my Zet Director though, this big boat is made for punching big stuff but at the same time feels quite nimble, a great combination (only thing, I feel really tiny in this beast...).
After the gorge, there are a few km of real quality grade 3, big and clean lines around giant rocks, mid-volume at its best! In the evening, we get introduced to cha-cha, the local vodka... but surprisingly, no excesses. We start to wonder whether we really ended up in a team of athletes, seriously preparing for the Bzuhzha race...