Morning in the mountains. New Athos

Armenian gorge. This is the name of the place where we rented a house when we lived in New Athos. This is practically the outskirts of the city, along the bottom of this gorge the Msrakuara River flows and soon it flows into the Black Sea. Our house stood across the street from this river, and on the other side, an ascent to a small mountain range began. If you climb it, you can move towards the mountains from the sea. It is extraordinarily beautiful there. You can not go anywhere on it at all, but just come to this place and enjoy. This is exactly what we did in the early morning.

Армянское ущелье. Так называется то место, где мы снимали жильё, когда жили в Новом Афоне. Это практически окраина города, по дну этого ущелья протекает река Мсракуара и вскоре она впадает в Чёрное море. Наш дом стоял через дорогу от этой реки, а с другой стороны начинался подъём на небольшой горный хребет. Если на него подняться, то можно двигаться в сторону гор от моря. Там необычайно красиво. Можно вообще никуда по нему не идти, а просто прийти в это место и наслаждаться. Именно это мы и сделали ранним утром.

There is a lot of greenery in Abkhazia, but more than others I like eucalyptus. Once upon a time, these parts of the Black Sea coast were swampy, here you could get sick with malaria. It was decided to bring and plant eucalyptus trees. These trees are natural pumps. They absorb large amounts of water. Since then, these places have become resort, and eucalyptus even made their way into the mountains. I don't really understand where they find water here, but maybe their roots have found mountain springs of water below the surface. Who knows. In the last photo, you can appreciate the power of these trees.

The last look at the sea and we plunge into the wild thickets.

In these thickets, I never expected to meet a praying mantis (Mantis religiosa). This is a fairly large predator and I have never met him in nature before. I must say that he has a wonderful disguise.

Here we are at the top of the ridge. It is not the tallest, we do not look overhead at the rest of the mountains, but this morning we did not need it. We enjoyed the morning freshness and beauty of nature.

The sun rose higher and higher, it became noticeably hotter, but at the top of this ridge the breeze still drove the night coolness out of the wild thickets. More smells appeared. I won't say that there was paradise, but the place was magical.

It's nice to remember such adventures, especially before today's trip into the depths of winter. In a couple of hours we go to one forest lake to visit friends. It's a real Russian winter there and we hope to have a good time and relax. I'll show you everything later.

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