Fitting a 220Ah battery in Rosinante (December 2023)

Racki and I went to Turkey for a border run to extend Rosinante’s stay in Georgia.

In advance, I had to find a lithium battery and bigger solar panel in Georgia, but there had been no real options. Shipping and importing from Germany would have been super expensive. So I had contacted a Turkish online shop and the owner was super friendly and had a battery and panel in stock. He had shipped it to Hopa to the Turkey-Georgia-border where we could pick it up easily.

At a small beach promenade in Hopa we started installing the panel and battery. The panel was super easy. The battery was a crazy operation! The batterie’s dimensions were perfect to fit it in the space behind our toilet but that made the wiring a puzzle.

To make it possible, we had cut our toilet at Hof Marani to be able to slide it over the battery.

We searched for cables in Hopa to make the installation easier and cleaner but had no luck finding some. But after we did shortcut the battery and nearly destroyed it, we finally made it!

It was interesting to experience the difference in Georgian and Turkish culture. In Turkey more than ten people stopped, asked if they could help us, were interested and curious. Although there are a lot of lovely and helpful people in Georgia as well, the experience would have been very different there, I guess.

Wonderful friends and creating together at Hof Marani in Georgia (December 2023)

We met again with Isarna, Adela, Alvaro, Roxane, Vincent, Regina and Gerold at the unique and wonderful Hof Marani.

It was so awesome to meet everybody again and spend time together! We had a lot of fun building a mosaic, a light for the entrance sign, making wine and Chacha, cooking, eating, drinking and just being together!

But at the same time it was our last time together in this group because afterwards we would go for a border run to Turkey, the french and Isarne would go west, the spanish east and Regina and Gerold would stay at their Hof Marani.

If you ever have the chance, go and visit the Hof Marani. It’s such a wonderful, creative and mind changing place. They built unique things like a house out of glass bottles, a house decorated with cans and bottle caps and everything is different. And they have a whole gang of animals. Chuchuna, the horse, sometimes even breaks into the kitchen to steal some food!

A cave expedition in Georgia (December 2023)

When Racki’s mother and her husband had visited us, they had fallen when we tried to approach a cave. Because we did not want to lose them or let them die in the forest, we canceled our approach and brought them back to safety.

Now Racki and I went again to that cave. It was an interesting small hike with a very cold river crossing and beautiful lightning in the cave.

See our tour on Komoot.