After crossing the border, we stopped at a restaurant for a quick bite to eat. It was quite cheap, about $5/person for a decent meal. Afterwards we drove to the ancient St. Stephanos Armenian Monastery near the border to check it out.
St. Stephanos Monestaru
While driving up a long hill to get there, Hamid noticed the car was overheating. We managed to get to the top and let the car rest while we walked around the monastery, which was built in the 7th century and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. After wandering around, we went back to the car to make sure everything was ok. Opening up the bonnet, we checked the water pump and coolant levels, but all appeared to be working.
Not knowing quite what the problem was, we took it slow back to Jolfa to get fuel, driving in low gears down hills because our brakes weren’t working too well.
After filling up with fuel, we drove to Tabriz, the first stop on our eight day tour. Mike was driving and promptly got pulled over for speeding! Apparently he was going 140km/hr in a 100km/hr zone! In his defense, the speedo in the car is broken!
Just like in the bazaars, when you get pulled over for speeding, you negotiate! Hamid did this expertly. First the policeman wanted to confiscate Mike’s license for six days, but Hamid explained we had an itinerary and couldn’t come back to pick it up. So he knocked it down to three days. Hamid continued negotiating and got it down to six hours. Of course we still didn't want to sit and wait for six hours, so we said we’d pay whatever the fine was on the spot to avoid waiting. This is officially offering to pay the fine, but really everyone knows you’re offering to pay now because you know the policeman will keep the money as a bribe. Fed up with negotiating, the officer gave up, handed Mike’s license back and said we were free to go, paying neither the fine, or getting the license confiscated!
Of course, after this experience, Mike was very careful to obey the speed limit, using an iPhoneas a speedometer! We drove straight to a garage, arriving at 9:30PM, where a mechanic Hamid knew was waiting for us. We explained what was wrong, the additional work we wanted done and he then kindly drove us to our hotel.
After dropping our stuff off at the hotel, we walked down the street to a traditional tea house. It was in an ancient bath house and was full of historic pictures of Iranian heroes including Bagher Khan. Tabriz was the an important part of the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1907. After dining on the excellent kebabs we returned to our hotel.
The tea house.