On our fifth day, we started off walking around the Haghartsin Monastery. An interesting fact is that in the past, monks wanted to be useful in service even after death so had their graves placed in front of the churches for people to walk on. (You can see some of these in the sixth row of photos. )
We hiked up most of the day and took our lunch at a rancher’s house. They had about 70 cows up in the hills for the summer and will take them back down closer to town during the winter.
As we neared the end of our hike, a beautiful waterfall revealed itself as the clouds cleared.
We stayed at another wonderful guest house and had both dinner and breakfast there. The dinner was traditional Armenia food including dolmas, fresh herbs, fried squash, tomatoes and cucumbers. The breakfast was a feast of jams: apricot, plum, quince and mulberry.
