What the canyon actually is
Martvili is a slot canyon in Samegrelo, an hour by road from Kutaisi, where the Abasha river has cut a narrow trench through soft limestone. The walls stand some forty metres above the water at the deepest point, close enough together that direct sun reaches the river for only a couple of hours a day, and everything the current does not scour is green with moss and fern.
The park has two halves. One is the boat: an inflatable dinghy for half a dozen people, poled a few hundred metres upstream between the walls and floated back down. The other is the walkway, a metal path bolted to the rock above the water that takes you past the waterfall, over a footbridge and down to the old bathing pool. Most people do both, in whichever order the queue allows.
The water is what people come for. Low and clear, it is the green of bottle glass, and where light drops through a gap in the canopy it goes turquoise for a metre or two and then closes again. It is also cold in every month, and swimming is not part of the visit.
Say the honest thing early: the boat leg lasts about fifteen minutes and covers perhaps three hundred metres. It is lovely, and it is not an expedition. The whole visit, walkway included, runs to ninety minutes at an unhurried pace. Plan it as half a morning inside a bigger day rather than as the day itself, and it never disappoints.
The boat ride, honestly
Boats leave from a small landing below the entrance. You are handed a life jacket, you sit on the tube of an inflatable, and a boatman poles and paddles you upstream to the point where the canyon narrows too far to continue, then lets the current carry you back. Fifteen minutes, give or take.
In August the queue is regularly longer than the ride: an hour of standing for a quarter of an hour on the water is a common exchange in the middle of the day. Arrive before eleven or after four and you may walk straight on.
The walkway loop
The walkway is the half of the visit most people undersell. A metal path bolted to the rock runs above the water for a few hundred metres, with railings and a couple of platforms, and it ends at the waterfall that drops into the gorge in a single sheet after rain and in threads when the river is low.
It is flat, short and manageable in ordinary shoes, with one honest reservation: the deck and the steps stay wet all day in the shade, and the moss on the older sections is slick underfoot.
The princes' bathing place
Until the end of the nineteenth century this stretch of the Abasha belonged to the Dadiani, the princely house that ruled Samegrelo from Zugdidi, and the pool below the waterfall is where the family came to bathe in summer. A stone bench cut for them survives beside the water; it is easy to walk straight past if nobody points it out.
The rest of the story is less decorous. There are dinosaur footprints in the limestone a short way along the gorge, genuine and marked, and there are far less verifiable tales about what else the canyon was used to dispose of. Take the second sort as folklore, well told.
When to come, and what the water is doing
The park is open all year and snow never closes it. What varies is the water. From late spring to early autumn the river is usually low and clear; in winter and after storms it runs high, brown and fast, and the colour that fills the photographs simply is not there.
Within the day the pattern is fixed. Coaches from Kutaisi and the coast arrive between roughly eleven and three, and in that window the boat queue, the walkway and the car park fill at once. Before eleven and after four you can hear the water again.
May and June are the greenest, September and early October the most settled. August works perfectly well if you are at the gate when it opens.
Getting there
Kutaisi is the sensible base. The canyon lies around fifty kilometres north-west of the city, an hour by car on decent road, with the last few kilometres running up from Martvili town to the entrance.
Without a car: marshrutkas run through the day from the Kutaisi bus station to Martvili town for a handful of lari, and from the town a taxi up to the gate is short and cheap. Agree the return or the waiting time before you get in, because there is little passing traffic at the entrance and the signal is patchy.
With a driver: a half-day from Kutaisi taking in Martvili alone is a modest fixed price, and a full day adding Okatse or Prometheus costs more but is how most people do it. Settle the itinerary, the waiting time and the fare before setting off, in that order.
From Batumi it is roughly two and a half hours each way, and from Tbilisi about four. Both are done as long days, and both deliver you at the gate at exactly the wrong hour. If you are coming from that far, sleep in Kutaisi the night before and start early.
What it costs
Entry is charged at the gate by the protected areas administration, and the boat is a separate ticket bought at the same window. Assume cash in small notes, though cards are sometimes taken.
None of it is expensive by any measure. The transport is the real cost of the day, which is another argument for combining the canyon with something else.
Building the day around it
Ninety minutes at Martvili leaves most of a day free, and the country around Kutaisi is full of things within an hour of it. The usual pairing is Okatse canyon, half an hour or so away, where a hanging walkway runs out along the cliff face above a much deeper gorge; it takes longer than Martvili and involves a real walk in and out.
Balda canyon is the quieter alternative: smaller, wilder, with waterfalls you can stand under and a fraction of the people. Prometheus cave near Tskaltubo is the wet-weather answer, and Gelati, on the hill above Kutaisi, is the one to save for the late light.
Safety and manners
Nothing here is dangerous if you keep to the built parts. The risks are mundane: wet metal, wet stone and a cold river that is deeper and stronger than it looks from the walkway.
The canyon is a protected area, and the rules are applied at the gate rather than argued over on the water. Nobody minds a question asked in advance.
The five mistakes
We have made three of these ourselves, and the first one costs the colour of the water.
The questions that always come
These six reach us every summer, and none of them needs a long answer.