Kvariati Beach

Kvariati is on the Adjaran coast of Georgia, a few kilometres from the Turkish border and ten minutes south of Batumi. It is a pebble beach with the foothills of the Lesser Caucasus rising directly behind it.

The setting is what distinguishes this coast from the rest of the Black Sea. Georgia's shore is short — around three hundred kilometres — and mountainous, and the subtropical humidity produced by that combination supports tea and citrus plantations within sight of the beach. Batumi to the north has been rebuilt since the 2000s with a skyline of towers and casinos that draws visitors from Turkey and the region.

The beach is dark grey pebble with clear water that deepens quickly. The Black Sea is brackish — around half the salinity of the Mediterranean — which makes it less buoyant and, below about two hundred metres, anoxic and lifeless. Near the surface it is perfectly ordinary and warm in summer, reaching the mid-twenties. Sarpi, two kilometres south, is the last Georgian beach before the Turkish border, and the border crossing itself is one of the busiest in the Caucasus.

Development is a strip of hotels and cafés along the front, busy and loud in season, with Gonio a little north holding a Roman fortress and quieter sand. The season is short and intense: July and August, with the rest of the year wet. Batumi's botanical garden, nine kilometres north on a cliff above the sea, holds plants from every subtropical region and is the best thing on this coast.

Dark pebble with the Lesser Caucasus rising straight behind it, tea and citrus growing within sight of the water, and a season of two months. Batumi's towers are ten minutes north and the Turkish border two kilometres south. Adjara is one of the wettest places in the region for the other ten months.