text: It took me 1.5 hours to get back to the church and another 30 minutes to get to the town. On the way down I made it halfway from the church to the town and then hitched a ride the rest of the way. Georgia is a safe country for hitching so I encourage you to try it. In this part of the country, the locals generally speak Russian and Georgian so don’t expect thrilling conversation in English with drivers.
  Most people will travel from Tbilisi to Stepantsminda on a day trip tour. You definitely won’t have the opportunity to do any walking if you join one of these tours. Consider taking the tour to the town and making your own way back to Tbilisi.
  The cheapest way to get from Tbilisi is by Marshrutka, the local buses that leave when they get full. And by full, I mean packed to capacity (And possibly more than that).
  Tours cost around 60 GEL so you could take a tour one way and a Marshrutka back as I did. I’m not really a fan of tours. It’s less than 100km from Tbilisi to Stepantsminda with 4-5 sights on the way, but the journey took us 9 hours if you include waiting for the bus to leave. Lunch is an overlong 2 hours in an expensive, low-quality restaurant.
  However, tours can be a great way to meet people and get some local insights. They are also much cheaper than hiring a taxi. If you have a group of people, it’s worth talking to a taxi driver for a better rate.
  If you want luxury on a budget, Rooms Hotel Kazbegi is the place. I love this hotel. It reminds me of a Swiss ski resort and the view is spectacular. Rooms Hotel is rustic and gorgeous. The restaurant’s food, while expensive, is excellent and even if you’re not staying there, the staff treat you like a guest. You can hang out in the comfy seats of the cafe anytime. The coffee is delicious and you can order from 6 am, perfect for that pre-walk caffeine injection.
  Another option is Hotel NOA, which is a 5-minute walk from Rooms. A great option if you’re on a tighter budget.
  The only “problem” with both of these hotels is the location. They are at the top of a gentle incline hill. It’s a 5-10 walk from the town centre. Of course, if you’re here for hiking, this won’t be too much of a problem, and there aren’t a lot of interesting distractions in the town centre.
  Yes, but only if you have your own driver. Otherwise, you’ll cut it fine. It’s worth spending a night in Kazbegi though. Accommodation and food in the town are not expensive and Kazbegi sunsets are incredibly beautiful.
  No cost. There are no park fees and you do not need a guide unless it’s winter, or you require assistance.
  
  There’s no such thing as information overload; only filter failure. That’s the wonderful Clay Shirky maxim. Now we can add to that the maxim: There’s no such thing as a Misinformation problem; only filter failure and attribute it to ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Ok, he didn’t quite say that. But it was close. This is from an awesome Atlantic piece by Alexis Madrigal on Schmidt’s incurable techno-optimism:
  “All of us grew up with an assumption that what we were seeing on television, especially in legitimate news, was edited and properly vetted. That’s no longer the case. Furthermore, you can anticipate very powerful forces will attempt to do misinformation campaigns to you for one business objective or another,” he said. “It will be worth it to them to spend millions of dollars to spend millions of dollars to create fake websites and so forth to convince you that something that is really bad for you is really good for you. Because they have a business interest to do so and the Internet allows that.”
  Gosh, that sounds bleak! What possible way could we solve this problem? “We have to rank against it,” Schmidt said, that is to say, Google should notice disinformation and rank it lower than good information.
  That might seem hopeless if you’re just thinking of it in the context of a search engine. Even if Google ranks something low it can still spread like wildfire on social media. But rankings can extend beyond search.
  That’s what’s so cool about experiments like Dan Schultz’s Truth Goggles project. Once you have some ranking or some statement of authority, you can build it into the experience at any level of the tech stack that you want. If the New York Times knows the article your friend is sharing w/ you is crap, that does you no good if their statement saying as much is on your site and you never go there. But if NYT is your trusted source, they could be your browser (or at least a plugin) and have a bright bar up top of everything you read with a credibility ranking.
  Of course, these are ridiculously hard problems at every step of the way. But I kinda love Schmidt’s optimism.