Crateús a city of 76,000 inhabitants on the banks of the River Poti in the south east of the state of Ceará, in the northeast of Brazil.
The first journey to Persia was by freighter from Marseilles to Constantinople, by a Russian boat to Poti on the east coast of the Black Sea, and then across the Caucasus and via Azerbaijan to Tabriz.
The Russians sent a small force under General Gottlieb Heinrich Totleben who helped Solomon to recover Kutaisi in August 1770, but the general's rudeness and condescension alienated the Georgians; Totleben was quickly recalled from Georgia, but his successor failed to take the Ottoman-held Georgian port of Poti on the Black Sea.
With the help of their Georgian colleague and friend Shota, the couple heads to Poti to meet Klaas Hendrikse, a Dutch priest said to be the mentor of Georgia's First Lady Sandra Roelofs.
On November 2, following an agreement between Eduard Shevardnadze and Commander-in-Chief of the Black Sea Fleet Admiral E. Baltin, units of the Russian fleet landed in Poti to consolidate the government control over the key harbor and help establish order in the town.