Travelogue - Part 4

Jordan-Syria Border Crossing

We got up the next morning and prepared to cross the border into Syria, which went smoothly really, even though our driver was a little bit of a worry, more for his compulsive duty-free shopping, and forgetting to put the hand brake on when he stopped at one point, rather than his actual driving, which was no more insane than anyone else's (it's all a relative thing.) He also became our 2nd driver to be pulled over by the police, this time for a badly-cracked windscreen! (Our first one had been fined for speeding.)

Upon arriving in Syria, our next stop was Damascus, which really doesn't need any introduction from me!

Damascus

Our driver wasn't allowed to drive us fully into Damascus for legal reasons (he was from another country), so we had to say goodbye to him some distance out of the city's centre and take taxis for the last leg to our hotel. We bundled into two taxis and headed on in. Now, I've been on a few slightly "exciting" taxi and bus rides before, but this one definitely took the cake. Picture, if you will, sitting inside a taxi with no seat belt on (but you're used to that by then), with the roads of the city filled with cars and people, and the driver constantly slamming the brakes to stop just short of hitting whatever person or vehicle happened to be in the way, and honking his horn impatiently to get people to move, constantly. We'd joked that we'd lost 15 years from putting on the Dead Sea mud, and my comment was that I'd just put it all back on again! On the way in, the taxi driver got out at one point to walk over to two cars that hadn't actually crashed, but were right in front of one another arguing over right of way, apparently, with fists flying at one point, and he and other people having to break them up.

After our gentle introduction to Damascus, we grabbed a felafel from a small street-side shop while we waited for our rooms to finish being prepared, then headed off to the local museum, which had an extremely impressive, large range of items and sculptures, both inside and out. I had even less time than the others, as I'd gone off to find an ATM that would actually talk to me, and I figured I'd have to go back the day after next before we headed out.

We spent the day going to the Old City, walking through part of the soukhs (more about that later), and visiting the Umayyad Mosque, which was very impressive:






The mosque has a small shrine inside, which is said to contain the head of St John the Baptist. It's very beautiful:


We also saw some of the Old City houses, some of which looked like they were about ready to fall down any second!



Unfortunately, I'd been feeling sick, uncomfortable, and in a certain amount of pain on and off during the day, so instead of having dinner with the others, I got a taxi back to the hotel, which was kind of adventure in itself, as we headed down the tiny streets of Old Town in the dark, and then through the much newer-looking modern part of the city.

A lot of the next day was a write-off for me, unfortunately, but I took myself out in the afternoon to see Azem palace, and walk around the soukhs properly for a bit. Azem palace was very nice, although most of the interesting things were inside small rooms, which unfortunately didn't allow photographs! The rooms were richly decorated from floor to ceiling, and definitely radiated important, and wealthy. The palace even had its own baths.

After having a proper chance to fully absorb the soukhs as I wandered through them, about the only word I could really use to describe it all was "wow". It was a near-sensory overload of walkways, people, and stalls selling just about everything from shoes to shisha pipes, with any amount of tacky, occasionally nice, things thrown in in between. It had a real atmosphere to it, and although I'd never really want to shop there on a regular basis (if at all!), I still found myself thinking that the shopping centres back in Melbourne were rather dull, sterile, and lifeless by comparison.

A lot of the laneways in the soukh were more like this, than the large, main concourse above:

Unfortunately I didn't really have the energy to go and see the museum again the next morning, but I felt I'd managed to get a good feel for Damascus even so, so I wasn't too disappointed.

Travelogue - Part 3

Red Sea

Our next stop was a little beachside resort on the shores of the Red Sea. Now, you'd probably think that the first thing we'd've been thinking would be "woohoo! beach! snorkelling!", and we were, but just about equally prominent in everyone's mind was "we can wear shorts!!". After a few days of wearing long pants in the sweltering heat, it was definitely nice to be able to get into some short clothes for a change.

We settled in to our small huts (one each, which was nice):

After that, we headed out to snorkel for a bit. The water was gloriously warm,and there was some nice coral and coloured fish to see. After that, we kicked back with a drink and relaxed while we waited to have dinner.It was a really nice change of pace. We ate outside the main hotel area by candlelight, and when our meals arrived, they had candles set in the middle of hollowed-out vegetables, which looked very cool. We'd been told that sleeping outside of our huts could be a good idea, given the heat, and this turned out to be good advice, although I settled for opening my door a bit and moving out into the middle of my room instead.

The next day I went scuba diving with some of the others in a reef area, which was good, esp as I hadn't scuba dived in a long time. There are apparently better places to go, but this location was still good, with plenty of colourful and interesting fish to see, along with the coral formations themselves.


Aqaba

After scuba diving came our crossing into Jordan by ferry. I've never been on the Sea Cat, but I expect you'd probably say it was somewhat similar to that. Fortunately, they give special treatment to tourists, apparently, and we were ushered past the long queue of locals waiting to get on, and given a special place to put our luggage down. The ferry itself was very comfortable, and although we couldn't see much from where we were sitting, it was a nice ride. We were actuallylucky, as apparently there can be big delays for the ferry, but we weren't left waiting very long at any point. After a short bus ride,we arrived at our Hotel in Aqaba, and went out to a nice restaurant for dinner. I decided to brave a salad for the first time, and see what happened!

The next day, we had the morning to explore Aqaba a bit, which is quite a nice city:

Some of us went to see to the fortress, which was pretty cool. It was also somewhat maze-like, which definitely added to the appeal!

Aqaba also has the world's second-tallest flag pole (which brings all sorts of comments to mind, really :P ). We headed back to the hotel, piled into another minibus and headed off towards Wadi Rum.

Wadi Rum

We got into two 4WDs driven by our Bedouin hosts whom we were going to be staying the night when we got there, and were taken off for a tour of the desert. The landscape was impressive, and beautiful, with both red and yellow-coloured sands.

We sat in a Bedouin tent and had tea,which was a mixture of sage, cinnamon, and cardamon. It was quite sweet, but nice (I don't usually like tea). I resisted the urge to buy a bag of it, knowing that it wouldn't travel very well in my luggage! After that, we went to see a large crevice which went a long way back into the cliffs, some carvings of camel trains, on an unusually flat bit of cliff face, a sand dune (which I had fun running down), and a small, natural stone "bridge" about 35 ms high (it was a bit of a climb, and it was kind of hard to feel completely safe while you were up there, too!).

We were then driven to a small camp, where we going to spend the night with our hosts. Before dinner, we hiked up the adjacent cliffs to the see the sunset, which was pretty impressive. There was also a rather cool rock formation (although the eyeballs have been added, I think!):

Dinner was good, and some of it was cooked in an earth oven (as in buried), which was quite cool to see. We all slept out under the stars, which was nice.

Petra

Our next major stop was Petra, which most people associate with Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, for the temple front carved intothe face of it. (It's actually the front to the Treasury, though, and sadly, there were no passages, traps, or grail rooms behind it!) It's definitely impressive to see, and didn't disappoint at all:

There's so much more to see of Petra, though. It's been named one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, and rightly so, if you ask me. Over the next two days my friend and I walked and climbed all over the place. There are squillions of tombs carved into the rock, ranging from the tiny and plain, to the huge and brilliantly coloured, temple ruins, and plenty of great vantage points to see fantastic views of the site, which is enormous. By the time we'd gotten to the end, I definitely had that "wow, I've been everywhere now" feeling, and a bit of a feeling of accomplishment, too. The icy poles that we had at the end of each day were two of the best I've ever tasted, too!

The Dead Sea

I was definitely looking forward to seeing what floating on the Dead Sea would be like, and on the way, we stopped to see a rather beautiful angle of part of its edge.

The place we went to was pretty much like any other touristy beach resort you've ever seen, so it wasn't so unusual in that. We all got changed, and were told to be very sure we didn't get any of the water in our eyes our mouths, as it wouldn't be pleasant!! Apparently, the only thing that can live in the Dead Sea is some sort of algae. I went into the water, (being very careful not to splash!), and tried to lie on my back. I'd originally had images of being able to float on myback quite easily once I got myself on top, but it was more like beinghoisted up to the surface by an invisible crane. It was really quite something. Floating on your side was very hard to do, and you tended to get turned to one side or the other pretty quickly unless you tried not to be. Moving through the water was so much easier than normal swimming: you could punt yourself with your arms almost effortlessly, and if you tried to "walk", you actually (slowly) got somewhere.

I'd heard you could get covered in Dead Sea mud, and thought I'd give it a go, just for the fun of it. I managed to get a tiny fleck of water in my eye on the way back in, and was very glad that was all,because it hurt quite a lot! I and another one of the people in my group got mudded up with what looked like thick, oily tar, but turned out to be not quite as oily as it looked, and fortunately didn't smell all that bad, either! It didn't feel especially unusual, apart from the fact that I don't think I've ever covered myself head to toe in black goop before. We stood around for a while to let it dry a bit and have a chance to take effect (it's supposed to be good for your skin). Naturally, some silly photos were in order:

After wandering back into the water to wash off again, and spending a bit of time in one of the pools (where it felt so much harder to swim, by comparison!), we headed off to Mt Nebo, where Moses is said to have been given a view of the Promised Land. (Unfortunately, it was very hazy in the distance when we got up there, and I haven't really got any good shots of it.) We then headed off to Madaba, the 5th-mostpopulated city in Jordan, with a population of about 60,000.

Madaba and Jerash

The main attraction here wasn't really Madaba itself, although we did see a rather nice Greek Orthdox church, complete with a partial mosaic map of the Holy Land, which was quite impressive. The major thing for me was the Roman ruins of Jerash that some of us went to the next day. They were very large, impressive, and we spent about 2 1/2 hour swalking through them. (I go gaga for Roman ruins, btw!)






We didn't get a chance to see see an arena performance, but I wasn't actually that fussed about it, esp. when our tour leader commented when we saw him later on that it really wasn't anything special. Madaba is quite a modern city, and actually looked rather cool at night (although this hastily snapped shot will probably only give you so much of a feel for it!):

Travelogue - Part 2

Mt Sinai

The next morning, we all piled into a very comfortable, air-conditioned mini-bus, and headed off to our first stop: Mt Sinai. Once we'd left Cairo, we rolled through what was very barren, yet interesting countryside. One thing you noticed was the large number of building projects, in varying states of repair, that seemed to have been halted partway through. I asked Chris, who said that yes, that tended to happen. We drove briefly along the coastline at one point, which was nice.

Egypt is definitely a place where you wouldn't want to mess with the checkpoints, of which there are quite a few. They're small, but are equipped with small, portable metal shields to protect the guards, and typically have a small tower with a couple of what are probably assault rifles poking out of them. In some ways, it was nice to know that things were being controlled the way they were though, actually, and I never felt bothered by them. We arrived at our hotel, which was rather cool, as it was nestled on its own in the barren hills we'd been driving past. We had a very nice buffet lunch, then headed off to climb Mt Sinai.


The Heat

At this point, it would be worth mentioning that unless otherwise noted, you can assume that everywhere I'm talking about is hot, in a hot Australian summer's day kind of way. Also, given that we're in countries which are conservative when it comes to dress, we need to wear pants that cover our knees (which pretty much means long). Sunscreen and lots of water are definite prerequisites for any sort of extended walk.

Anyway, back to Mt Sinai! We were told that there were several options available to us: ride a camel two-thirds of the way up, take the normal route, or take the "Stairs of Repentance" instead, which would basically involve climbing about 2,500 stairs. Although none of us went for the camel option, none of us thought we were feeling particularly repentant!

We met our guide, then started on what was apparently going to be about a 3-hour walk. It wasn't too steep for the first two-thirds, but it wasn't exactly easy either, mostly because of the heat. At least some of us were starting to looking forward to seeing the point where the camels had to stop (we'd seen several pass by with people on their backs, and all agreed that they were, indeed, slackers :P ). The views along the way were great, and it definitely made all of the effort feel worthwhile. It wasn't long after the two-thirds mark that we encountered the stairs which made up the final part of the climb.

Very steep in places, they were definitely challenging, but were over almost surprisingly quickly, and we'd finally reached the top. The view was really something, and we stayed to watch the sun set.

At this point, you're possibly wondering whether or not we stayed the night so we could head down in relative safety in the morning. Well, the answer is "no, we didn't". We pulled out our torches, headed down as much of the stairs bit as quickly as we could before the light faded altogether, and continued on down, continually impressed by our guide's almost psychic ability to find his way in the light of the almost-full moon. To put it into perspective, the track was dirt and stones, with fine grit on the larger stones in places, which meant you had to be fairly careful. None of this really mattered though, as far as I was concerned, and I really enjoyed the walk down. The moon and stars in the sky, along with the almost complete quiet, and the relative coolness of the evening gave everything a really nice atmosphere. As we neared the end, we could see the lights of the buildings, which looked almost like candles in the night.

Despite how good the walk had been, we were definitely happy to collapse into the mini-bus and go back to the hotel for a late, quick dinner before falling into bed. The next day, we went to see St Katherine's monastery, which contains what is said to be the burning bush that Moses saw. We'd already passed it on our climb up the day before.

There's also a fire extinguisher near the bush, just in case!

Okay, it's at this point that I feel the need to reassure you all that my next few posts are going to (mostly) be less wordy for each place I go to. ;) I've been trying to give you all a bit of a feel for everything to get things started, but I don't want to put you all to sleep!

Travelogue - Part 1

Hi All,

Welcome to the first instalment of my travelogue for Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Now, I know I said I was going to try to post updates more often this time, but unfortunately I didn't get many chances to get on to a computer, and the internet over here is a real problem when it comes to this site sometimes, apparently (and there were a few days in Syria where I wasn't even allowed to access it, or Facebook!).

(For those of you who don't want to read a lot of first impressions stuff, the short version of this post is that I left Melbourne, arrived in Cairo, got settled in, went to see the museum, met my tour group for Cairo to Istanbul, who seemed nice, and tried a Shisha pipe, which really did taste of strawberry, and didn't make me choke (I'm not a smoker!).

Leaving

First, I left. After a few hectic days of studying, passing the exam I was studying for (yay!), shopping, packing, and general organising, I arrived at Melbourne airport, and even managed to look mostly awake for this photo:

I met my friend, who's going to be travelling with me for all the time I'm over here, said goodbye to everyone, headed through customs and hopped on to our first flight (Singapore Airlines). Plane flights aren't very interesting to talk about, so I'll just say I ate far more than I should have, slept far too little and watched a movie or two, as flights, timelines, and stop-off points (Singapore and Dubai) all blurred into one (I really can't sleep on planes very well). Singapore Airlines is good though, both for the food and their very good selection of movies!

About 24 hours later, we arrived at Cairo airport, at about 5:00 AM, feeling more than just a little worn out. I breathed my usual small sigh of relief when I saw my bag coming around on the carousel, passed through customs without any difficulty (in fact, we'd fairly much been waved and/or processed quickly through everything), and got on to the mini-bus that was waiting to take us to our hotel in Cairo.

Cairo

It might sound unkind, but the first two things that struck me about Cairo as we headed away from the airport in the just-past-dawn light were "polluted", and "dirty". The smell, and the early-morning haze pretty much hit you as soon as you stepped outside. For anyone who lives in Melbourne, we have nothing to complain about when it comes to pollution. The highway into Cairo had very good lane markings: even have lane markings, if only the drivers would bother to pay attention to them! Straddling two lanes and only moving when you get beeped seemed to be fairly standard practise.

All that aside, it was very cool to see Cairo as we headed in, with its buildings topped with forest of satellite dishes, and their sides covered in air conditioning units. Yes, Cairo is pretty darn hot, even at that hour of the morning. The only unpleasant thing was slowing down to go past an overturned car on our side of the highway at one point. That was something that couldn't've gone very well. :(

Our first day was pretty much spent napping, orienting ourselves, and venturing out (slowly!) ınto the heat to see about finding some water etc at a local supermarket. We bought some water from a person who naturally insisted on giving us some friendly advice about where things were, then walking us to his brother's papyrus and souvenirs shop, where we spent a bit of time politely listening to the brother trying to sell us stuff, and having a browse. I actually ended up buying some papyrus bookmarks, which were pretty cool, but said no thanks to anything bigger, for the moment, at least! After that, we found the supermarket, then headed back to the hotel, where we decıded to have dınner at the restaurant on the top level, whıch had a vıew of the city.

Ramadan

One thing I should probably mention before I go any further is that we're currently in Ramadan, and will be for pretty much all of our trip to Istanbul. The practical implications of this are that shops and tourist attractions tend to close early, and alcohol can be very hard to come by, even in hotels. People break fast at about 6:30. On the upside, there appear to be less tourists around, making moving through places much nicer!

Okay, back to the story so far... The view from the top of the hotel was actually quite nice, even if this photo doesn't really do it any justice:

Cairo Museum

We had the next day to ourselves before meeting our tour group in the evening, so we decided to head to the museum. We asked at the hotel about a taxi, were given a price, then led down to the tiny little side street the hotel was on to a guy who looked like he'd be only to happy to be given something to do, especially if it involved paying customers. After a short drive, which gave us a chance to see more of Cairo, we arrived at the museum. Ignoring all the people trying to sell us stuff on the way in, we bought our tickets, walked through the metal detector, waited for me to get patted down by one of guards (it must've been that shifty look I've always got??), and headed in.

Cairo museum is impressively big, and it took us about 2 hours to look at everything only briefly. Sculptures, sarcophagi, utensils, jewellery, statuettes, and all kind of other things, including a section with mummified animals. Horses were fairly easy to understand, but I started looking slightly more amused/bemused as we encountered crocodiles (an adult and a tiny baby), fish, and even scarab beetles! The only real problem with the museum was the extremely limited number of explanatory plaques: most of the exhibits didn't have them!

We walked around a bit outside before deciding to take someone up on their offer of a taxi back to the hotel (although we had to keep saying "no thanks" to their offers to take us somewhere else on the way back). In the evening, we met our tour group: 5 other people and Chris, our guide. They all seemed nice, and we went out for dinner together at a hotel restaurant, which was actually willıng to serve us alcohol! I was going to go to bed after that, but thought I'd go out with Chris and some of the others to a local Shisha place to see what it was like. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't smoke, but I decided to give it a go anyway, just to see what it was like, and my friend and I ordered a strawberry-flavoured one to share.

Having had one puff of a cigarette years ago out of sheer curiosity, and with memories of coughing unpleasantly, among other things, the Shisha pipe was actually a pleasant surprise. It looked rather cool, to start with, and really did have a distinct strawberry taste to it. The smoke didn't make me cough at all, and even though it's something I'd definitely never take up, it was definitely an okay experience. We didn't stay long, which was good really, because I was still very tired and somewhat jet lagged.