The Pyramid Adventure Begins

Today we leave the tourist enclave of Dahab -- where we enjoyed fresh fruit juices for $1 by the Red Sea for four days -- for Aswan in southern Egypt to begin our adventures through the sites of ancient Egypt. We are traveling with our Australian friends who host a much better blog here.

When we get to Aswan we will try to find a boat to take us up the Nile to Luxor.

Petra and Wadi Rum, Jordan

The Treasury, Petra, Jordan, made famous in the last few scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and now an official "wonder of the world."


An evening shot of The Treasury.


Caroline on one of the massive dunes in Wadi Rum.


Tired and dirty at sunset, Wadi Rum.

Hello, Goodbye Jordan

We just arrived in Egypt after three nights in Jordan. The first two were spent at Petra, home to the famous Nabatean ruins, and the last one at Wadi Rum, an incredible desert nature reserve where Bedouin lived until very recently. At the reserve, we hired a guide, Salim, who drove us around the massive sand dunes and fed us at one of his camps. We slept under the full moon in the desert, and this morning took the ferry across the Red Sea to Egypt. Now we are in Dahab, a divers' hangout that once was very laid back but that now is overdeveloped and not very chill at all. We're tired right now, so maybe our first impressions will change after a day of snorkelling tomorrow. We met some really nice Australians who seem to be our alter egos: they have travelled the same route as us, and are pretty much going to the same places over the new few months. Besides being tired from our trip today, everything is going well and we're excited to leave for Dubai and India in mid-September.

chillin in beirut

No really... it's true the mention of Beirut never conjured the feeling of relaxation in my mind, but it does now that I've been there! We stayed at Jerome's friend Saseen's house for five nights... hanging around, doing laundry, shopping, going out in the evenings, and sleeping in. It was pretty chill after the relative chaos of Aleppo and Damascus. And some hotels we've had lately leave something to be desired (note, always ask for clean sheets as it's not assumed you care! Okay, I have to admit we've been paying $20/night), so it felt great to be in a real home again.


I spent a lot of time at home with Arse the cat. Don't be jealous Minou, I'll be back eventually!!


Out on the town with Saseen.

Sometimes we even walked around town:

At the American University of Beirut. If you have two physicist + political scientist jobs open up, we're available!


On the way to our favourite restaurant Le Chef, where we ate three times because of my addiction to their chick peas and garlic dish.

Jordan

After chilling in Beirut for five days, we arrived yesterday for our whirlwind tour of Jordan. Beirut was great. Wonderful food, good nightlife, beautiful location, lots going on... definitely one of our favourite stops so far! Today we visited Petra, recently voted as one of the "new" 7 wonders of the world. Maybe some pictures later - technical difficulties right now.

In Beirut

We arrived in Beirut yesterday afternoon by taxi from Damascus and are staying in the family home of one of my friends, Saseen. Last night we went for Lebanese food and Arak, a Lebanese alcohol similar to Raki or Ouzo. We will be here for 3 more nights and then head to Petra in Jordan.

Last Night in Damascus

Our last night in Damascus was the most random ever. We were supposed to go to our friend Said's house for a supper of stuffed zucchinis made by his wife. When we met, however, he said we needed to do something else first. We said OK and followed him to a fancy office in some nearby shopping district. The office was the executive room for some Syrian wholesale makeup company, but the man at the office also produces and publishes Arab music CDs. Apparently our friend Said, who is an English teacher, was helping some Islamic singer-songwriter (who doesn't know a word of English) with an English song on his upcoming album for the American market. Our job was to (1) listen to the song to point out grammar and pronunciation problems; (2) edit the English liner notes in the CD booklet; and (3) assure them that they didn't need to write an apology for the musician's English in the CD booklet. So, before our fantastic supper of stuffed zucchinis we hung out in a bling bling exec office, drinking coffee, listening to and editing some cheesy religious song by a guy who speaks no English but whose album heads to America for release this week! The weirdest and most random things happen in Damascus. You have to visit here.

Krac des Chevaliers

Then we were off on yet another minibus ride with switch-back turns to see what must be one of the most impressive castles in the world: Krac des Chevaliers, built by the Crusaders and defended successfully for hundreds of years. This is the view from our hotel window.

Aleppo

Our first stop in Syria was Aleppo. Due to more lack of planning on our part ("want to go to Syria tomorrow?", "Sure, why not?"), we couldn't find a cheap hotel. (BTW, cheap in Syria means really really cheap. A three hour bus ride is $1.50!) However, this kind of worked out as we were forced to blow some cash and stay in the Baron Hotel, which had a tonne of character. Agatha Christie used to stay here with her archaeologist husband, and it was here she wrote the first half of Murder on the Orient Express. The place was right out of the 1930s and also had the most ancient hotel staff we had ever met.



We took a trip outside of Aleppo, to see the ruins of the Basilica of St. Simon, built around a column from which he preached for 40 years. Now it looks a bit like a boulder.


We also really liked the markets in Aleppo (souqs), which were full of smells and vendors selling everything.

Our vote for friendliest country

Last week in Lattakia, a nice city on the coast, we were adopted by a shopkeeper named Ali who took us out for dinner. His taxi driver friend gave us a 3-hour tour to a Crusader castle and didn't want any money. We talked to several students on the street for an hour. And that was just one day! Since we arrived in Syria over a week ago, about 200 people have said "welcome." Taxi and minibus drivers have bought us coffee and juice.

Syria is also one of the safest countries in the world for travelling. Basically the only chance of hostage-taking is being removed somewhere by a local to drink tea or coffee. We arrived in Damascus yesterday, and after 20 minutes met a friendly English teacher named Saeed, who took us to his apartment for some ping pong, tea, coffee, and shawarma.


Jerome gets his ping pong ass kicked.

Syria update

We're in Damascus now. Internet connection is unreliable (I think we might be on dial-up -- and it doesn't help that the electricity is shut down for two hours every day!). But I'll try and post a few things we've been up to since we arrived.

In Syria

We are now in Syria! After Capadochia we took a long bus ride to Mt. Nemrut and saw the famous face statues at the top (pics to come) and then went to Urfa, where Abraham was allegedly born and turned something into fish. Near Urfa we also saw the beehive houses of Harran. From there we went to Antep, home to an amazing museum with mosaics from the Roman city of Zeugam. Then we crossed the border into Syria. Now we are in Halab (Alleppo). There is a very good citadel and souq (market) here, and today we saw the basillica where Saint Simon sat on a column for 40 years. It was a great site, but Saint Simon seemed to have been a bit weird. Apparently the game 'Simon says' comes from him. Tomorrow we are of toLAttakia where we plan to see Saladin's castle.

Ihlara Valley 1

Yesterday we hired a guide to take us through the Ihlara Valley, a small Grand Canyon-like valley in Cappadocia. Our guide, Gaye, was from Middle Earth Travel, a good company that designs treks and hikes for small groups of independent travellers -- so no big bus groups and no trips to some uncle's carpet shop. We were the only ones on the tour! We had a great time and highly recommend this guide company to other travellers.

The 6-hour trek through the Valley was spectacular: lots of trees and flowers, a cool stream at the bottom, and steep canyon walls with hundreds of churches and caves carved high-up into the rock. Some of the churches have interesting frescoes.

We ended the day with a swim in a volcanic crater turned lake.

Here are some pics, which unfortunatly do not do justice to the real scenery:







This fresco is from an iconoclastic period in which images of Christ and other biblical characters were considered not cool. So they used the infinity symbol instead.


This fresco depicts the Three Wise Men but in Dervish dress!

Ihlara Valley pics 2

More pictures from our hike:

Cappadocia

We are in a really cool place: Goreme in the region of Cappadocia. It is hard to describe the area, it is like nowhere else. Valleys full of these "fairy chimneys" formed out of volcanic ash and erosion. For almost 3000 years people have been carving out caves and building whole cities in and under the rock. There are also tonnes of early Christian cave churches with very interesting frescoes. Today we went to an old Hittite and Roman underground city which had more than 2000 rooms! We are staying in an incredible hotel called Elif Star, where our room is a cave! See pıcs at: http://www.elifstar.com/

Yesterday we went hiking in a valley and saw a lot of these...

PS - you may notice a new haircut in the picture above. The buzz happened after a barber gave me a bowl-cut and then a reverse mullet afterwhich I had to beg for a full shave.