Istanbul: From Asia to Europe all in one day

We are currently running on maybe 5 hours of sleep over the last 72 hours and are likely to add only a couple more to that total over the next 24 hours. As such, if this entry makes little sense, please accept my apologies.

We left Bergama on the 10 hour night bus to Istanbul. As comfortable as these buses are, there is only so much sleep you can get in such a position. It is therefore not surprising that when we arrived in Istanbul at 6am we were quite exhausted. However, we somehow managed to find our way to the center and to track down the meeting point for our pickup by Gokhen, our next Couchsurfing host.

In the past, whenever I’ve referred to our Couchsurfing experiences, I’ve generally kept it quite brief, especially when discussing our hosts. However, I think this time round a bit more detail is necessary. Gokhen is a Human Rights lawyer in Istanbul. He has completed his masters and is now working on his PhD while practicing full time. He informed us prior to our arrival that he lives relatively near the old town of Istanbul. Maybe I should have learned by now not to have any expectations, or rather to expect the unexpected when traveling through the Middle East as well as most other places. However, having scanned through a number of Couchsurfing profiles, seen relatively roomy apartments etc, I had some kind of standard in mind when I thought of a lawyer hosting us. That is not to say that I expected luxury or felt cheated by the lack of it. What I’m getting at is that what greeted us was the complete unexpected.

Gokhan’s flat was a very small two bedroom place that had seen better days. Officially there were at least 5 guys sharing the flat, sleeping 2 or 3 to a room on mattresses spread on the floor. Unofficially the rotation of tenants at times was unpredictable, often with more than 6 people sleeping there (that is excluding any Couchsurfers). Furniture was comprised of several mattresses, two couches in the little living room, a table, a tiny TV, several laptops and some hangers for clothes that hang in various spots across the flat. The toilet was a traditional Arabic style toilet and from the kitchen window you could shake hands with the neighbor in the building across from you (beneficial if you ran out of tomatoes while cooking pasta etc.).

Various reasons came to mind for such living arrangements: rent might be extremely high in Istanbul; there might be a shortage of flats; this was a temporary arrangement. All three of these proved to be false. Rent for the flat was approximately 500 TL or 250 Euro a month; apparently a flat double the size could easily be obtained for the same price in a similar area; and the living arrangement had been in existence for a number of years. This was simply the way they chose to live.

We were welcomed into these small quarters; a few of the tenants were woken up and told to move to the other room so that we could have somewhere to change; and we were informed that the sleeping arrangements would be sorted out in the evening.

After a quick breakfast we headed out onto town first towards the Blue Mosque, where through the massive crowds of tourists we managed to catch some glimpses of the gorgeous interior of this building. However, we decided to pass on the massive lineup to the Aya Sofya and instead visited the fantastic Basilica Cistern – an underground chamber 65 meters wide and 143 meters long and supported by 336 columns arranged in 12 rows. It once held 80,000 cubic meters of water. Now there are only several inches of water in the cistern, but the atmospheric lighting and the occasional dripping of the water make this a truly memorable place.

From there it was off to lunch, followed by some Turkish tea, and an excursion to the Great Bazaar where I got yelled at by a shop attendant for talking too much and meddling in other people’s affairs (as I haggled for a good price for Julita and tried to do the same for Paulina). He told me to stay out of it and having gotten mad, refused to lower the price any further.

We then returned to Sultanahmet Square and realizing that there was no longer a lineup to Aya Sofya, decided to go in. For me, this 1500+ year old building that used to be a Christian Basilica and then was converted into a Mosque seemed to be missing its identity. The interior was in a state of great disrepair with renovations ongoing but to little effect. Some of the Christian mosaics were visible as were most of the Muslim decorations that had been added, but all of it lacked luster and failed to make an impression. What did, however, make an impression was the giant dome which seemed to float unsupported over the massive center chamber. The architectural design of this structure was truly amazing.

A side note: all of these sights have security checks that you go through. The last time we had made ourselves sandwiches, Paulina had pulled out her knife, put it into her day pack and completely forgotten about it. As we went through the security check to the Aya Sofya they noticed the knife on the x-ray machine and told Paulina to remove it from her bag. After fiddling with it for a while the security guard asked us where we were from, and upon hearing that we were from Canada, handed the knife back to Paulina saying that Canada is good and that it’s no problem. Go figure. I wonder if he would have been as generous if he knew we were also Polish citizens.

From there we headed towards the water, rounding the Golden Horn and strolling along the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus Strait until we reached the Galata Bridge. From there it was up the hill, all the way down Istiklal Caddesi, Modern Istanbul’s most pretentious street, filled not only with the best brandname stores, but also an endless array of restaurants, bars, clubs and embassies. By 8:30pm we had finally made it to Taksim Square where we were to meet our Couchsurfing entourage. Unfortunately plans had changed, they had decided to sleep and we had to continue our exhausted march back down Istiklal Caddesi until we got to Gokhan’s office.

There we finally were given the opportunity to have dinner and eventually dragged out for some drinks on what must have been the 7th floor of a restaurant. The stairs were never-ending. We finally made it back home at around 2am at which point we were advised that Paulina and I would be sleeping on the balcony (not a large balcony – barely long and wide enough for a single mattress). At 5:30am the alarm rang and we were up on our feet again to see the sunrise over the Blue Mosque.

As exhausted as we were, this proved to be a wise decision. The view was stunning and the lack of crowds was amazing. We went back to the Blue Mosque and aside for the janitor vacuuming the carpets, had the mosque to ourselves. Next on our list was the Topkapi Palace where the highlights must have been the Topkapi dagger with its giant emeralds encrusted in the hilt, the 48kg solid gold candlesticks, each encrusted with thousands of diamonds, as well as the Spoonmaker’s Diamond, an 86 cerate rock that had been found in the dump and bought by a street peddler for three spoons (it’s the 5th largest diamond in the world).

The Place was followed by a visit to the spice bazaar, some haggling for jewelry with an elder Turk who spoke a beautifully accented Polish and was of the opinion that Polish and Russian girls were the most beautiful in the world. He also spoke fluent German and English as well as being able to communicate in Russian, Hungarian, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Spanish and a couple other languages.

By this point it was already 4pm. It took us nearly an hour to make it back to the apartment and the plan was to quickly pick up (reserve) our bus tickets to Bulgaria and swing by a Haman (Turkish bath) prior to heading out to the bus station for 7:30pm. Well, everything seemed to take much longer than expected. By the time we got our tickets we were dripping wet from sweat (after having carried all our packs in the 32 degree weather), desperately needing one of those scrubs offered up in the Haman, but having absolutely no time to do so. Instead, still soaked, we stocked up on some incredibly delicious Balaclava, boarded the tram, then transferred to the metro and headed to catch our next 10 hour bus that would take us into Europe proper.

We are scheduled to arrive in Burgas early in the morning and from there plan to take a minibus for another hour or so to Sozopol. Hopefully there we will be able to rest up a bit.

PS: And rest we desperately needed. Having commenced our commute to Sozopol at around 4pm in Istanbul with a 1.5 hour march through the blazing hot streets, the last half hour with all our gear, followed by local transit for another hour, we finally got on the bus at around 7:30pm. Exhausted, we started to fall asleep around 10:00pm only to be woken up for a half hour stop at 10:30pm. We got back on the bus at 11pm and an hour or so later started to fall asleep (as opposed to just dozing), but were again woken up at 1am for all the border formalities. The same situation repeated itself with a stop at 2:30am and at 4am when we were really desperate for some rest, we arrived in Burgas. There were no ongoing buses to Sozopol nor was anything open at that ungodly hour. We grabbed some benches in the park, pulled out our sleeping bags, stretched out and decided to nap for a couple hours. I got up just before 6am, found a nice bakery and was informed that a bus would be departing for Sozopol in less than 10 minutes. By 6:45am we were in Sozopol, a town whose official population is 4900. However, on a Saturday morning at 7am in the offseason the population is likely closer to 20. We could not find a single hotel reception that was open despite having wondered through the “new” and “old” part of town twice. Eventually at around 8am I tracked down a couple eating breakfast in one of the hotels and managed to secure a room where we all passed out.

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Pergamum and the crowds

Just as in Ephesus we got up early and arrived at the ruins shortly after the opening of the gates. Again, the crowds were not bad, but everywhere we turned we could see them scurrying across the ruins, ducking behind corners, peaking around the bends. Just when we thought that we were alone in the amphitheater or tunnel, one would peak out his head and stare at us. However, this time around the crowds were not tourists, but rather lizards.

The first place we went to in Pergamum was the Asclepion (the ancient healing spa). Aside for two other tourists, we did not see a single other person until we left, but as I’ve mentioned, there was no shortage of lizards. The ruins weren’t anything extravagant, but it was nice to walk around them in absolute silence, with only the birds chirping offering a continuous accompaniment. We even spotted a tiny little turtle. He did not seem to think very highly of our Turkey Lonely Planet Book.

From there it was off to the Red Basilica where again we were on our own and then up the mountain to the Acropolis were we stumbled across a few busloads of tourists but they seemed to disperse themselves quite nicely.

However, in all honesty, if someone is pressed for time, Pergamum does not really have much to offer and can easily be skipped. The ruins are described quite impressively in the guides, but in reality are little in comparison to Ephesus, Palmyra, Jerash and even Side. It is a pleasant enough place to stop if you are slowly meandering your way down the Turkish coast, but not worth going out of your way.

Since there’s not much to say about our current excursions, this might be a good place for some Turkish facts:

• While some countries are battling it out in courts about policies pertaining to wearing headscarves and turbans, it is illegal for women to wear these scarves to universities or to work in government offices. Many of them, in order to abide by their religious believes, continue to wear them, but over top of the scarves will put on a plastic black wig.
• Many apartment blocks remain unfinished throughout the bigger cities. Consturction is often started as a form of speculation, or as a cooperative, with various people contributing money. Sometimes that money runs out, sometimes there are disagreements or the builders run off with all the investments, but at other times it simply is no longer profitable to continue building, and whatever tax breaks the builder had in the beginning might no longer be in existence. As such, numerous unfinished blocks dot the skyline.
• Military service is mandatory. For someone who did not complete university, mandatory service lasts approximately 14 or 15 months. If you have completed univserity you have two options: you can either serve for 6 months as a normal soldier, not be allowed to leave the base throughout that entire time and not be paid anything; or you can serve for a year commanding a group of 300 people, be allowed off the base after 5pm and be paid a small but not insignificant sum of money. The downfall of both these options is you never know where you will be placed and might be required to move halfway across the country for service.
• Gas is probably the most expensive I have seen in a long time: at most stations petrol costs 3.78 TL or $2.70 CAD per liter.
• When walking through a bazaar, even in a relatively small town, be prepared to be accosted in every possible language. The vendors are incredibly good at guessing your nationality and will address you first in the language they believe to be appropriate. If we were walking and talking in English, that would be their default. To fend them off I would reply in Polish which in turn would be met with invitations from the same vendor to come into his shop and relatively fluent Polish along with comments such as “Ale ladna dziewczyna. Sliczne masz oczy” (usually addressed to Julita). With that attempt having failed I would begin to answer in German, but their response was equally fluent. We tried the same with some basic French to no avail. I think Greek was the only language we tried which didn’t receive and equally fluent response.

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Same country, different sea

The last time I wrote we were on the south coast of Turkey relaxing on the Mediterranean Sea. We've now made it to Turkey's west coast and with it to the Agean sea.

Our boat trip, although relaxing, did not turn out quite as we would have wished. We woke up to a cloudy sky that quickly started to dump rain on us. By 11am it had cleared up enough so that the trip was not called off and we became optimistic that things would continue to improve. Unfortunately, they did not do so until about 5pm. Up until that point the clouds alternated with sunshine and were interspersed by periods of drizzling rain. Overall we didn’t mind too much and it was still relatively warm. The downside was that the gorgeous turquoise sea simply did not have the same impact and color as it would have in full sunshine. Secondly, because there was no guarantee of warming oneself up in the sunshine, I did not have enough courage to go for a swim in the slightly chilly waters. But you can’t go wrong when you’re sailing through gorgeous bays all day long and are fed a fantastic fish lunch for a whole $10CAD.

The following day, despite the hotel managers valiant attempts to convince us to stay longer (on the house), we hit the road again. Our initial trip took us the scenic route through little villages, winding roads, high “mountain” (hill) passes, gorgeous valleys, beautiful lakes and a number of detours all the way to Pamukkale.

Yellowstone National Park has one site in it that is like a white waterfall of calcium like shelves. On photos it looks like snow with icicles. Well, Pamukkale is a large scale equivalent of this. The site is 2,700 meters long, 600 meters wide and 160 meters high. It can be seen from the hills on the opposite side of the valley in the town of Denizli, 20 km away. These travertines (terraces of carbonate minerals left by the flowing hot spring water) are quite the sight. They would be even more impressive if they were filled (and overflowing) with water.

Unfortunately, unlike in Yellowstone where nature is left to do its thing, humans have intervened in Pamukkale. By the 1990 the human effect on these shelves was becoming apparent, especially since there had been a road leading directly through them and hotels which diverted the spring water for their own purposes. Most of these pristine white shelves had started to turn grey. To reverse this effect, the road was shut down, much of the area was closed to tourists and you could no longer bathe in them (with the exception of a small area specially designated for that purpose). However, most significantly the water was diverted from the pools to allow them to bleach out in the sun. Now the water is controlled on a weekly rotating schedule with the result that only a small amount of the travertines are filled with water. All the gorgeous photos you can see on the internet, are taken during special times during which all pools are temporarily filled.

Nevertheless, Pamukkale was quite a sight, and it was neat to walk around some of the shelves and take a dip in the 36 degree Celsius water.

From Pamukkale it was a semi quick drive down highway-like roads all the way to Selcuk where we spent the night and bright the next morning went to explore the ruins at Ephesus. Following the advice of travelers I had met in Cappadocia, we showed up shortly after opening hours and were rewarded by much lesser crowds (most of the tour buses not yet having arrived). The highlight was the Library of Celsus which had been gorgeously reconstructed. The library was build to house 12,000 scrolls and to serve as a monumental tomb for Celsus. It was not as large as I had imagined it to be, but nevertheless impressive (especially when we managed to snap a few shots without ANY people in them (well – aside for maybe us). By the time we were leaving the site, it was difficult to squeeze by all the people, even on the main roads.

The cacophony of languages surrounding us by that point in time was crazy. But we did manage to pick up some interesting bits of information from the various tour groups: from a German group we found out that the communal washrooms with about 40 “toilet” holes surrounding what originally used to be a fish pond were quite the meeting place but the marble slabs had to be pre-warmed by slaves during the winter; from the Polish group we learned that the town hall was the place for all welcome-parties and all such events were paid for by the citizens of the city; and from the British group we learned that the four statues at the front of the Library symbolized: wisdom (Sophia), knowledge (Episteme), intelligence (Ennoia) and valor (Arete).

From Ephesus we headed up the mountains into the midst of various fruit orchards to a little village of Sirince. There we got to taste some interesting (and not so tasty) wines, including mandarin, blueberry, cherry and blackberry, stroll cobbled streets, get invited by an elderly lady into her home for some tea, have a delicious lunch comprised of Turkish pizza (almost like savory pancakes), and simply meander through the village. Although there was nothing particular about this little place, it was probably the highlight of the day. The only thing that would have made it better would have been the absence of tour buses, which unfortunately seem to make it virtually everywhere.

We’re now in Bergama with plans to see the ruins of Pergamum tomorrow morning; in the afternoon we will be parting with our vehicle (which we have grown very fond of); and in the evening we will be hoping onto a 10 hour night bus to Istanbul.

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Antalya and Standard Transmission Vehicles

From Side to Antalya it’s about 80km, so one would have thought about an hour would have been enough to make the trip. Well, I left Side at 3:30pm and finally managed to meet up with my next Couchsurfing host in Antalya at around 7:30pm.

Antalya had not much to recommend. It was simply a big city with a semi-nice old town and port. Unfortunately the weather was turning a little sour so the coast and the water had lost a bit of its charm. Julita and Paulina arrived after a long flight from Vancouver via Calgary and Frankfurt and then a 12 hour bus ride from Istanbul to Antalya. They were good sports and more than willing to immediately head to town to explore, albeit at times in a zombie-like fashion.

Our main goal in Antalya was to figure out a vehicle rental so that we could explore the coast at our leisure. The catch was that all main rental agencies were at the airport and we had no intentions of going there. We finally managed to find a place that was going to rent us a nice Suzuki Jeep like vehicle with gas (propane) for about 450 TL for 5 days with a drop off on the west coast of Turkey. The upside of the gas vehicle was that normal petrol costs about $2.20 per liter whereas gas is only about $1.20. The lady who rented us the vehicle reminded me of Estelle, Joey Triviani’s agent and it was hard to tell whether she was any more reputable than her Hollywood counterpart. However, this had been the best price we had found all day so we signed the contract and arrange to come for the vehicle the following morning.

Well, the next morning it turned out that Estelle got yelled at by her husband for offering us a price that they couldn’t honor. After some arguing and frustration we ended up getting a small Diesel Renault Clio at the rental place next door for 550 TL. We’ll see whether the decision was a good one or not, but it is definitely beneficial to have a vehicle and to be able to travel wherever we want.

Paulina started out as the designated driver, I the navigator and Julita as backseat decoration. However, after ½ hour of driving and after having stalled the vehicle about 10 times on an intersection, Paulina gave up and handed the wheel over to Julita. Now Julita is our designated, and speedy driver, I’m still the navigator and Paulina has been promoted to the backseat tour guide that tells us all about the Turkish history.

Our first day’s adventures took us to Chimera, a place where some form of gas escapes from the earth and upon contact with the air catches fire. There are about 30 of these little fire spouts dotting the hillside. Next was Olympos where Greek and Roman ruins go all the way down to the sea and where backpackers abound. There we fell asleep on the beach, had a delicious meal and got back in the car to head towards Kas.

In Kas we spent a nice night, wandered around in the morning and then hit the road again.

Can (John), our Couch Surfing host in Antalya, wonder how the three of us ended up traveling together and today so did I. Here’s a sample of the dialog that went on this morning.

Julita: Do you have a sister?
Paulina: Yes, but she doesn’t really look like me.
Kasia: She actually looks more like Julita than you.
Paulina: I don’t know a Julita.
Julita: WHAT???

And the saddest part of it was that none of this brilliancy was attributable to jet lag. I think over the next month or so I will definitely have to work on my patience.

Today’s adventure took us to Saklikent Gorge, an 18 km gorge that sometimes reaches 200 meters in hight and is often only a few meters wide. The first 50m of it are a nice boardwalk above the roaring river. However, from that point onwards you’re walking in the river. At times this is only ankle deep, but the further we went, the narrower it got and the stronger the currents. By the way, the water was freezing.

At one point there was simply no way to continue in a manner that would guarantee the safety of my camera. At about the same point in time Julita decided that she wasn’t going to continue any further. Paulina and I handed off most of our belongings and escorted by a few local youth, proceeded onwards. I should mention that the floor of the river is this black clay like sand. As a result the river is this chalky color with absolutely no visibility. You have no idea where you are placing your feet.

After we left Julita we were escorted through the river over boulders with raging currents, waist and chest deep in the water, trusting our guides that if we lounge and place our feet where they are pointing, we will land on a rock and not sink fully into the river. At times this worked, but at other times a moment’s hesitation was enough to make the lounge a few inches to short and to plunge us into the chilling waters. After passing a waterfall, and clambering over more of these rapids, we decided that we went far enough and began our return journey.

Later on in the season with the water level lower, the gorge is much easier to explore and from what I have heard, further on along it has fantastic slides carved into the rock by the force of the water. Slightly disappointed that we couldn’t make it that far, we were nevertheless happy to have gotten as far as we did, despite being soaked and frozen.

From Saklikent it was off to Oludeniz with a brief stop for a goat. Driving over 60kph along little narrow roads in the Turkish countryside Julita all of a sudden slammed on the breaks, stalling the car to a complete stop. All of this was because the little car that passed us in the opposite direction had a goat in the backseat that was sticking its head out of the window. It took some convincing to stop Julita from turning our car around to give chase so that she could have a picture of this unusual sight.

Now it’s time for a day of relaxation in Oludeniz with a boat cruise in store for tomorrow.

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Side: a Turkish Playa del Carmen

Before heading to the coast let me wrap up a few Cappadocia matters. Firstly, the Whirling Dervishes, well, they whirled, and whirled, and whirled, and whirled. Nearly 45 minutes of non-stop turning. I don’t know whether I can say that it was a fascinating experience, but it was definitely a dizzying one. My head was spinning from just watching them and I don’t know how they were able to maintain their balance.

Other than the Dervishes we did a lot more walking, some more hitchhiking, and a bit more relaxing. However, the highlight was an early morning wake-up to see the balloons. We had imagined that there might be 5 or 10 of these balloons and when we got up shortly after sunrise to find 49 of them in the sky, our jaws dropped open in amazement. There was simply nothing that could have prepared us for the scale of it.

We hiked up a little mountain right behind our hostel and beheld all the valleys which we had been climbing through over the last few days filled with hot air balloons.
Now, as I’ve noted on some of the photos, if you ever were considering a change of professions, hot air ballooning in Cappadocia might be the thing for you. The season lasts from April to December but there are also balloon trips in the winter. Every balloon holds between 10 to 30 people, although we have heard of balloons being stuffed with upwards of 36 people so that there is barely enough room for you to raise your elbows so as to take a picture. Now, the cheapest that we heard being charged for one of these balloon trips was 110 Euro. However, that was not a usual price and considering some of the stories we heard about people driving down to Russia and completing their balloon liscencing in less than a week, I’m not too sure I would trust a 110 Euro flight. Additionally, such a flight would generally consist of the balloon going up, maybe traveling a bit to the sides, but coming down in the exact same spot where it started and would most definitely be filled with at least 30 people. If you wanted something a bit more fancier and more “worth your money”, you could invest 240 Euro in a balloon trip that would be twice as long as everyone else, there would only be 15 – 20 of you in the balloon, and you would be treated to champagne at the end of the trip. Plus your balloon would travel through these valleys and would get picked up by a specially designed truck at a location different from the one you started at.

So now let’s see this business proposition: 50 balloons in the air per day; 20 people per balloon (let’s be conservative); 160 Euros per person. 50 x 20 x 160 = 160,000 Euros per day flying up above you. These figures might differ a bit since there might not always be business for all 50 balloons (although most companies are booked solid throughout the high season), there may also be more or less people in the balloon and the prices do vary. However, let’s even call it 150,000 Euros per day for even 6 months of the year (as opposed to the usual 10), you still get a grand total of approximately 27 million Euros per year (conservatively speaking) – and that’s just for these flights which start around 5am and wrap up around 8am. So the rest of the day is yours to do with as you please. Not bad, eh? The only thing that we didn’t get a chance to find out is what the insurance costs are on such operations, if there are any at all.

But moving on; we left Goreme by night bus to Side and managed to show up here at an ungodly hour when everything was still completely closed. To make the matter more interesting, we had reservations in a pension in town that no one knew. We had an address, but none of the streets had names and even when someone finally pointed me towards the correct street, none of the buildings had numbers. To make it even more mysterious, the pension was no longer called by the name used in the guide book nor by the name used on the internet site which I had made my reservations through. In fact, the pension no longer did business with that internet site, had no information of my reservations, nor of the deposit I had paid or of the prices that were advertised. Thankfully they were nice enough to honor the reservation (probably not a hard thing to do given that they only had 2 other guests in their entire hotel). But it definitely made for an interesting morning.

With the hostel tracked down it was high time to relax so we headed to the beach for some well deserved tanning and swimming followed by some roaming, relaxing, eating and resting. Overall, it was a very exhausting day.

That being said, Side is an adorable little town with virtually no vehicle traffic (access is controlled). It’s located on a jutting protrusion of land into the Mediterranean Sea and as such is surrounded by water on three sides. Interspersed throughout the city are Roman ruins including an ampitheater, Roman baths and walls, and the gorgeous remains of the Temple of Appolo overlooking the sea.

The downside to Side is that it is filled to the brim with tourists, with 90% of them being Germans. More than half of these tourists are your usual package holidayers who are staying at nearby all-inclusive hotels. The telltale colored bracelets on their wrists make them easy to spot. As a result of this mass of tourists, the town is filled with souvenir stores, “brand-name” stores, jewelry stores etc. You can buy the identical polo shirt with your choice of logos, whether it would by Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Loren, D&G or Armani. Apparently they all design absolutely identical clothing. Side is essentially the equivalent of Playa del Carmen. It is a quaint little town filled with hotels, restaurants, bars and stores; some tourists decide to stay there, but most tend to come from nearby town (such as Cancun, Mayan Riviera etc) for a day trip to stroll the beach, see the ruins, and do some overpriced shopping of tacky souvenirs or rip off name brand goods.

Despite its touristiness, Side has been quite nice to relax in and a perfect place to see one’s traveling partner off, and to kill some time before welcoming the new entourage.

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Cappadocia: a land where time stood still?

I’m sitting right now on the terrace of our cave hostel trying to soak in the last rays of the setting sun as the temperature slowly begins to drop. Every time the wind blows a shiver runs down my arms and spine. As hot as it is during the day, the air remains crisp and as soon as the sun sets, you know you need to layer up.

Goreme stretches out below me; a lady in the fairy chimney across from us has just finished hanging up the laundry. The kids are playing soccer with a Japanese tourist on the bit of street in front of our hostel trying to teach him some Turkish. A grandma sits on some steps on the opposite corner deep in contemplation. Behind her, on the room of her cave like house are a couple satellite dishes and solar panels. Further down the street the local construction crew is wrapping up their day’s work after having spent most of it forming perfectly straight bricks, about 2 feet by 1 foot. They accomplish this by scraping with shovel-like tools the soft rock from all sides. Every now and then a blow or scrap goes awry and the brick cracks into pieces or too much of it is shaved off.

Goreme is a town filled with tourists. There are easily in excess of a hundred hostels, pensions and hotels catering to every form of traveler. You can have a simple cave like dwelling or a honeymoon suite with private jacuzzi and a swimming pool. The hostels and hotels all have wireless internet connections and satellite TV. And yet as I sit here on the patio the only sounds surrounding me are the twittering birds, the tapping of horse hooves coming down a street, the yells and laughter of the kids playing down below me and an occasional scolding yell from one of their relatives.

It is difficult to imagine a town of greater contrasts; a town in which the massive influx of tourism has not really changed the way that life is led. For the locals here life continues the same way as it has for centuries. They work in the fields, they live sometimes in stone built homes, but often still in the fairy chimney caves. This traditional life is at times augmented by the benefits of civilization, such as the solar panels on the roofs, but for the large part it remains unchanged. Down near the main street of the town, a grandma sits day in and day out, weaving a complex carpet by hand. Over the last two days maybe a couple inches of this carpet have been created. On one of our walks through the valleys today we passed many families toiling in the fields, laundry hanging outside little holes in the walls as an elder Turk poked his head out one of holes, brushing his teeth and checking why his dog was barking up a storm, only to nod to us as we passed by.

It is an idyllic place; truly a land of fairies and all that is needed to discover it is to wander away from all the busloads of tourists.

Those wanderings today took us on some interesting adventures. Goreme lies in the center of this Cappadocia region with various valleys of hoodoos like formation, chimneys and pinnacles stretching in all directions. The catch is when you are on the plateau it all looks flat. Only if you look from up above or as you approach a rim of such a valley do you realize its extent. This, along with incredibly poor signage of all the trails, proved to be our downfall today.

We started out in the morning with the intensions of hiking through the Zemi Valley, the Iceri Dere Valley and the Pigeon Valley. However, we quickly realized that if we continued along the Zemi Valley we would be led in the opposite direction to the one we wanted. As such we managed to track down the trail to the Iceri Dere Valley and were hoping to continue along it’s length and eventually cross in the Pigeon Valley.

Unfortunately, shortly after we started out, the valley in which we were hiking seemed to come to an end and the path led us up to the plateau. Disoriented and unable to pinpoint our locations on the incredibly poorly designed maps, we decided that the best course of action was to proceed into the valley to our right. Across this valley (or so it seemed to us) we could see the lookout points that we had past the day before while coming back by road to Goreme. As such, we felt fairly certain that if we could only manage to get down into the valley, we would be on the right path.

And so the scramble began. To put it into perspective, the valley into which we decided to scramble was about 40m deep. Its edges are primarily comprised of tuff (condensed volcanic ash) that is incredibly crumbly and unstable. Quite often the edges include little caps or rims and what looks like a gentle slope might all of a sudden have this bulging rim and then drop vertically down. Walking along the edge of this valley we managed to spot a section which seemed to have significant amount of grass growing along its sides and slightly more gentle slopes. As far as we could tell, there were also no unexpected bulges.

And so we began the scramble. The first 20 or so meters were relatively easy but then we got to this 5 meter slanted section which was pure tuff. There was nothing to hold on and no way to get a firm foot hold since the moment you stepped on the slant, everything would begin to crumble all around you. Inching our way down, desperately trying to find little protruding rocks that were more deeply embedded and that would provide at least a bit of grip, we eventually got to a point where we either had to slide down it or attempt to run down it. My dad somehow managed the latter, and like a mountain goat, with is feet quickly looking for new spots, ran/slid down this slope. I, on the other hand, got myself into a bit more precarious position, having secured footholds to a certain point along the wall, but then being too afraid to stand up and simply make a run/scramble for it. In the end, the footholds gave way and I began to slide, on my feet, butt and hands. Overall it wasn’t too bad. The only problem is that this tuff rock is quite sharp and having worn thin linen pants, the sliding on my butt resulted in a nice ventilation hole stretching across the entire left butt cheak as the pants were torn to shreds (as was my left palm). Thankfully I had a long enough shirt on that I was able to cover my backside.

Thinking that the worst was over, we proceeded along the valley floor down what seemed to be a trail. This quickly turned out to be the dry stream bed that would on numerous occasions simply drop vertically several meters at a time and at other times would be blocked by gigantic boulders. All this meant more scrambling down sheer walls and up steep sandy embankments while desperately trying to maintain some kind of footholds and avoid a serious tumble.
Eventually we emerged amongst little fields were we managed to help a grandpa break a tree which he had been trying to swing of off in a futile attempt to accomplish this task. From these little fields we somehow emerged back in the center of Goreme.

Slightly disheartened, but with sufficient energy left in us to give the valleys another attempt, we managed to find the entrance to the Pigeon Valley and continued along the winding path through its fantastic formation all the way to the nearby town of Uchisar.

Uchisar is built around a steep hill or castle that rises high above the town and the surrounding plateau. An ascent to the peak of this castle provided us with stunning views of the Cappadocia region and the distant snow clad Erciyes Volcano (3917m) which was one of the primary contributors to the formation of this region’s geography.

A hitched ride with some locals brought us back to Goreme were we got to relax a bit and in the evening will head out for a Whirling Dervishes performance.

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Cappadocia: the land of fairies

One of the first things that came to our mind after we crossed the border into Turkey was the wish that all places were the size of most Middle Eastern countries. In Lebanon we managed to travel through nearly half the country in one morning. Unfortunately the same is not true in Turkey.

Our journey started in Aleppo at 4:30am. From there it was off to the Syrian border where after some pocket money to the border guards (paid by the bus driver to speed things up) and another expensive border tax, we managed to successfully leave Syria. The next step was to enter Turkey while swapping passports to avoid the $60US visa required of Canadian citizens (Polish citizens only had to pay $20US for a visa). The problems began when the Turkish border guard could not find the Syrian exit stamps in our Polish passports. Eventually, after showing them our Canadian passports as well, they let us in.

We arrived in Antakya, the first main Turkish town across the border, at 8:45am. Our bus for Cappadocia was leaving at 9am giving us just enough time to withdraw some money, purchase the bus tickets and grab a quick sandwich. Then it was an 8 ½ hour bus journey from the south of Turkey into central Turkey. Temperatures dropped to about 12 degrees and we had the first rain in the course of the last 3.5 weeks. Rain, however, might be a bit of an understatement. Although we were riding in a bus, we felt like we were inside an aquarium. The water just poured down in drapes down both sides of the bus. I had not seen a rain storm like that in a long time. The depressing part was that the black clouds seemed to cover all of Turkey with no prospect of the rain easing up.

Fortunately, once we arrived in Kayseri at 5:15pm the rain had stopped. We again had 15 minutes before our next bus and at 5:30pm settled down for another 1.5 hour journey. We finally arrived in Goreme (Cappadocia) at around 7pm after around 14 hours in transit.
Cappadocia has proved to be absolutely amazing. Just outside the bus station was a tourist information office offering pictures of the hundreds of little cave hotels and hostels in the town. The guy working there refused to offer recommendations saying that he had to stay impartial. He could tell us the prices of any that we chose and would call to inquire as to availability. We finally picked one of them, were picked up and driven a short distance up the mountain and dropped off in front of a little fairy chimney hotel where we secured a cave room and settled down to our first meal since the prior day.

Over dinner we met some fantastic Polish travelers: two who had spent 4 days in Cappadocia and were about to leave, and later another Polish girl who had just arrived.
We spent a fantastic evening chatting and relaxing.

The relaxation ended on the following day. Together with Judyta we started early in the morning into the local valleys and in a matter of the day probably did well in excess of 20km of up and down trails amongst fantastic hooodos like formations, fairy chimneys and picturesque countryside. True heaven!

It has been an absolute constant everywhere we’ve travelled: in all these tourist destinations there are endless busloads of pre-packaged tourists. Stay to the main road, main view points and main trails and you will have a hard time avoiding the hoards. Walk off the main path for 5 minutes and you will not have a soul in sight. This was true in Petra, in Palmyra and the same thing here in Cappadocia.

Enjoying this fairyland we have now decided to spend another couple days here. Photos to follow soon.

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Aleppo: butchers, tailors and soap makers

We parted company today with Lise and headed north towards Aleppo, the last major city in Syria prior to the Turkish border. Like Damascus, Aleppo has an intricate Old City, one in whose alleys you could lose yourself and probably not find the way out for a good few days. However, unlike Damascus, something here is amiss. We did not feel the same kind of atmosphere as we did in Damascus, nor did we feel content to just merely wander around. Maybe it’s just getting to be too much of the same thing over and over again. However, I really think that there was something special about Damascus that no other town can compare with and it’s something that you have to experience for yourself.

Aleppo, however, is not without its merits. Its Old City is filled never ending souqs that go on for kilometers. These are seldom touristy. Rather, they are filled with all the goods that the locals might desire. There seems to be a kind of logic to most markets like these, whether it would be in Hanoi, in Cairo or here in Aleppo. Generally speaking if you want a given product, you go to a given area. So, like in Hanoi where you would find a street filled with stores selling rope, here too you will find an area of the souq selling such goods. A different section will be selling cloth, toys, spices and whatever else you can think of. However, sometimes this logic seems to go astray, especially when you see a carcass of a cow with all its innards hanging in a window, right next to a tailor shop on one side and a soap store on the other.

Other than that, Aleppo is just a large city, with the usual mosques, Christian quarters, citadels etc. I think am more than ready for something new, something different and I hope that the Cappadocia region of Turkey will provide the needed variety. Tomorrow at 4:30am we’re off to Antakya and from there hoping to catch a bus on to Cappadocia, so the next posts should be either from there or from the Turkish coast.

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Syria: The country of crooked trees

The border guards did in fact permit. Aside for making us pay yet another $56US for the visa, the whole process took approximately 20 minutes with our taxi driver doing most the talking. So much for the embassies in Canada assuring us that it was impossible to obtain visas at the border. Had I known, I would have saved myself the $60 courier fees to Ottawa, the $73 visa and the $10 in photos. That being said, we did hear about Americans waiting for anywhere between 4 to 12 hours to obtain their visas at the border. I guess sometimes it pays to simply smile and nod and be Canadian.

After all the border formalities, we headed to Homs, our pit stop for the next few days and our next Couch Surfing experience. We had “surfed” a night in Damascus with Sam, whose hospitality by all accounts seemed to surpass his means. A couple nights prior to staying with him he had 11 Couch Surfers sleeping in his bedroom. It goes to show, however, that one does need three guest rooms and fancy apartments to open one’s doors to others. In this particular case all that was needed was a small bit of floor space and a mattress.

That being said, we are not hosted by Lise and her husband Ayoub in a very pleasant flat with a beautiful garden on the outskirts of Homs. Lise is originally from France and Ayoub from Morocco. She is now working in Homs teaching French and on our first night was also hosting four others (Belgians, French, Tunisian and Moroccan) all of whom were currently on a study break from their Arabic studies in Cairo.

The afternoon we spent with an excursion to Crac des Chevaliers, an impressive Crusader fortress just west of Homs. As impressive as it was, I might be getting a bit jaded by all the citadels and fortresses, as it seemed as just yet another massive stone construction.


The evening however, was spent in fantastic company over an absolutely amazing dinner. All eight of us headed out to town with Ayoub leading the way to an adorable restaurant. Once there all menus were set aside as Ayoub started discussions with the waiter, both of whom seemed to be bouncing suggestions off one another and the latter madly scribbling on a notepad. This discourse was only briefly interrupted by what seemed like indignation on Ayoub's part when one of the girls inquired about ordering some French cheese as an appetizer. After again inquiring with all of us whether we wanted a Syrian meal or French one, Ayoub recommenced his ordering and finished it all off with some creative negotiations as to the final price for our meal.

The food was absolutely delicious. We had been getting a bit tired of meet and bread which seemed to be staples here. Most of the meals we had ordered were simply that – no sauces, no vegetables – just meat and bread. As we found out the trick is to order many appetizers, various salads, vegetables etc and one meat dish (which is usually just grilled meat) to go with all those appetizers. The “main meals” as they appear on the menus, do not really work very well on their own.

To finish of the evening you should have seen all eight of us piling into a little taxi, and I do mean LITTLE. It was quite the sight: five girls in the back, three guys in the front passenger seat, and the driver desperately trying to operate the stick shift. For now you will have to take my word for it, but I did manage to film a short clip from the inside of the vehicle and if I ever have a really good internet connection to upload videos, I’ll do my best to add it to the website.

Our second day in Homs was spent with an excursion out to Palmyra. The City of Palms, or Todmor, as it is known in Arabic, dates back to about the 18th century BC. However, it did not become a major hub on the trade routes between Asia and the Mediterranean until the Romans around the 1st century BC. In essence it is an oasis town in the middle of a vast desert: 150 km of desert to its west, 200 km of desert to its east and nothing but desert to its north and south. Once the Romans established their base there, Palmyra prospered and vast temples, agoras, and camps were built. The city unfortunately fell into decline around the 6th century AD and was all but destroyed by an earthquake in 1089. What remains now is sufficient to provided the visitor with an inkling of the splendor that must have existed there two thousand years ago.

However, as magical a place as it must once have been, and as acclaimed as it still is, Palmyra proved to be a bit of a disappointment. Maybe it’s the same as with the various citadels and maybe I simply have seen too many Roman columns to fully appreciate them. For me Palmyra left less of an impression than the town of Jerash in Jordan. By no means am I saying that I regretted the two hour side trip into the Syrian desert. However, I will not rave about it and if someone is pressed for time, needing to pick their destinations wisely, then my recommendation would be to skip Palmyra and on route to Amman stop in Jerash for a couple hours.

One thing that has come out of all these side trips is the realization that Syria is a country of crooked trees. I do not know why nor do I understand the how, but it seems that all trees in Syria are slanted in the easterly direction. Some only by a few degrees, however, others are at more than a 30 degree angle. It is an odd sight to be driving along the highway with a bit of a forest to the side in which every single tree is slanted in the same direction. It’s almost as if there was an unrelenting wind blowing from the coast and these trees were too weak to withstand it. There is, however, one exception. Syria is a massive olive producer and we drove through hectares of olive tree plantations. Seemingly these olive trees are immune to these winds as every single olive tree we passed grew perfectly straight, or as straight as one would expect them to be. Go figure.

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Lebanon: The country of surprises

With our itinerary being on constant flux we found ourselves with sufficient time to make a side-trip into Lebanon. The only hesitation was the lack of both a Lebanese visa and the Syrian re-entry visa. Well, sometimes you just have to go into the unknown and it proved that aside for being a bit expensive (Syrian departure tax, Lebanese visa, Lebanese departure tax, Syrian Visa), there was nothing really to worry about.

Lebanon proved to be yet another surprise. Firstly, it’s insanely expensive (comparatively speaking to all other Middle Eastern countries). Secondly, it’s mountainous (they have numerous ski resorts and at least based on the postcards, seem to have more snow than our local Vancouver mountains). Thirdly, it is green (the coastal mountains are covered in a carpet of lush green trees). Fourthly, it (at least Beirut) is quite wealthy (for every 10 cars, two will be BMWs, two will be Mercedes, two will be Porsches and then the rest will be a mixture of Lexus, Land Rover, Hyundais etc . oh and throw in your occasional Jaguar, Ferrari, Lamborghinis and Hummer). Beirut is the place where everyone comes to party - it is a city of glitz, glamour, restaurants, and beach clubs. However, it is also a city whose outskirts are comprised of some of the most deprived Palestinian refugee camps of all, and its crowded slums provide a breeding ground for Hezbollah fighters. As such, as the Lonely Planet puts it, Beirut is a city that is crowded and ancient, beautiful and blighted, hot and heady, home to Prada and Palestine. It is many things at once.

We paid $30US for a miserable room in the cheapest hostel in town. We paid $5US for a burger and $20US for a relatively crappy dinner. We saw more gorgeous cars in the course of a couple of days here than I have in probably an entire year in Vancouver. I saw a purse for sale for $1800US (it wasn’t even nice), the ugliest suit for about $2500US and a dress for $3800US. [I probably showing more of my ignorance since most of those things were likely some super fancy brand names that cost six times as much at home.] Nevertheless, it is not something that I was expecting to find here. In Dubai: yes, most definitely. In Lebanon: no.

To give you some perspective on this apparent wealth: a new BMW X6 costs approximately $60,000US; 80 square meter apartment (not in the best part of Beirut) costs approximately $2,000,000US (1 square meter costs $25,000US); rent for an apartment in Beirut will cost approximately $500US per month (if you share it with 4 other people); average salary is approximately $500US per month; an individual with a masters in nursing (maybe their degrees work differently here), responsible for the ICU wing in the Beirut hospital and working 12 hours per day, 6 days per week was paid $800US per month. Instead, that individual now runs a hostel but has absolutely no explanation how people in Beirut can afford the expensive cars, apartments, clothing and food. Beirut was once called the Paris of the east and it still seems to aspire to that status, but at what costs to its people?

From Beirut we made a road trip up to the Jeita Grotto. It is in the running to become one of the new seven natural wonders of the world and deservedly so. It’s comprised of two interconnected limestone caves spanning an overall length of nearly 9 km. The lower grotto can only be visited by boat since it channels an underground river that provides fresh drinking water to more than a million Lebanese. The upper grotto, which was not discovered until 1958, houses the world’s largest stalactite and is comprised of a series of chambers, the largest of which peaks at a height of 120 meters. All of this equates to a jaw dropping sight or the setting of a sci-fi movie. Unfortunately, you will have to take my word for it or else look it up online since pictures were prohibited.

From there it was on to Byblos with more ruins (slightly disappointing), back to Beirut and on the next day off to Tripoli.

Triopoli was a mess. Although the guidebooks make it seem like it’s a city filled with Souqs, mosques, citadels etc. it was a far cry from Damascus and even Beirut. We managed to meander our way through all of the key areas in about an hour with eight more hours left to the day and the Lebanese mountains beckoning. The main problem was transportation. Minibuses leave for the mountains on a semi-regular basis until about 4pm and we found ourselves wishing to head up there around 3pm. As such, the getting there was not an issue, but the coming back would be. We decided to risk it anyways and it proved well worth the chance.

The bus climbed a winding road high into the mountains, leaving the coast far below. We ended up in a little town at the foot of Lebanon’s highest peak and were informed by the bus driver that the last bus back to Tripoli would be at 6pm. Happy to hear this news we decided to explore the town a little, soak in the views, and eat a delicious dinner in a quaint mountain chalet. Unfortunately on our way back to meet the bus we were informed that the last bus to Tripoli left at 3:30pm and a taxi would cost us $40US (a figure we were unwilling to pay).

So we started walking. After some time we were picked up by two young guys who were only traveling about 2km in our direction. However, they informed us of a town on the cross-roads to Beirut and Tripoli to which it might be easier to hitch a ride. Within a minute of getting out of their car we were picked up by a great Lebanese gentleman who had spent 3 years in Australia and gladly dropped us off at Kosba. From there a $4 taxi brought us back to downtown Tripoli by 7pm.

Even if it had been just the drive up into those mountains, with the huge valleys stretching far below us, and the snow covered mountain peaks above us, the excursion would have been well worth it.

Tomorrow morning it’s back off to Syria – border guards permitting.

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"Some cities oust or smother their past. Damascus lives in hers." - Colin Thubron

Legend has it that on a journey from Mecca the Prophet Mohammed cast his gaze upon Damascus but refused to enter the city because he wanted to enter paradise only once – when he died. It might be a bit of an overstatement to compare Damascus to paradise but there is some indefinable element to it that makes that story ring with truth.

Damascus has so far been one of our greatest surprises. We expected it to be yet another city with lots of great things written about it, but all coming down to the same thing: 4.6 million people in a city that would have some history but simultaneously be like all other capitals around the world. Such expectations could not have been further from the truth.

At no time during our stay in Damascus did we ever feel that it was a capital city nor that it had 4.6 million inhabitants. All that we were surrounded by was the history. Mark Twain once wrote: “Go back as far as you will into the vague past, there was always a Damascus… She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies… To Damascus, years are only moments, decades are only flitting trifles of time. She measures time, not by days and months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise, and prosper and crumble to ruin. She is a type of immortality.” Damascus vies for the title of the world’s oldest continually inhabited city and with every step you take you can feel her age and a kind of grace that comes with it. Maybe this grace has seeped into the people as well because so far, the Syrians have been the nicest most hospitable people we’ve ever met.

To give you a bit of an understanding of what we mean by history take for example the hotel we were staying in. This was located outside the Old Town but was nevertheless housed in a 600 year old building.

The Old City itself is a network of tiny alleyways, only some of which are miraculously navigable by these little narrow cars others are barely wide enough for two people to pass one another. Along these alleys are ancient buildings many constructed with what looked like a mud and straw mixture. Some of these buildings are crumbling while life still goes on inside the, many are sagging with age, others look as majestic as they have for centuries.

We put the guidebooks away and simply got lost in these little turns, trying to discover little corners, courtyards, mosques and churches and to simply soak in the atmosphere. There was nothing better - well, maybe with the exception of the absolutely amazing ice cream. Take my word for it – there is nothing that even remotely compares in Vancouver. This one ice cream shop on their main souk street, has lineups out the front door and they are well deserved. Their scrumptious ice creams are made with sahlab (a tapioca-root flavoured drink) and are topped with crushed pistachio nuts. If I had to survive on one thing for the rest of my life, this might have to be it.

But on the other hand, there were the hot chocolate filled croissants that came straight from the oven. Those might give the ice cream a run for its money. And then the pancakes, the lamb dishes, the fresh orange juice, the pastries …. Oh the list just keeps on going. We only spent two days in Damascus but that was enough for the food to make a wonderful impression on us.
Overall we did not in fact do much or see much while in Damascus. We simply roamed. However, I could have easily kept on roaming that city for another 7 days and not have gotten bored.
I won’t bore you, however, with an ongoing description of this amazing city. I will let the photos speak for themselves.


*NOTE: Pictures coming soon.

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Jordan – Lucky Number 50?

I have officially confirmed that Egyptian time really does run at a different rate than everywhere else. But before I go on to explain what I mean by that, did I mention I virtually came face to face with a barracuda while snorkeling? I was following a puffer fish and some other fish down below me. A quick glance to the sides and I was going to continue onwards but ended up doing a double take as a meter to my left was the nice long, skinny body of a barracuda with the saw-like teeth glistening in the penetrating sunlight. As far as I knew barracudas wouldn’t attack unless provoked and it did seem to be minding its own business, but knowing my own ineptitude with fins, I immediately pictured myself trying to swim away from it, hitting it with my fin and having it gnaw on my ankles. Thankfully reality wasn’t as bad as my overactive imagination but it sure made for a highlight of that snorkeling excursion.

Now as to Egyptian time. Our plans were to make it from Dahab, Egypt to Petra, Jordan. The trip would have several segments. Firstly, we would have to take a bus from Dahab to Nuweiba at 10:30am (approximately 75km). Secondly, from Nuweiba a fast ferry was to leave at 3:30 and take us the approximate 80km to Aqaba, Jordan. From there a taxi would take us the remaining 120km to Petra. The ferry was to take 1 hour. Looking at those times and distances one would expect us to be in Petra by 7pm at the latest. Well, we arrived around 11:30pm.

The trip started with the original bus being about 40 minutes late. When we arrived in Nuweiba we were informed that the ferry (which cost and insane $80US) would be leaving at 2:30pm. 3:30pm rolled around and the ferry still had not arrived in the port. However, at 4pm we were told that it had arrived and we started going through the 3 or 4 border controls. By 4:30 we were on the ferry ready to leave but apparently the crew must have been wrapping up its siesta. The ferry finally started moving at 6:30pm – don’t even ask why. Next, the journey didn’t take 1 hour, but rather 2 hours. I truly don’t know what distinguished it from the “slow” ferry which according to our guide takes 2.5 hours to reach Aqaba. After all the customs we were ready to catch our taxi at 9:45pm (we managed to lose an hour to the time change). Thankfully the taxi driver was Jordanian and the Egyptian time schedule didn’t apply to him. He informed us that the drive to Petra would take us anywhere between 2 and 2.5 hours but managed to get us to our hotel in 1 hour 45 minutes. We were exhausted but had not done a single thing all day long.

Now on to Petra. Maybe I’m ignorant about the Middle East and its history, but I was until quite recently under the impression that the ruins at Petra are essentially that one temple carved into the cliff and that’s it. The last thing I was expecting was an entire city with hundreds of such tombs and churches. If you want a quick idea of how big the site is keep in mind that we spent nearly 12 hours wandering through it and still did not see everything.

Petra was established around the 6th century BC as the capital city of the Nabateans and was a key trade center. Despite having been inhabited by the Nabateans and later the Romans, it somehow became forgotten by the Western world until in 1812 the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt accidentally stumbled across it after nearly a millennium. (He also accidentally stumbled across Abu Simbel a year later.) The city is primarily cut out of rock – at least the tombs and the monastery, meaning that most of the “buildings” are cut out of one solid piece of mountain. This rose-red city half as old as time is truly one of the must-sees.

We got up bright and early and headed to the site for 7am to beat the major tour groups. The entrance to the site is through a Siq – a canyon like fissure that continues for a kilometer or two (think Antelope Canyon in Arizona but much bigger). At the end of this Siq you emerge right in front of the Treasury (the building featured in Indiana Jones). To our surprise there was almost no one there. We snapped a bunch of photos and continued on along the Façade of Tombs towards the huge 7000 seat theater only to return back to the Treasury half an hour later to snap more photos (different light).

After that it was an up-down-up-down-up-down that went on all day. Another example of my ignorance: I had assumed most of this area would be relatively flat. Well , it isn’t!

After those first initial sights we proceeded on a 45 minute hike up countless stairs to the Holy Place of Sacrifice. (Did I mention that my leg muscles were completely locked up from the hike up Mount Sinai and that by this point I was hating stairs?). From the top the view was stunning with the Royal Tombs directly below us and the entire Petra valley at our feet. From the top it was down again past more tombs (some of which in Renaissance style despite having been built in the 1st century AD).

Back in the main valley we stopped for a short snack, some cold water and commenced yet another 45 minute hike up stairs to the top of another hill with a Crusader fort on it (did I say I hated stairs). Again, fantastic views from up top.

Next, after we had returned to the bottom, it was time to head up to El Deir, or as its referred to in English, the Monestary. This entailed yet another pleasant hike up in excess of 800 steps but it was well worth every single aching muscle. It is truly the most impressive building in Petra and the views when you hike up some more steps (did I say I was really hating stairs by now) were equally breathtaking. Although it was described as the “View of the End of the World” I felt like I had all of Jordan at my feet.

From there back down, then back up to see the Royal Tombs, then back down and then finally out. 11 hours and 30 minutes after having entered Petra, we finally excited and exhausted headed back to our hotel for a desperately needed shower and dinner.

From Petra it was off to Amman where we’re couch surfing with Jeff. Amman is a cleaner, friendlier and less chaotic La Paz. It’s a city of hills (apparently there’s 7 of them), very densely populated creating a vision of endless sea of multi-story apartment buildings.

Today we hired a taxi and first went to visit Jerash, one of the best preserved Roman cities, where we got to experience gladiator fights and a chariot race and then it was off to swim (or rather float) in the Dead Sea. It’s even difficult to lower your legs from a floating position and if you try to swim on your stomach, you first have to flip onto your back before you can set your feet down.

Tomorrow it’s off to Damascus and after that hopefully to Lebanon (luck permitting). With Jordan being my 50th, I hope the luck holds. We only have a single entry visa into Syria, and a side trip into Lebanon would require two entries into Syria. We’ll see how it goes, but our itinerary is most definitely in constant flux.

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Camel ride for $50US?

"Camel, camel, wrboad, wrboad", with an occasional correctly pronounced "wielblad" thrown into the mix being repeated over and over is not exactly what I associate with 2am. Add to that the fact that these shouts are coming from the Bedouins surrounding you as you try to climb a mountain in the pitch darkness.

Well, if there ever was self-imposed torture then this might qualify for it:

1. Don’t go to bed and on a last minute spur decision agree to be picked up at 11:10pm by a little minibus (i.e. a small cargo van) into which 15 people are squeezed, including their day packs.
2. Drive for just over 2 hours in this incredibly uncomfortable environment to be dropped off at the foot of a mountain just before 2am.
3. Follow a crowd of about 20 massive tour buses up a relatively narrow path that you’re not only sharing with the endless parade of people, but also an equally endless amount of camels which do not care where the step, whether it’d be rock or foot.
4. Hike up this path for anywhere between 1.5 hours to 2 hours and then commence an ascent of 750 steps to the summit.
5. Arrive at the summit at 4 am to already fine a crowd.
6. Perch yourself on a precarious rock, past all the normal platforms and ledges and overlooking a several hundred meter drop in order to have at least a decent view of the sunrise.
7. Remain perched on this cold rock in the chilly and windy mountain air for the next 1.5 hours awaiting the sun to rise.
8. Snap a few photos and then proceed to follow these 20+ busloads of people down 3750 steps to get to the base by around 7am.
9. Find yourself waiting in the rocky landscape for a further 2 hours awaiting the opening of the monastery doors.
10. At 9am find yourself sandwiched like a sardine as these 20+ busloads of people try to squeeze through a tine archway wide enough to fit one person so as to enter the equally small monastery.
11. Squeeze through the crowds to see what was “allegedly” the burning bush and what was “allegedly” the fountain from which Moses drank.
12. Return to the minibus (i.e.small cargo van) into which for the return journey only 14 people have to be squeezed.
13. Arrive back home 12 hours after your initial time of departure not having slept a wink.

Those 13 steps to a perfect receipt for self-imposed torture accurately surmise my most recent Mount Sinai excursion. However, it was not all bad. Truth be said, the self-imposed torture was well worth it. The view from up top was amazing as were some of the people we passed along the way.

Mount Sinai is believed to be the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. As such, it is an important pilgrimage location of sorts – at least for the hoards of tourists. It is 2285 meters high and the summit can indeed be reached by 3750 “steps of penitence”.
The Monastery of St. Catherine is located near the base of the mountain. The Monastery is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and claims to be the oldest working Christian monastery in the world. The monastery was built by order of Emperor Justinian I between 527 and 565, enclosing the Chapel of the Burning Bush at the site where Moses is supposed to have seen the burning bush. There is in fact a bush inside the monastery with which everyone insists on posing and this is “allegedly” the original burning bush.

In the end the highlight was the walk up to the summit in the middle of the night with all the stars as guides. Far away from any civilization (minus the several hundred flashlights), the night sky was breathtaking. Everything from the Milky Way to the Big and Little Dippers, Casiopea, Scorpio and Orion (plus all the other constellations which I can’t recognize) were all clearly visible. Secondly watching the sun rise from the peak as two tour groups alternated singing religious hyms, first in Polish and then in Arabic. Finally, descending the Steps of Penitence. I must say I love running down stairs/steps – regardless of how many there are, so long as there are no slow-pokes in front of me. However, my knees are now protesting the 45 minute descent.

Tomorrow it is off by ferry to Aqaba and from there to Petra. Next we will be trying to reenact Indiana Jones - The Last Crusade.

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The Red Sea & the Blue Hole

There truly cannot be another diving place like this. The entire coast is lined by coral reefs with an endless choice of dives. The dives we did off of the Mayan Riviera were pathetic in comparison. Maybe then we were simply unlucky and maybe a trip to Cozumel would have changed our opinion. However where we had been taken the coral seemed ravaged by storms, a mere skeleton of what it once used to be with a shortage of sea life.

Here on the other hand, our trip to the Blue Hole did not disappoint. The Blue Hole is a submarine pothole (a kind of cave), around 130m deep. there is a shallow opening around 6m deep, known as "the saddle", opening out to the sea and it is this opening that has the most sea life. For those experienced and qualified enough, or else too stupid to know better, there is also a 26m long tunnel, known as the arch, connecting the Blue Hole with the open sea. However this lies at a depth of 52m well beyond recreational diving limits and has been the cause of a number of deaths.


For us, our dives started with a trip to the Canyon where we got our Adventure Deep Dive certification descending down a narrow canyon to 30m. For the first time ever I had absolutely no issues with equalizing my ears, making the whole diving experience so much more enjoyable. We also got to see and swim after a baby turtle along with all the other fish that I won't bore you with.

From there it was on to the Blue Hole were our entry point was Bells, a deep crack in the reef enabling a vertical descent and at 26 m a swim through an arched passage way. From there it was a swim along an insanely gorgeous reef wall. I have never seen anything on such a scale. We were swimming at around 25m and the reef just continued downwards without end (apparently the drop off there goes in excess of 800m). It was a true highlight to finishing our dive there.

Other than that the rest of our stay in Dahab has been spent lazying around (at least for me) and sleeping of some bad strain of stomach flu in my dad's case. Tommorrow it's off to Nuweiba, from there a $70US ferry to Aqaba and what is currently looking like an expensive taxi ride to Petra (as the only buses leave in the mornings and early afternoon).

**Note: These fantastic underwater photos were taken by Rich Carey. Check out his Facebook profile or http://www.richardcareyphotos.com/ for more amazing pictures from the Dahab reefs, turtles, insane shark shots as well as your miscellaneous fish and reef shots.

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Dahab & Diving

On the one hand Egyptian buses are a vast improvement over our local Greyhound buses. On the other hand, they are noisier than GM Place after the Canucks score a goal. Having been unable to secure a seat on any of the 10 daily flights to Sharm el Sheik, we were forced to take a night bus from Cairo to Dahab departing at 12:15am and arriving around 9:00 am. Most long distance buses that I have traveled on, whether in South America, Asia or here in Egypt, are far more luxurious than our counterparts in Canada. The seats lean back to virtually a lying position, often some also have foot rests that come up similarly to barknloungers thus making a long journey more comfortable than any plane ride. The downfall of these buses is their entertainment program which in this particular case was comprised of several loud calls to prayer, an Arabic movie played at full volume, 2012 played at full volume and some fantastic Arabic music that was blaring for a large majority of the journey. By the end of the ride I found the prayers quite soothing. Might have been a good idea to put the iPod or earplugs in the carry on luggage as opposed to in the main backpack that was stored underneath.

We arrived in Dahab shortly before 9:00am to be picked up by Nadar within a few minutes. I tracked Nadar down via the Couch Surfing website and if we were to exclude our “couch” stay with Agnes in Amsterdam, this was our first real introduction to couch surfing. Nadar has proved to be an amazing host. He has this very quaint little apartment 20 steps away from the dive center in which he works and another 40 steps away from the Red Sea.


He’s taken us with Juma, his Bedouin friend, on a camel safari off into the local mountains where we had a fantastic Bedouins dinner. Despite it being cooked over a fire, it by far surpassed much of the recent food we’ve been having in the restaurants. We were joined by 7 Belgians who were wrapping up their Dahab diving trip and got to listen to the Virtual Barber Shop (highly recommend for everyone to try to download it, but make sure to listen to it with headphones and your eyes closed), and play a variety of very entertaining games.


Dahab is an interesting little town. It’s a scuba diving mecca with several dozen dive shops mostly manned by Europeans and Australians: people that come here, do a few dives, then decide to stay for several months, get their full instructor certification and then several years later find themselves having a difficult time leaving. Truth be said there is not much of a beach here, but the waterfront is lined with amazing little open air restaurants with plenty of tanning chairs right along the water, so even if you don’t dive, there really isn’t much to complain about. The reason for the lack of beach is that the reef starts virtually right on shore. Most of the dives here are shore dives but there also is no shortage of boat dives.

So far we’ve got our first 2 dives done, one about 200 meters from where we are staying and the other a boat dive out of a 5 star resort. For some unknown reason I have insane problems equalizing, always had, and no matter what I do I can’t seem to rectify that. As a result the dives are a bit less enjoyable than they would normally be, but so far we’ve seen: Unicorn, Puffer, Glass, Cornet, Lion Fish, Regal Angelfish, Fusiliers, Indian Bird Russ, Goatfish, Red Sea Bannerfish, a Napolean (same somewhere underneath me as I was trying to equalize my ears) and the list goes on. Tomorrow it’s off for some deep see diving at the Canyon and Dahab’s famous Blue Hole.



PS: What has technology come to? I am writing this post while sitting in a little beach-side restaurant in the desert oasis town of Dahab while uploading all the photos taken over the last few days, checking emails and paying my bills.

PS: To anyone traveling, I highly recommend Couch Surfing: www.couchsurfing.com . It is a fantastic way of getting to know local people, and experiencing their cities/towns based on their recommendations as opposed to what might be written in a guide book.

PS: Rob – Thanks for recommending Hostel Bookers. We made use of that in Cairo.

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