Middle East two

Click on the photos for links to the photo album 

Turkey

Jordan

Syria 

Sorry, photos from Syria are lost.

22nd day, Friday 8th May.

 We have started a second page for the Middle East as it has taken more room up than expected and the original page was getting far too large.

 We stayed two nights at the Riga Palace in Aleppo. Nice to have some luxury like nice piping hot shower and room service says Jackie. Leaving Aleppo today it was really quite on the roads and we realised that it was Friday and of cause that is like Sunday to us. We are heading down country towards Damascus. Stopping at

Crac-des-Chevaliesolels which is close to Homs about ½ way to Damascus. Or also called The Castle of the Knights. This is a fantastic old castle that was first built in 1031. Over the century’s it has developed into a marvellous place that shows the changes and additions to the building over the years. It is amazing how much is still standing and how the turrets are blended into the walls. It looks like a perfect join but it is carved stone that would please craftsmen of today, (should we have any that can reach that standard). We camped at the local motel (grand title for what it is). But they let you camp in the car park and use the facilities of one of the rooms for a shower, etc.   Their is also a couple of other camper vans parked for the night so we are not alone. During the day it is starting to get quite hot but it’s a bit nippy tonight so we will have to go to the bar for a warm up.

On the way here to Crac-des-Chevaliesolels and back to Homms we run for a few kl’s along the Lebanon border, be it on the Syrian side. All the Syrians have told us that the Lebanese are very friendly but not an area that we shall explore.

When we reach Damascus we have been told that there is a camp site just off the main road. Hopefully this will give us a base to spend a couple of days having a look around. We will find out tomorrow if the map tells lies again or not.

23rd Day Sat 9th May.

We left Crac-des-Chevaliesolels and headed for Damascus. The run down was easy just a stop for derv and a coffee or two.   The map lied as normal. We are fast loosing faith in them. They are nowhere as accurate as the UK OS maps and we are starting to use them as a general guide. We could not find the camp site on the north side of Damascus, Try as we might. Knowing that there was on supposedly on the south side we headed for that one. Same result, nothing. Heading back to Damascus and not wanting to have to go through the centre again we took the new unmarked ring road. This proved to be a winner. While local rules still applied it was a far easier drive and quicker too. We asked directions for this site and it was only the knowledge that two months ago it was used by someone we know that kept us looking. We found two in the end one on the north side just past the coach garages. And one the south side by the Skoda garage. Both were locked with no telephone number or contact details. By now it was close on 8 o’clock. Driving down the side road most of the car garages were lit up and we decided to park on one of the forecourts for the night and move early in the morning. Parking by Audi a security guard came out of one of the car compounds to see what we were doing. The language barrier came into force but by now we are both competent at sign and pigeon all languages. We asked if we could park in the locked car park over night but he seemed very reluctant at this. But he left happy and 10 min later his wife appeared and she was obviously the one with the money sense. Indicating to the compound and rubbing her two index fingers against her thumb we understood that for a fee we could park in the compound. 100 Syrian shillings later we were in parked up at the top end out of the way behind a locked gate. We have them some bits for the kid, cigarettes for him and that was that. It looked like they lived in what we will call a breeze block building on the site. 

24th Day 10. Sunday.

Up bright and early and ready to go at about 8 ish. Feeling a bit guilty as we would normally pay 300 Syrian shillings for the night and seeing that they had very little material things on the way out we gave them up another 200. Damascus was deserted. Not able to park as the car park was not open. Talking to one of the nice honest straight Traffic Policemen he went to the car park and made them open up. So from we are not opening, to please come in. We had a good walk around but it was just like Aleppo in the north. Getting Jackie’s phone sorted out, (it appeared the sim card was faulty) we left to head south towards Jordan. Once more the run down was nice and easy. Arriving at the border town of Dara we decided to see if we could park up for the night. Finding an out of the way spot we sat down for a coffee when a motor bike turned up. He was not pleased; it appeared that must have been his land. We attempted to explain but to no avail. So we moved off to the boarder. Leaving Syria was like leaving Turkey only we had to pay 100 Syrian Shillings tax on, do not know what. Then a 1000 Syrian Shillings tax on us departing. They get you most ways. Arriving on the Jordanian boarder, like the Syrians we have found them to be polite, honest and very welcoming.

All vehicles are inspected upon entering Jordan, in main due to the (what look like taxies) that run between the two countries and bring back cars full of goods from toys to fresh vegetables. We kid you not when we say loads we mean loaded. Rear bumper is scraping the floor. They appear to have to go through a full inspection process. When we arrived and say the line of cars loaded we thought it was going to take hours. We were waved through the first inspection with only a cursory look inside and a look underneath. Told to park by the police office which was rather worrying at first thought. But this just put Sandy out of the way so that she was not mixed up with all the taxies. Then the fun started and do we mean fun. By this I must add that the officials did everything to help it was just the process. When you went to the customs office the taxi drivers just barge in slapping their papers down for processing pushing you out of the way. The officials opened the office doors and invited us in, told us to sit down. Pushed the taxi drivers papers on one side and did ours first. Advised us how to get the documentation done and where to go next. His worked quite well on the face of it and they tried hard to push us through first. Unfortunately and there always is an unfortunately, when we went to the exit gate, yes we needed another stamp!!!!. So be it. Back we went to immigration to get the visa. We should know better by now we have done enough of them. But once done out we went. The cost was not so bad, 20JD’s for the visas, 39JD’s for the insurance, and 20JD’s for vehicle tax. £1 is roughly equal to 1JD, (Jordanian Dollar).

Leaving the boarder we went into Ar Ramtha to find a hotel for the night. Going up a street I spied a very large sign that said “Regal Suites available” taking this to be a hotel I turned around, parked and in we went asking for a room for the night only to find it was a very very up market sweetie shop. The sign said “Regal Sweets” my anticipation. Driving around we asked a policeman where the nearest hotel was only to be told that no hotel!!! So we put the co ordinates of a hotel onto the Sat Nav. (ho boy do we learn some lessons the hard way). Off we went to find this hotel at Umm Qeis. (We later found out that this is only a few miles from the Golan Heights (disputed) it says on the map). But more of that later. Driving along we went through Irbid all was going well. Jackie spied a sign for Umm Qeis turning to the right. Deciding to follow the Sat Nav (My error) we continued. Slowly is started to dawn on us that the road was slowly detiriate from a good road to a country lane. This deteriatrion continued until passing some people walking on a half tarmac half grass track/road we realised that this could not be right. But persevering and believing that the sat nave was right we continued until we ran out of road full stop. Now the indicator was showing that the hotel was only 3 to 4 miles away but the huge valley with vertical sides in front of us was putting Jackie off a little. And I might add I was not too keen either.  Turning around while eating large portions of humble pie with a cream topping for not taking the road signs we proceeded to start to retrace our steps back 10 miles to the last road sign. Having then turned around we were greeted by the people who we hade passed not long ago. Stood outside a large house they indicated TEA! That was it. We stopped. One of them spoke excellent English. Offering us tea it was an offer we could not refuse. We went inside to be warmly greeted, Jackie was whisked away by his wife and children inside the house while I sat in the warm evening with the farther, sons and grandfather. I feel quite shamed at receiving such hospitality from a total stranger and not even getting his name.  Sitting talking to them was quite an insight into how they view and live life. Taking tea is a sociable way of life here. Jackie returned with all the girls and had been quite amazed at the difference in the way of life. The daughters took Jackie off to show her the family pets and soon it was time to leave. They showed us the back way to where we wanted to go. Inviting us to come over next day we agreed. Unfortunately, the phone number was wrong and we were unable to contact them. We were really disappointed as we were looking forward to seeing them and didn’t want the daughters to think we had forgotten of didn’t have time for them. Hopefully they will read this and make contact.

Continuing on we found the hotel, not the best but it was late and we needed to rest. Having a quick meal and that was about that for the night.

25th day, 11th Monday.

We headed for Irbid. Taking the main road it was surprisingly quick. We did think about trying to retrace out steps last night but missed the first turn so decided against it as it was all small roads. In Irbid we did the necessities of life, find a hold in the wall, internet access, and sort out one of Jackie’s phones. People are so helpful, people who don’t know you who you will never see you again stop you and offer you tea, coffee, and just want to say hello. Thanks to Ehab in Irbid we sorted out the phone. He just helped. He didn’t have to and would not take anything. Thank you Ehab. We headed south filling up with Derv on the way. WOW £20.00 to fill your tank. That’s more like it. Works out at about 33p per litre. Travelling on the Desert Highway this is exactly what it is, a duel carriage way right along the desert. Ending up at Petra for about 7.30pm. The hotel is quite reasonable in standard but do they know how to charge being the main tourist attraction in Jordan. A bit like Blackpool in that respect. Found a couple of English who are here for a few days from Kuwait? Tomorrow we will see the tombs and then we are heading off to Wadi rum for a few days in the desert.

26th Day 12th Tuesday.

Woke up to high temperatures again and the bluest sky. We were sat down typing some of this up when we looked out of the window and for one awful moment we thought Sandy had been moved. But then we realised it was another Landover just like ours; they were looking at Sandy and writing our website down. We went out to say hi. They are called Steve and Katy from England. They came into the hotel and had a good old chat about where we had all been and will hopefully meet up later to catch the ferry over to Sudan. We then went to see the ruins in the cliffs and it was absolutely awesome as the pictures to follow will show. The price to enter was quite expensive for tourists if they do not watch it they will price themselves out.

27th Day. 13th Wednesday.

Left Petra to go to Wadi Rum Desert for a few days bush camping, piece and quite, and to play with Sandy in the sand. On the way we saw another Landover with all the kit on so we stopped for a chat (as you do). They were from the Netherlands and had just come from Wadi Rum and Aqubar. They gave us a card for a hotel that you could camp in the car park in Aquaba. They also intended to do the SA trip next year. Good look guys hope you do it. We arrived late afternoon Jackie had a bit of a drive around playing in the sand like a kid on the beach. We set up camp in a quite part sheltered by big cliffs. We just had to cook on an open fire sat under the stars. So peaceful not a sound could be heard. The alarm was set for 6am to watch the sun rise.

28th Day,   14th Thursday.

We turned the alarm off and slept in. so much for sunrise!!! Spent the roast of the day chilling out and sorting bits and bats, catching up on washing and checking Sandy over.  When doing the Ironing Jackie complained that the iron was not as hot as at home and it was hard to get the creases out. Reminding her that she was in the desert, miles from nowhere, no national grid and that power came from running the engine to power the Inverter what did she expect. Be grateful you have electric.

However, cooking tea at about 5.30 on the fire the wind started to rise, Jackie passed comment that a lot of sand was blowing about in the valley. And your line of site was getting diminished by the minuet. Then it hit, sand came from everywhere, wind blowing quite hard. With hindsight we should have packed everything away and shut all doors immediately. But watching it was quite spectacular. We eventually received the message, your tent will be blown away soon if you don’t move or do something. Unpegging at full speed and throwing everything in the back we moved into the lee of the cliffs to give shelter from the storm. Dinner was chicken, Jacket potato with sand. (It cleans the teeth). We sat the night out and about 1.30am it stopped as quickly as it had started. Morels of the story, at first sight of a storm pack away everything the sand goes eveverwher.

29th day. 15th May Friday.

We were moving on today to Aquba to get ready for the ferry to Egypt. We decided that as you could drive through the desert to close to Aqubar that this was the way to go. The track through the desert was rough but quite passable and it kept pretty much in line with the GPS bearings. Arriving at Aqubar we found coast road and the hotel. It had a swimming pool, now that was a bonus. Later in the day Steve and Katy arrived. They had seen Sandy from the road and parked up.

We intended to leave Jordan by ferry on the Saturday but no ferries were running until Sunday. We decided to stay until Monday and explore Aqubar a bit.

30th day. 16th May.

We have defiantly slowed down. No rush. No time frame other than going into Sudan as it is a possibility that we could be part of a 4 car convoy that is looking like leaving Egypt on the 8th into Sudan. We think we will divert at Khartoum into Ethiopia as a safer route. It seems that there is trouble in the south of Sudan so precautions are a sensible option. We will be leaving Aquba on Monday to go to Egypt.

We are typing this up in preparation to put this on the website but the site internet access has gone down. This seems to happen a lot in this part of the world. Hopefully we will find an internet café in Aquba as they always seem to work.

More as and when.

MIDDLE EAST 2