Cairo, Egypt

The night train to Cairo was pretty good. Kerri and I didn't sleep that well though as the beds squeaked. There was a handbasin in the room and only two beds so John had to share with a guy next door who was a tour guide. We had an early morning wake up and a basic breakfast.

Buying the ticket for the train was hard work. The tourist information officer at the station right beside the ticket office had no idea what times the trains went and insisted that we could only buy a ticket at 8pm for the 8.30pm train! We went to her as there were big queues at the ticket office. The ticket office clerk sold us a ticket for the next day 5 minutes later. I guess the tip is, keep asking until you get the right answers to your questions!

We took the metro from the station, which wasn't there 32 years ago, to Talaat Harb where our hostel was and were able to check in straight away and have a catch up sleep. We managed to sleep through the traffic noise from the second most popular downtown street in Cairo. At times it felt like the traffic was outside the window even though we were 5 flights up.

Kerri checked the temperatures for the upcoming days and with the hottest day being the next day we decided it was best to go to the National Museum and leave the pyramids for a cooler 21 degree day.

The museum used to be dark, dusty and absolutely crammed full of exhibits and rocks so I was surprised to see that we could move easily around the rooms. However it was still dark and had the same dirty typewritten labels that were there when I last visited. A new museum is due to open in 2010 out near the pyramids but it looks like there is not enough money for that yet.

The Tutankhamen treasures used to be in a room called the gold room but now they are in an open space for all to see at no extra charge so that was great.

The hostel offered us a tour to the pyramids but we took a local bus from the bus station to the entrance to the site. The touts rushed out to get us to hire horses and camels but we knew it was possible to walk around without too much trouble. I still had my blisters from camel riding in Jordan so the last thing I wanted was more of them.
Postcard and plastic pyramid seller
32 years ago, I and a bunch of friends from the YMCA where I stayed then, climbed the top of Cheops and watched the sunset and slept overnight and woke to watch the sun rise. Now it is not possible to climb any of the pyramids. Of course we paid a baksheesh back then to be able to do it.

The poor Sphinx is looking worse for wear and our guide book tells us that it has the equivalent of cancer. It is disintegrating from the inside out due to the high water table and breakdown of the sandstone. There is now a huge wall around it.

Kerri wanted to buy some scarves and a new bag so we spent some time at the Khan Al Khalili (bazaar). She seemed to enjoy her attempts at bargaining for her purchases but we found that they were not so keen on dropping prices, even when we waved the money around or walked off. Maybe this is because of the recession.
The scarf seller and his boys learning the trade
Crossing Cairo streets is a chore. The drivers do not like to stop for anyone and they are pretty intimidating. After half a day's practice, we were experts and Kerri got better at it too. The traffic in Vietnam is a lot more considerate than in Cairo, they moved around behind you as soon as they saw you begin to cross. The place to meet the Cairo hustlers is at Tahrir Square. they will find you as you gingerly cross the road. they usually begin their spiel with' Walk like an Egyptian, just close your eyes' or something like that. They then move quickly onto 'What's your name? Where are you from? There's a shopping centre there.'
Before you know it they are trying to hustle something as they will get a sales commission.
This scene hasn't changed!
Some Egyptian scams we encountered:
the bus driver sells you a ticket and at the end of the trip he asks for it back so he can resell it,
tourist police at the pyramids take baksheesh off the boys selling postcards at the pyramids,
taxi touts charge double for the taxi that they don't own or drive,
tourists at the mosque have to hand in their shoes, wear a galebeya, and then pay a baksheesh to get the shoes back, while locals carry theirs inside and are dressed as you are,

two people have to share one seat on the tour bus and everyone pays different prices for the same thing,
the bus driver is having lunch so you must take a taxi,
there is a big demonstration at the Arab League building near the museum so don't go there, come with me, I don't own a shop I don't sell tours ... I know the guys who have horses and camels at the pyramids as we grew up together etc,
Oh lady you look hot and tired here sit on my seat in the shade...baksheesh please, from the tourist police or security,
I found this hotel for you so you so you owe me 30% commission.

Phew, you have to have your wits about you all the time. People who speak to you and help you usually want something other than altruism for it.

We wanted to walk beside the Nile but found that all the nice parks charge a fee and if you wanted to be on the lower part close to the Nile you had to pay more, which was probably to keep the riffraff out.

We found a couple of nice places to eat Egyptian food near our hotel. One place did only one dish called koushari and you could get it in small, medium or large. It was great for carbo-loading: macaroni, spaghetti, rice, lentils and a tomato sauce. There was also creamed rice if you needed more carbos.

The other place had its kitchen in the front on the street level, so you could see the pizzas, pancakes, shwarma, and kebabs being made. The upstairs had long tables that seated 10 or 12 people and had a good selection of sandwiches, soups, salads, grills, fish, and pasta dishes. The menu was in English and Arabic and it was a popular place for families and young couples.

The street we stayed on had hundreds of clothing shops. We found a department store that had 7 or 8 floors and thought we might find something for Kerri only to discover that every floor had mens' clothes and we only saw one store with womens' clothes. There are dozens of children"s shops with doll-like mannequins dressed in sequined, frilled and over decorated co-ordinated outfits. Some even had Madonna type sequined bra tops for under 5 year olds.

The lingerie shops are amazing. The couples stand outside discussing, and pointing at the see-through negligees and skimpy underwear and we would only have such clothes in an adult shop.

We took Kerri to the airport on her last day and spent another couple of days catching up with the blog, sending emails, doing some research on Yemen and getting ready to go to more Middle Eastern places. It was sad to see her go but we will be home before too long.

Luxor, Egypt

We had a pretty good flight from Aqaba to Luxor via Cairo. Kerri had been told many stories about the state of Egypt Air's planes but the express was quite new and everything went like clockwork.

At Luxor airport the rates for the taxis to the downtown area are written on a large board but the taxi touts that approached us as we arrived still wanted to quote higher prices and say the rate was per person and not per taxi. All that detail was unfortunately written in Arabic on the sign so we had to stand our ground for the 25 Egyptian pound it cost. John slipped the money under the wipers and we continued into our hotel and the driver gave up hassling us. That was our welcome to Luxor.

The hotel was in a dirty dusty unlit street but near the main part of town and a few streets from the train station. It was painted in pictures of Bob Marley with Marley flags hanging in the hallways. Nevertheless it was OK for the price and everything worked well. On the rooftop was the breakfast area and a bar with a happy hour and half price beer but it was extremely hot in the early evening.

The first day we strolled around town and visited the Karnak temple a few minutes walk from the hotel. It was pretty crowded and pretty hot. In the evening we watched the sunset over the Nile and tried to ignore the dozens of touts wanting us to take a felucca (sailboat). The Nile River cruise boats were lined up 5 deep by the river. They look like 3 storey buildings with ranch slider windows on a barge and are not at all attractive but have romantic names. 32 years ago they were smaller wooden boats with lots of character; like something out of an Agatha Christie mystery. The felucca of old were unpainted and didn't have motors or neon flashing light and loud music either.

We joined a tour run by the hotel and headed off to see the Valley of the Kings. When I last visited here you had to cross the river by a small ferry and ride around the site with an early morning start. Now there are electric carts to take you to the entrance and no photos are allowed inside the tombs. It was about 40 something degrees and pretty crowded. There are a few more tombs now than before and there are still more to be excavated in the area. Having a Japanese fan, a gift from our ex-student, and a light-coloured umbrella to provide all over shade, was helpful in keeping Kerri and I cool.

There are extra charges to see more than three of the tombs these days so you have to decide before you go in what tombs you want to see.

There are no objects in the tombs, just hieroglyphics and carved reliefs, some painted and some not. The air is hot, humid, still and stale inside and the heat from the queuing bodies adds to the claustrophobic atmosphere.

From here we were off to Hatshetsup's temple.

When we arrived here two Korean girls complained that they had to share one seat in the van as the tour manager had overbooked the tour. The Egyptian guide told them that it was their fault as they had accepted the situation when they first got in the van so she was not going to do anything about it or take any responsibility for it so the two girls left and we never saw them again. That left a sour note with the group as no one agreed with the guide. When we entered the van the manager told us not to discuss the price we had paid with any of the others because they had paid more. This is so typically Egyptian.

As we strolled around the temple looking at the columns and sculptures a local guy called to us to look at something in the corner. This is a typical ploy to get a 'baksheesh' (tip) from you, he thinks because he has shown you something you should pay him for it. Of course you would see it anyway as you walked about.

We read that the locals have to have loads of small coins and notes as they will be asked to give baksheesh to policemen who signal them through the traffic, touts who dust their mirrors, touts who find them a park space and keep the traffic away as they reverse into it, waiters find them a table, bus drivers who lift their bags into the bus etc.
'Tss, come and look' the baksheesh man

The last stop was the Habu temple which was a military temple. This relief showed what they did to the foreigners when they caught them.


Luxor still has lots of horse drawn carts as I remembered. They cruise the streets selling fruit and all sorts of goods. The gas bottle guys cruised the street in front of our hotel and signalled their arrival by bashing on the empty bottles with a crescent spanner, it was deafening. There are still lots of cats everywhere but Arabs consider dogs dirty so it is rare to see any.

We had planned to have an extra night in Luxor and take a day train to Cairo but discovered that tourists could not use the day train from April 1st so we had to take a night train at 8.30 pm.

Nuweiba, Egypt

From the desert we returned to Wadi Rum village where we were met by the taxi driver we had hired from Wadi Musa, of course he was a friend of the Sunset camp owner too.

We drove through the outskirts of Aqaba where we could see the rows and rows of holiday and dive resorts catering to the Red Sea visitors. It could be anywhere in the world with its Irish bars, English pubs and multinational fast food chains.

We arrived at the port of Aqaba where we had to catch a fast ferry to Nuweiba in Egypt. It was pretty disorganised with people sending us up and down stairs to get booked onto the ferry.

We sat on the ferry from 11 o'clock until 1:15, when we finally sailed. We had to hand over our passports to a small office in the front of the ferry so they could stamp us out of Jordan while at sea. The crossing was smooth and the DVD kept people entertained during the one and a half hour journey.

We picked up our packs from the car deck where they were stacked up on the sides and headed out for a full on Egyptian welcome.

The porters rushed us to carry our packs, the touts jostled to be first to tell us where to get our visas expecting us to tip them for this information and others touted for their taxi driver friends waiting outside the immigration office. It was full on.

We finally found the bank, that had a queue of non-Egyptian Arabs and backpacking tourists, where we had to pay for our visa. There was one small doorway into the bank for those entering and exiting and the galebeya dressed men did whatever they could to push in the queue. John put himself in charge of managing the queue and we all got sorted in an orderly fashion. Had to go from there to another building where we could get an official stamp and then we were all sorted for entry into the outside world.

There were huge metal furniture trailers on the ferry and these contained all the household affects of Egyptians returning from Jordan. The mattresses were piled high and we were able get our packs through a different set of metal detectors and move on before they did, else we would have been hours in the queue.

Outside the port gates were rows and rows of taxis who wanted too much to take us 6 kms to our beach bungalow so after some half hearted bargaining on our part we walked a short distance into the town and found a taxi for a more reasonable rate.

The bungalow turned out to be a tiny six-sided room amongst a whole lot of other bungalows. The local Bedouins' goats, sheep and camels wandered through the place morning and night.

There were only two other people in the place who were also Kiwis so we met up and had dinner together in the town. It turned out that Stanley had just come from Yemen and Oman so we were able to get some information on places to see there.

Nuweiba was a nice gentle introduction to Egypt. I had been here in 1976 so I knew what to expect. After a rest we flew to Luxor via Cairo.

Wadi Rum, Jordan

We sadly said goodbye to Dan who was headed for some motorbike riding in Turkey and we took a taxi to Wadi Rum arriving in the afternoon. We sat around the Bedouin Desert camp's owner's house drinking tea and swatting flies while he organized some camels for us to ride from Wadi Rum town to the desert camp 12 kilometres away in time to see the sunset.

Kerri had the oldest lead camel (18 years old), and had a lot of trouble keeping it on track. She ended up with a rope burn on her fingers as it yanked the rope out of her hands to grab at some bushes to eat. We were tied to her camel and sat back to enjoy the view.

The Wadi Rum desert is a protected area and we had to pay a small fee, at the visitors' centre on the outside of the town. It was difficult to work out what was being protected as there were dozens of 4 wheel drive vehicles and tour companies lined up on both sides of the entrance looking to take visitors into the park.

As we rode to the camp we saw convoys of vehicles criss crossing the desert and loads of Bedouin camps set up amongst the rocks. There didn't seem to be any protecting of the desert from what we could see. Rubbish blew everywhere and there were loads of people.

The camel I had was not well padded and I could feel the wooden slats of the saddle so I got two blisters on my bum, one about 6cms long! I'm glad we didn't do a full day ride like some people signed up to.

We never got to see a good sunset as it was dusty and quite misty. When we arrived at Sunset Camp we were shown our tent that looked no better than the Palestinian refugee tents we had seen in Lebanon and Jordan! What a disappointment. We at least expected black goat-hair tents in the traditional materials but got bits of raggy old carpets tied together with bits of string. The roof had filled with sand and was in danger of falling onto us in the night so John had to empty it. There were no sheets on the mattresses, the pillows were rock hard stuffed with old rags and the duvets were dirty and everything was covered in sand. Luckily we have sleeping sheets we can use in situations like this.

It made us think of our ger experience in the Gobi Desert and for such a poor country they were able to prepare a clean, comfortable and authentic experience for us.

We were told by Muhammad, the owner, to buy some food for lunch from his shop and this along with our bags was taken to the camp ahead of us. When we unpacked we found that our food was missing and then discovered it being cut up by the cook for the evening meal! We were able to replace it from his supplies later.

The wind was blowing off the snowy mountains in Syria and Turkey but originating in Scandinavia, so it was freezing. We sat around an oval tent that had a fire pit and drank lots of small glasses of sweet tea and chatted to some of the other 30 camp guests. There were people from Israel, France, Holland and Italy.

Dinner was a rice and chicken dish with lots of salad vegetables (some of them ours) and gritty sand in the sauce. The Sudanese chef they employed stood in front of the tip box and asked each person to read the sign about putting money in it for him. This was the same guy who pinched our food.

In the morning we met our guide and with an Israeli couple we got into our 4 wheel drive jeep. The guide had to hot-wire (put two wires together) to get it started. It had no brakes and filled the inside with diesel fumes. The fuel tank had a plastic bag stuffed in it, two doors opened from the outside only and there were no window winders to open or close the windows so some stayed permanently open while others remained shut. We had to push a few times to get going and had to enlist help from some other groups so a 6 hour tour turned into 9 hours! The bonnet was wired on so it didn't fall off and the wheel nuts were all loose! There were no traffic police in the desert.

We climbed rocks and ran up and down sand-hills and drove round in a circle all the time not too far from the camp.

At lunchtime the guide lit a fire in the protected area, made tea, heated some bread, made a salad and opened a can of sardines. We didn't need the food we had bought at Mohammed's shop after all. Our guide played the urd, a traditional guitar, and sang to us. He made the whole experience fun as he had a great smile and took my teasing in good humour.

In the afternoon we saw the spring where Lawrence of Arabia fame drank water and also saw some rocks which were once a house where he stayed.

The first night we arrived there was no hot water although we were told there would be some so we were ready for a shower after our 9 hour tour. We arrived at camp to find there was not even any water let alone hot stuff. We are used to carrying packets of 'baby wipes' for such emergencies. The toilet facilities were pretty squalid really, sewerage flooding the floor, waste water leaking from broken pipes and all this in a protected area. The Mongolians could teach them how to do it better in the desert!

Petra, Jordan

The hostel we stayed in was pretty basic. There were 3 beds crammed into the small room and a teeny tiny bathroom. We had to sit sideways on the toilet as there was not enough space for our legs in front of the toilet. Next we had to clamber over the toilet in order to use the shower at the end of the room.

The best news was that Kerri's suitcase turned up so we didn't have to share my 3 tops and 2 pairs of trousers any more!

Dan got a better place further up the hill from us. On the way to pick up Kerri from the airport, we chatted to a Polish guy who had just returned from Petra and he told us about Dan's hotel, called Valentine Inn. They had a buffet evening meal with about 50 different dishes, mostly salads; tomatoes in 4 different sauces, eggplants in the same sauces, cucumbers in the same sauces and so on but it was all freshly prepared and a welcome change from chicken and rice, although they had that as well. The thing Dan liked most about the hotel other than the view, the food, and the terrace was the beer!
Buffet dinner at the Valentine Inn

We got up early and bought a two-day ticket to Petra. Our hostel manager dropped us off just before 7 so we could beat the heat and the crowds. It was a cool and peaceful morning and we were able to take photos without hordes of people in the way.


The Siq was caused by tectonic plates separating. After the long walk through the Siq it is quite a dramatic moment when you see the famous treasury for the first time all lit up by the sun above the sandstone hills.


It must have the best photographed camels in the world as well.

The Nabutaeans built the rose-coloured city of Petra in the 3rd century BC with palaces, temples, sacrifice areas, tombs and store rooms. From here they commanded the trading routes from Damascus to Arabia and spice, silk, and slave caravans passed through having to pay taxes and protection money. The Nabutaeans mastered hydraulic engineering, iron production, copper refining, as well as sculpture and stone carving.

The Romans took over in the second century AD building palaces and temples, remains of which can still be seen. A massive earthquake in 555 AD forced the city to be abandoned.

While it was cool we climbed the numerous steps to the High Place of Sacrifice


and could see many of the sandstone temples around the site.
The locals still live in the valley amongst the ruins

It was about 30 Celcius at lunchtime and we managed to find a tree with some shade near the Roman ruins and enjoy our packed lunch while watching the long lines of red-faced, sweaty tour groups trudge in.
Roman theatre
Dan and John explored a few more tombs which had cavernous rooms while Kerri and I looked at the outsides and headed home early on the first day. We walked all the way back to the hostel taking a short cut through a valley where we drenched our heads and hats in cool irrigation water and arrived back the same time as the guys who had taken a taxi!

The next day we were up early again and saw things along the Siq that we hadn't noticed the first day. The light highlights different things at different times of the day. We took the steep route with its 800+ steps to the Monastery and expected a long hard slog to the top so we were pleasantly surprised when we made it in a short time before the jewelery sellers had even unpacked their wares in the shops lining the steps.

We were able to look over the Arabian Desert Valley towards Israel. A souvenir store holder gave us a cup of cardamon tea and we chatted with him before heading down the steps again.

The worst thing about Petra is the number of horses, donkeys, camels and horse and carts going up and down the Siq and the stairs carrying goods and ferrying overweight passengers. In the Siq you have to get out of the way quickly or they could crush you as they thunder past you in the narrow walkway.

Overall we had a great time and were glad we were up and at it early to enjoy everything before the crowds arrived. The city of Wadi Musa ( Valley of Moses ), the name of the city outside Petra, is a hilly place with not much going for it and nothing to hold you there any longer than you need. As soon as we were done we farewelled Dan and caught a taxi to Wadi Rum and the desert.

Amman Revisited and The Dead Sea, Jordan

We caught a bus to the airport to pick Kerri up from her Etihad flight from Dubai. Her baggage got lost between Melbourne and Amman so she arrived with just what she was wearing, a small day bag and a few necessities. This was probably due to a combination of a couple of things; the new check-in clerk at Auckland airport and the two hour delay of the flight taking off. She was being paged as she dashed to the boarding gate for her connecting flight.

After registering her loss at the Amman airport and getting a clerk's contact number we headed back to central Amman. She managed to get a few hours sleep on the Auckland to Melbourne leg and another 8 hours on the way to Dubai so she was pretty relaxed.
Downtown, Amman
The next day we visited the Roman ruins: the Nymphaeum (fountain), and the restored Amphitheatre. Later we climbed up to the citadel and Umayyad Palace ruins overlooking the city.
Kerri and the tourist policewoman at the amphitheatre.

The hotel was a easy place to meet people and share experiences. We met Mark from Capetown, South Africa and went out for a meal with him. Mark was keen to find somewhere to eat and have a beer but we had not found anywhere in downtown that served food and alcohol. When Mark asked a shop keeper if the place next to him sold beer he directed us down an alley to a small bar ( The Jordan Bar ) where we could buy a local beer called Petra and it was sold in half litre cans of either 8 or 10% alcohol.

Our American friend, Dan, arrived at the hotel and was put in the room next to us by the friendly staff at the hotel who knew we were expecting him. We met Dan in 1981 while backpacking in the Andes. His schedule happened to coincide with ours so we were able to meet up and travel a bit together.

There are not many nice places to eat in downtown. One restaurant had 3 floors, the first floor had the food set out in bainmaries including sheeps' heads floating in broth, the second floor was for men only and the top floor was for women and families. You could point to what you wanted and the waiter brought it up the two flights to your table or you could choose something from the menu. The photos of the dishes on the menu did not represent anything in the bainmaries and the translations didn't help describe what was in the dish.

Another restaurant we found had waiters in jackets and only an Arabic menu. The waiter offered the night's special and two other dishes: a lamb dish and a chicken dish. I once ordered the chicken dish and found it was too much to eat: half a roasted chicken, rice, and three piles of boiled vegetables. When I requested it the second time with only one vegetable and half of the half chicken I was told no, I had to have the whole dish. They serve other meals like sheep brains and stuffed intestines but only offer the tourists the most expensive dishes. It also had a pastry shop of sticky sweet baklavas.
Filo pastries with pistachios and sugar syrup

The hotel served breakfast in the lounge which was so handy: a boiled egg, triangles of spreadable cheese, jam and pita bread. After breakfast with Dan we shared a taxi to Petra with stops along the way.

The first stop was to look at a pile of rocks which the driver called 'lozz'. After some research we realized he was pointing out the pillar of salt that Lot's wife had turned into when she looked back at the city of Sodom.

The next stop was the Dead Sea. We had to pay to use the facilities at the Amman beach resort and to float in the sea.



John, Dan and Kerri relaxing.
By the time we left Amman' Kerri's bags had still not arrived so she had to swim in my pyjamas but enjoyed the float nevertheless. The salt dried out our skin in no time.

The next stop was at the Crusader fortress of Karak


and then at Shobak which had a secret escape tunnel.


The buildings are well camouflaged being made of the same materials as the surrounding area.

We had a good ride in the taxi and arrived at our hotel in Wadi Musa (Petra) in time to wash up and find somewhere for dinner with a beer.

Madaba, Jordan

We decided to leave the sights of Amman until Kerri arrived from NZ for 2 weeks with us, so we took a bus to Madaba, about an hour from Amman.

Nearly all the streets in the city centre hve been ripped up and new seal and paving is being laid. It will look spectacular when it is finished, but right now the sand blows everywhere and the grinders cutting the stone pavers are both dusty and noisy. The positive thing is that there are no cars any where!

Madaba is pretty laid back. The shop keepers give up hassling you after one attempt of 'Come and look'. There are several nice restaurants in the centre and we enjoyed the hotel where we stayed.

Madaba is nearer the airport than Amman so it is a good option for easing yourself into Jordan.

We visited the Roman ruins where there are several mosaic floors and an old road. They were discovered when a resident wanted to build on the site and it is now a museum and mosaic studio where you can have lessons if you want.

In the Greek Orthodox Church was a mosaic of map of the Holy Land. It was so full of tourists doing a bus tour we missed the ticket office and ticket collector.

We had to do some repairs to our portable water boiler that we had purchased in Syria and the local TV repairman was most obliging. He offered us mint tea while we waited and wouldn't take any payment for soldering the wires back on.

The people of Madaba were very friendly and everyone wishes you a 'Welcome to Jordan' as you pass them in the street.

These lads were sitting at the bus station when we left to go back to Amman. they had pigeons in their boxes and were trying to sell them to the bus passengers.

Jerash, Jordan

The hotels sell tours to many places around Amman but we decided to catch local transport for a fraction of the price and check out the Roman ruins at Jerash. It was built on a Neolithic settlement dating back 6,500 years.

Excavations have been going on here for 85 years and it is estimated that 90% is still not excavated. Around the 4th century, at the time of Alexander the Great, it possibly had a population of 20,000. The Persians invaded in 614 AD followed by the Muslim conquest in 636 AD. A series of earthquakes in 749 caused the settlement's decline. When the Crusaders came through they described it as uninhabited. The ruins were covered with sand over time and this helped preserve them until they were found in 1806 in quite good condition.
The oval forum
Some of the gates still exist as well as the colonnaded street with the original pavers where you can see the ruts caused by the Roman chariots. In the hippodrome they have revived the chariot races after 1500 years.

The amphitheatres have been restored and are used for annual festivals. Council meetings were held in the theatre and some of the seats still have the name of the tribes written in Greek characters on them. We were sung to by an Irish guy who was encouraged by his guide and the acoustics were great.

There are several temples and remains of a synagogue and several churches.
Mosaics
It was a 24 degree day and every girls' high school in the area decided to have a school trip on the day we chose to visit. Many of them sought us out to practise their few words of English and then giggle after being so brave. It became quite tiresome by the end of the day but great that they felt happy to talk to strangers.

We met this handsome couple at the theatre. He had previously worked for the tourist police at the complex and was showing his wife of one week around. He told us she was his cousin and that he had 5000 cousins, maybe he meant 500 but either way he has a lot of cousins!

Amman, Jordan

We took a taxi to the outskirts of Damascus and from the bus station there we took a servees (shared taxi). It was a new Korean car and we shared with a Jordanian Muslim lady who never spoke at all and a businessman from Iran who spoke some English. The driver was a young man who loved smoking and speeding; he wound the speedo up to 200kph while texting on his cellphone!

After the exit formalities at the border, the men visited the duty-free shop to buy packets of cigarettes. Once back in the car we were given cartons to carry for them through the Jordanian border controls. At customs, the car was driven over a pit and checked underneath. We had to open our backpacks and everything was taken out of the car. Every bus and its passengers were treated the same way so it was quite a long wait here.

After leaving the fertile fields of Syria we travelled through desert and rocky terrain. There were many rock crushing companies with lots of makeshift tent towns for the workers.

We were dropped at the servees station and were immediately taken over by locals touts who flagged a taxi down and got a 'buksheesh' from the driver, who in turn took it from us even though we had said we didn't want him to tip the guys. The driver didn't believe we had booked a hotel so followed us in to the reception hoping to get his own tip for introducing us to the hotel. It was not the best welcome to Jordan.

We had booked the hotel online and it was the highest rated place that had 3-bedrooms for the time we wanted. Once inside the 4 bedroom they gave us I saw that it was dusty and hadn't been swept for a long time. It was late and we decided that it would be Ok after a sweep. I hunted out the place and got a broom, moved all the beds and swept the walls, shelves and floor. In no time at all I had all the staff apologizing and trying to take over the cleaning. I decided that they had had their chance and had done a lousy job so I would continue while John went off to find another hotel for the next night. After 2 hours of cleaning, dusting the dirty windows and moping the floor, I turned on the fan to get rid of the dust in the air. By this time the manager was apologizing to John and offering us a discount. We had pre-booked 6 days in total to stay here.
The filth that embarrassed them!
After one night in the hotel, and an uncomfortable one at that because of the hard lumpy mattress we moved on to another place across the street. The manager wouldn't charge us for the night as he was still embarrassed. We did notice on leaving that the stairs and hallways had been swept and mopped so hopefully they were embarrassed enough to change their habits.

We explored some of the back streets of the city but didn't visit any sites as our daughter Kerri is arriving in a few days and we will do it with her then.

We sussed out some eating places and were surprised at how few nice places there were nearby.

We met a South African from Capetown, called Mark, and he managed to find a bar where they served local beer called Petra and at 8% alcohol, one was enough. Most places we have eaten do not serve alcohol so it was a rare find.

Downtown Amman is a busy place but not very pretty. The traffic is hectic and the drivers toot incessantly. The people greet you all the time with 'Welcome in Jordan' or 'What's your name?'. That makes a change from the usual 'Wherrre you frrrom?', with the 'r' trilled.

Amman was originally built on seven hill but now covers nineteen. The site of Amman has been continuously occupied since 3500BC. 'Rabbath Ammon' was the capital of the powerful Ammonites in biblical times. In 1900, there were only 2000 people living here and in 1921 King Abdullah made it the capital of Transjordan and today there are 1.8 million.

We have also met some very nice taxi drivers who have given us tips on places to catch buses and have been honest with using the meters.

It is 'high season' for tourists in Jordan and we see lots of tourists, with a lot of them being French.

Zahle, Lebanon

The city statue.

We caught a minivan (shared taxi) to Chtaura where we had planned to stay and explore more Roman ruins but found that there was no accommodation , other than a four star hotel out of town, so decided to go to the next city of Zahle instead.

What a contrast to anywhere else in Lebanon we have been. The city is built along the banks of a river with houses up the sides of the rocky mountains. The streets were sealed and the paths paved and everything was so clean and organised.

We learnt later that the city had 30 churches and no mosque. We saw very few veiled women and lots of young people driving up and down in their expensive cars talking on their cellphones at the same time. There were advertisements for cola and burbon lining the highways and lots of pubs and nightclubs. Most of these were closed as they open next month when the weather is warmer.

The main street was lined with clothing shops with names like 'Snob', "Flirt', and 'Coquette'. There were so many signs in English and even 'real' supermarkets.

There were the usual Catholic statues of Mary and small shrines on street corners or in parks. The city was the birth place for about 50 poets, writers and thinkers in the past.

We stayed in a hotel that was built in the 1800s and across the street were other buildings of the same age with the same French style of architecture. They had shutters and balconies overlooking the street. Many of the old buildings are being renovated and will give the town a French colonial feel when they are all completed.

We walked to the top of the town and found the open air restaurants that Zahle is famous for. They are jammed into a small space on either side of the river in a small valley and each one is trying to get noticed more than the other. They have playgounds to attract families and canopy-covered areas. None was open but the carpenters and painters were busy painting the canopy frames in bright colours and renovating the kitchens.

The area is also famous for its syrah wines that come from grapes used by the Romans. They also have a strong liquor called arak. We bought a bottle of wine and found a modern bakery selling ciabatta bread and French cheese to get into the European mood of the place.

Baalbek, Lebanon

We caught a minivan from under the motorway bridge in Beirut and headed back towards the border with Syria. We climbed up over the mountains that still had quite a bit of snow on them. At the summit the road was foggy and there were still piles of snow lining the road where the grader had been.

We came down from the hills into the Bekaa Valley and dropped people off at the towns in the valley. The slopes were covered with many small grape vines and fruit trees. An ancient grape grows well in this area and apparently makes good wine. We have not seen any shops that sell wine or, any alcohol for that matter.

We arrived late afternoon in Baalbek and found the first hotel we visited too cold and lacking any kind of heating. The wind was blowing off the snow on the hills above the city so it was important to find a warm place. Eventually we settled on a pension overlooking a narrow main street. It was spotless and had a heater in the middle of the room that had a flue which crossed from one side of the room to the other, over the top of the hanging lights, and out a hole in the wall where it bellowed the black diesel soot outside. The manager told us that he only had generator electricity from 6pm to 12am but the rest of the rest of the day he had mains electricity to heat the hot water. There was a huge lounge with a well decorated diesel heater too and a balcony that got the sun so we could wash and dry our clothes.

Baalbek is famous for its ruins and is another World Heritage site. It is also the home to Hezbollah (Party of God). The Phoenicians named the city Baal after the sun god. The Greeks called it Heliopolis, City of the Sun, and the Romans made it a worship place for their god Jupiter.
The ruins are quite grand. There are temples to Venus and Bacchus as well as a huge court, altars and baths. The entrance fee is expensive and although there are information boards on the site many of them have been damaged and are useless.

The museum, with a few relics, is underground and was freezing cold at this time of the year. Parts of the complex had been turned into a mosque as well. It was interesting to learn that many Roman structures took centuries to build so many were never completed and there are some pillars where the outline has been chiselled and the detail work was never finished.

Just out of the town is a huge spring where the Romans got water. It is now surrounded by vans decked out to sell coffee and hire out hubbly bubbly pipes. The spring is littered with plastic coffee cups and other rubbish that the goldfish swim around. Ducks have made nests on the Roman ruins in the centre of the pond too.

There is a beautifully tiled mosque at the entrance to the city. The handmade tiles have patterns as well as Arabic script on them.


We read that the town used to export ice to Egypt!

There is not a lot to do here but we have enjoyed being out of the bustling large cities and walk about looking at the locals as they carry on with their daily life. We have a backgammon set that our friend Gerti gave us for Christmas and John keeps beating me at that. We exchanged books at a hotel in Damascus and have been sitting in the sun doing some reading and genrally relaxing as the next month will be quite hectic when our daughter will join us.

We have just had news that John's mum, aged 95, has had a small stroke so we are keeping in touch with family who are taking care of her and letting us know how she is doing.