Welcome to Syria

We have made it safe and sound into Syria via Antioch in Turkey. I desperately wanted to take a picture of the 'Welcome to Syria' sign at the border, but thought better of it after seeing the arsenal being carried about by the border soldiers. We spent our first few days in Aleppo, which is the newly designated 'Center of Islamic Culture' for 2006. Aleppo is in competition with Damascus to be considered the oldest inhabited city on earth. It is definitely old with a wonderful old town, complete with ancient city wall, souqs, and imposing citadel. Within the old city are numerous 'khans', which are ancient inns used by merchants on the silk and spice road to rest their camels and sleep the night. We decided to do a walking tour on our first morning with a lovely old guy, named Ahmed. He is an agricultural engineer who has retired and stumbled into giving tours to tourist around Aleppo. One day he discovered that he was famous after hearing that he had made it into the Lonely Planet. He gave Leighanne and I a great tour of Aleppo, showing us all the sights and introducing us to some wonderful people in the souqs. We met a family of 9 brothers who all run shops in the souq and spent an hour or so talking with them. They knew about Arncliffe in Sydney, where Nana Ransley lives, because the Syrian Embassy is there. We also met a family in the mosque who were very interested in where we were from and what we did. The picture above is of Leighanne and I with them in the Great Mosque. We had read before arriving that the Syrian people where some of the friendliest on earth, and they are surely living up to it. Many people on the streets welcome you to their country and are happy to walk out of their way to show you the way to a hotel or restaurant.
It's been interesting to talk to the people and get their opinion on how the world is today. The vast majority are bitterly disappointed with how they are portrayed in the media and I totally agree with them. Everyone we have met so far has been very kind. They may not look to favourably on the actions of 'Little Johnny', Tony, or W, but hold nothing against the regular people from Australia, Britian or the US and have been incredibly welcoming. The whole experience so far has been very enjoyable.
Today we traveled from Aleppo to Hama, which will be our base for exploring Krak de Cevaliers tomorrow.

Gule Gule Turkey

Our quick visit to Turkey is almost complete, tonight we start the long bus ride into Syria. We initially flew into Istanbul and immediately noticed how much it has change. Obviously the big push to join the EU has major impacts on the cities infrastructure. The new metro and tram system was very good and made the trip into Sultanhamet simple. It was interesting to be in Istanbul for a 2nd time, and we both noticed how expensive it is now. Probably more so considering how cheap it was in Morocco. We spent a couple days in Istanbul seeing the sights, mainly the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia Mosque, Sulyimanie Mosque, etc... I had a very strange experience on our first night, we had a run in with a guy I went to high school with in America. The world is truly a small place.
We next headed to Goreme in the Cappadocia region of Turkey, famous for its bizarre rock formation and caves. We've now spent 4 days here and have enjoyed it. We have seen the underground city that the early Christians used to escape the patrolling Roman Army and walked through the beautiful Ilhara Gorge. We have seen the strange 'fairy chimney' rock formations and went for a walk through one of the nearby valleys. Unfortunately today it is bucketing rain, so anymore walks have been cancelled.
Next stop for us is Aleppo, Syria and the part of the trip I'm most looking forward to. We meet an Aussie guy had just made the journey through Syria and Jordan and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I can't wait to get going.

Morocco Summary

Here is an itemised summary of the good, bad, and ugly as we see it;

Best Border Crossing - Tangiers Port
Worst Border Crossing - Ceuta/Tetouan (by a country mile)
Best City - Marrakech
Worst City - Tetouan (robbers capital)
Best Restaurant - Marhaba Restaurant, Meknes (fantastic Harira soup all for 25p)
Best Place - Dades Gorge
Best Hotel - Atlas Berbere Hotel, Dades Gorge
Worst Hotel - Dump in Tetouan (name has been erased from memory)
Best Meal - Crepes with Honey/Almou at Cafe Toubkal in Djeema al Fna Square, Marrakech
Best Experience - Hiking in Dades Gorge and tea with the nomad family
Best Scenery - Bus trip through Atlas Mountains to Marrakech

Shukran...

General Itinerary

By popular demand;

March 06 - Morocco
April 06 - Morocco, Spain, Turkey
May 06 - Syria, Jordan, Egypt
June 06 - Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi
July 06 - Malawi, Mozambique, Sth Africa
August 06 - Sth Africa, Namibia, India
September 06 - India, Sri Lanka
October 06 - Thailand, Cambodia
November 06 - Vietnam
December 06 - China, USA
January 07 - Central America
February 07 - Central America, Chile
March 07 - Argentina, Brazil

Deep breath all together now!

Essaouira

We are now back in Marrakech after a relaxing 4 days in Essaouira, which is a seaside resort town on the Atlantic. It has a very nice medina with no honking cars, but the occassional speeding moped. The town is predominately painted white with blue shutters on the windows, very similar to Chefchaouen up in the Rif Mountains. The blue is supposed to scare away evil spirits. The main attraction in Essaouira is the port area with the colonial ramparts and the sweeping beach. On a clear day the sunset is quite spectacular against the town.

We spent our days lazing on the beach and I managed to burn my feet even though I was diligent with the sunscreen. Hopefully that will be the last burn for the trip, but somehow I doubt it. We didn't venture into the water as the looks on peoples faces who had told a rather frigid story. Instead we finished off our books and watched the locals play football all along the sand. They wait until the tide goes out then use the flat hard packed sand as the pitch, after seeing some of the fields around the country those beach pitches were probably the best in Morocco.

We have one night here in Marrakech then we are catching an overnight train to Tangiers then onto Barcelona. Morocco has been a good introduction to the year long travels, relatively easy to get around but enough of a challenge to keep us on our toes. Onwards we go!

The Long And Winding Road - Moroccon Style

Just a bit of humour to lighten your day. In order for us to reach Marrakech we took a bus up over the Atlas Mts. The scenery was incredible with mud hut Berber villages clinging to the slopes. The road was one of the most impressive I have ever been on and we had a fabulous time looking out on the changing scenery.

However, I have the sneaking suspicion that Moroccons consider it the road from hell. It turns out Moroccons do not deal well with winding roads and suffer quite severe motion sickness that seems to afflict a good proportion of the population.

So the journey started innocently enough with gently curves, but soon enough the conductor was handing out small black plastic bags. Shortly after this the telling waft of spew started to inflitrate the bus. People were going down like flies, starting with the gorgeous little girl and mother in the back seat. When the smell became sufficiently strong the conductor would drip washing detergent down the aisle, which we thought made it worse.

Anyway we found the whole thing amusing, even if it was at others expense. Moral of the story is if you are taking a bus over the mountains in Morocco, sit in the front seat of the bus.

Marvelous Marrakech

We have arrived in the main port-of-call for Morocco, Marrakech. It is totally different from everywhere else in Morocco, especially in the tourist numbers. Europeans have definitely discovered Marrakech and are making the most of it. Unfortunately it is extremely disappointing that they have not made the effort to respect the islamic culture of Morocco and are still parading around in outfits that are not appropriate for the country. Where as Fes and Meknes were very compact and bussling, Marrakech is much more spread out with a rarity in Morocco, public parks. There is a beautiful mosque overlooking the main square, which burst into life at night with hundreds of food stalls selling everything from fish and chips moroccan style to goats head. Also in amongst the food stalls are monkey trainers, snake charmers, henna artists, etc... We will be here for a couple more days before heading to the beach.

As per the previous post we have been busy seeing the Sahara desert and the Atlas Montains. The Sahara was our first stop and was slightly dissapointing. The dunes although quite impressive did not blozw you away. However we spent a nice day relaxing in the shade then went for a long walk at sunset around the dunes (see pic).

Next stop was fantastic, we went to a place called Dades Gorge right on the edge between the Sahara and Atlas Mountains. A river had cut a beautiful gorge valley out of the red rock to create a thin oasis in the desert. We stayed here for 3 days in a beautiful hotel literally 1 m from the river. We spent the days wandering around the valley amusing the local kids and managed to do a hike up to the solar plateau to see the start of the Atlas Mountains and visit a nomad family. We eventually tore ourselves away from there and visited Ait Benhaddou, which has the best preseved Kasbah in the Atlas region and host of movies such as Lawrence of Arabia and Gladiator.