We travelled from Eastern Turkey and the dreadful weather over the border and into Syria – and not without some trepidation as various people had warned us about Syria – the secret police, the military state, the obsession with the King, the security checks, the coldness of the people. The only aspects of any of this we found to be true were that our emails couldn’t download (google and gmail are banned). Every other aspect was entirely the opposite of what we had heard. The Syrian people were astoundingly hospitable, friendly and happy to see us.
From the freezing cold border post (5 degrees outside) we headed directly south with the first stop being the 12th century Crusaders castle, Crac de Chevaliers. The weather continued with torrential rain so hard most cars had to pull off the road. We just plugged slowly on knowing that ours would not slip and slide, but visibility was about 40cms in front. We finally found the correct road up the mountainside to Crac de Chavaliers, by now in the pitch dark, with the same awful conditions. No street lights, no houses, no moonlight, it felt as though we were about to drive off the edge of the world. We finally found the little hotel recommended by the Lonely Planet – and actually the only option in the area. It was run by 4 local men and we were the only guests. There was no hot water, an ancient heaving radiator that tried to pump warm air into the tatty room, no plugs in the sink (but no hot water anyway so why bath?), the paper thin curtains had tears from top to bottom and the bed linen had holes bigger than 50p pieces. However the men were so kind and one of them made a feast of a dinner for us out of what was left in the kitchen – pide bread (pita), hummus, halva, chicken kebabs and rice. We did a jogging tour of the castle first thing in the morning – jogging because it was sleeting and near freezing and we were frozen half to death. Amazing place with the moat and battlements all intact.
Back into the car then onwards to Damascus, which we reached by early afternoon, through snow covered highways and locals agog at snow on the roads (first snow in 25years apparently).
Once again, what we had been told proved incorrect, or grossly exaggerated. Driving in Damascus was actually ok, sure a bit crazy compared to Edinburgh, but not much worse than Venice or Athens. We drove about the city centre a bit to get our bearings and decided on a local run budget hotel with great reviews. Once again, threadbare- leaks and drips and torn and tatty, but the men in charge were just great and full of local info, help, chat, humour and hard boiled eggs (seems to be a national obsession). We dumped our stuff, put on all the extra clothes we had and walked to the Old City – right in the heart of Damascus and still surrounded by the ancient city wall. It was great, ancient wee streets all higgledy piggledy, store keepers, cafes, the famous Umayyad Mosque dominating a vast chunk, smells of schwarma (totally delicious and the best bet for 30p each!), and the total sensual overload which is the huge covered Souq (massive covered market area with tiny stalls and each section given over to different things- like the spice area (all dried fruits, herbs, spices and tea), the fabric area, the clothing area (Mara fell head over heels in love with a sparkly, shimmery, white shiny dress with lots of netting and a big hoop to ensure maximum princessness). We ate in a roof restaurant – more of the same local fare – delicious, then walked home in the dark and collapsed into bed. The next day we spent walking around some more and went into the Mosque (where I had to put on robes rather like a Jedi because I was a western woman)
and explored the old city further. At 5pm we headed to a cafe to hear (and see ) the last professional HakiWati in Syria. This is a story teller, and each day after dusk prayers he goes to this cafe and sits and regales the clientele with a story. The folk in the cafe listen or ignore him, depending on the story or the strength of their nargileh (I presume!). Pieter and I also had a nargileh (hubbly bubbly pipe), when in Rome and all that. We had the tourist strength version – the tobacco was flavoured with apple and cinnamon and it was very weak and along with a hot sweet black tea, and the hakiwati in the background, it was sublime. For the umpteenth time we were made a big fuss of – the hakiwati himself even came over to talk to us and a few others in the cafe came over to say hello and offered to translate the story if we didn’t understand.
Throughout the course of the day we were almost killed with kindness. In the Mosque a visiting Imam from Turkey gave each child a huge balloon on an elastic band which they bounce like a baseball. Then when outside again Euan burst his and a complete stranger got up from a nearby street cafe and went off and bought him a new one. Couples, families and individuals stopped us at least once or twice an hour to ask to take photos of the kids or to come over and shake their hands. Back in the Souq an older man just took each boy by the hand and walked off with them, almost immediately lost in the throngs of people and the narrowness of the alleyways. As he walked away he called over his shoulder “Don’t worry Mama, I just take them to give them a present”. Like hell muttered the paranoid western mother who charged after him and followed them through a maze of back streets, stairways and allies. Sure enough, we ended up in a tiny upper level shop where he sat us down, scratched around and found each boy a t-shirt, Mara a bracelet, a brooch, and a pair of earrings and we all had tea. We waited every moment for the hard sell – but nothing came, he just wanted to chat and compare stories and make our kids smile; he told us he really missed his grandchildren who had all moved to Algeria.
That second night in the cramped wee hotel (more like hostel) room we got the most amazing surprise. A Skype call to South Africa to say hello and let everyone know we were alive resulted in the most amazing Christmas Present – 5 flights to SA to spend Christmas and New Year with family. Wow! Pieter stayed up till 3am researching the cheapest and most viable routes and that turned out to be flying from Cairo. Hence some rushed planning to ensure we could drive from Damascus to Cairo in 5 days.
We left Damascus sharp the next morning, got horrifically lost trying to navigate OUT of the city and drove south, over the border into Jordan, and kept on going south. We hit Amman and got lost in outer city highways as there were not many signposts. 2 hours later it was dark and we were still driving around lost and trying to find the main road south. Sense of humour failure – we had broken our 3rd rule of camping – ALWAYS be off the road 1 ½ hrs before nightfall. We finally found the road and stopped at the town of Madaba. An unusually Christian influenced town with a budget hotel complete with Christmas tree – the kids were thrilled! Sadly no time to explore the town the next day as we had to drive south on our tight schedule.
We made it to Wadi Musa which is the village which has sprung up around Petra – all crappy hotels, cafes and shops. Still far too cold for camping we found another cheapy hotel, dropped off our things and set off to explore. Petra was made one of the Wonders of the World back in November 2010, so unfortunately for us we got the inflated prices - £50 per person (cue collapse backwards). For a start we booked tickets to do a Petra by Night walk where the entire walkway is lit by 1600 candles and once you reach the entrance to the ancient city you sit and listen to local music in the candlelight.
It was pretty special, although quite a long walk for the kids. Next morning we went back into Petra again, worrying about how to see as much as we wanted as the ancient buildings carved into the mountains are spread over a space of 8kms and there are 100’s of stone steps. No way our 3 could manage it all. As luck would have it we met a local Bedouin guy who offered us donkeys for the day for an extortionate sum. 20minutes later and after much bartering and negotiation we had 2 donkeys, 1 mule and a guide for the entire day PLUS he paid US £40.....we traded were our 2 adult bikes. So many thanks to Lesley and Simon – your 2 bikes have made a very chatty Bedouin very happy and we spent an awesome day plodding all over Petra and to the very highest peak (up 350odd huge stone steps) – without any whinging from the kids as they were too busy delightedly clinging to their assorted animals and Pieter and I enjoyed the exercise.
At 4.30pm we fell back into the car and drove straight on South to Aqaba. This is the most southerly city in Jordan, and on the Red Sea. Sadly our new tight time schedule meant we didn’t make it to Wadi Rum (where you can drive on the sand to the famous points where Lawrence of Arabia is said to have gone) – although others told us that if you are doing desert in Egypt and Sudan you will get the same idea. Just outside of Aqaba is a great camping and travellers hangout called the Bedouin Garden Village and this is where we rocked up just as night fell. We me up again there with Willem and Pam, Willem a South African guy doing exactly the same trip as us in nearly the same car.
We enjoyed spending a night chatting and drinking (been dry for quite some time by this point!) and sharing some of our treats from the car like Mrs Balls Chutney, cheddar cheese and Greek olives. Next day we had to sort out all the ferry arrangements to get from Jordan to Egypt the following morning, and I spent hours on the internet trying to book a hotel in Cairo which would allow us to leave the car for the 3 weeks we were to be in South Africa.
The plush looking ferry to Egypt from Jordan is all facade – you leave as and when the captain is ready to leave, our tickets (booked from the official ticket office the day before) were incorrect and we had to go haring out of the port to sort this out before rushing back for our place in the queue – terrified we might now miss the one and only ferry leaving that day. Once on board Westerners were pushed to one end of the boat and we were not allowed to move down to the “local” end – which was overcrowded, loud, hot and smelly. By this point we had made friends with the family in the car in front of us as we waited to drive on board. A lovely Egyptian family with 3 kids aged 16,15 and 11 who were driving from Kuwait (where they live and work and attend American school) back to visit family in Cairo. The entire family has perfect English, the kids have American accents and they are as Western as whatever such a stupid term could mean. However they were not allowed to sit with us and when the 16 year old tried to strum his guitar (with great talent) the staff onboard shooed him away and told him to be quiet as he was “disturbing” the Europeans. I was horrified.
Once we docked in Egypt the mayhem ensued, never seem customs and immigrations like it (and we’ve seen a few!), but our new friends took us completely under their wing and made sure we parked close to them. Pieter and Salaah (the husband) dashed around from shack to shack, with appointed local “helpers” who know what the hell is going on and can help you get the necessary paperwork such as a temporary Egyptian driver’s license, Egyptian number plates for the car, photocopies of everything, rubber stamps on everything else etc. Pieter’s “helper” was mute, so that made life additionally interesting! While I sat and guarded the car and tried to entertain the kids I had to take Mara to the loo. The worst yet. A hole in the ground in a room with a door which didn’t close. It was an eastern hole in the ground, i.e. no loo paper as you wash with a tap and bucket from the hose – except there was no hose or bucket and the tap was broken and there was excrement plastered to the floor, the hole, was just a bottom of the door and the walls. We were both gagging. We ran out of the “cubicle” and tried to wash hands – only to discover that the sink was just attached to the wall, there was no water plumbed in, no waste pipe underneath it, so the fact there was no soap or paper towels really didn’t matter.
Salaah and family then suggested to us that as it was now dark (we sat in the chaos of customs for over 3 hours) we should follow him to Cairo as the roads were not well signposted and they were headed that way. We thought it was a great idea – our first Western hotel chain beckoned and we had read it was a 5 hour drive – so following a guy who knew what he was doing made the possibility of a hot bath – and maybe.....just maybe.....the notion of a glass of room service wine....feasible. Hurrah. Naive Fiona and Pieter. Salaah drove at no more than 40kms per hour the entire way and we stopped twice at roadside shacks for hot, sweet, black tea. Now, don’t get me wrong, we loved the chance to stop and get to know such a wonderfully warm and friendly family better...but as it hit midnight, and later....and later....well....the hot bath became a dream and all I began to care about was whether or not the hotel would even hold our reservation. We finally said goodbye to Salaah and his family by the side of the ring road outside Cairo at 5am. An amazing family with incredible values we can really relate to and we dearly hope that one day we can meet them again. We then went on to try and find our hotel and finally arrived at 5.30am. We had left at 9.30am the day before.....tired does not even begin to describe it.
So, in our new supposedly 5 star hotel (at best a possible 4 star on a gigantic American level – but I’m not complaining, we hadn’t stayed anywhere this fancy to date and are so localised we don’t even notice that the toilet leaks, the armchair is so stained we have to put a towel over it before we sit down and there is a rip in the bed linen) we sleep and sleep until our alarm wakes us at 10.45am – 15mins before breakfast finishes. We don’t want to miss this meal....it promises to offer something than more than black tea and a hard boiled egg, so we throw on yesterday’s clothes and rush to the dining room. Oh bliss and heaven and joy.....leavened bread in many shapes and sizes, even pastries, and .....to top it all.....PANCAKES! We sit and sleepily eat and overindulge in tastes of home....there is even fresh milk and palatable coffee.
We re-organise the trailer (by now we no longer have the kids bikes either – we traded them at the campsite in Aqaba for one night’s accommodation and you have never seen an owner so happy) and use duct tape to secure our underbed storage boxes which will now have to survive a flight and pretend to be “normal” luggage. I spend 2hours negotiating with the hotel staff about what they are charging us to leave our car (our baby, our home) parked in their secure parking area – the price I was quoted by the online booking company seems to them “impossible” and they’d far prefer to charge 17 times that if I don’t mind. At 4pm we leave and get a taxi to the home of the sister of a friend of mine in Scotland. She also has young kids and we have arranged to visit her en route to the airport. It take us 2 hours to do the 15kms journey (welcome to traffic in Cairo, where on the 3 lane highway we counted 8 lanes of traffic) to her house, but once there we enjoy a wonderful meal and wonderful hospitality and the kids are mad with joy being in a home again for the first time since the start of September. Our flight is not till 2am but we are flying Ethiopian Airways who seem to think you should be at an airport 3hrs before flight time, and our hosts tell us that it can take 3 hours to get to the airport in bad traffic. Hence at 9.30pm we pile into 2 local taxis and begin the journey to the airport. We are all exhausted; we have had 4 hours sleep and driven through 2 countries in the previous 24hours. We have spent the 5 days prior to that driving as much as possible AND still doing all the sights. We reach the airport and the sheer excitement of heading off to South Africa keeps us fired up until boarding time. By then the kids are whimpering and somewhere between sleep and balling their eyes out. But not to worry.....after a 5 hour flight to Addis Ababa and then a 2 hour wait and then a different plane and a 3 ½ hour flight to Johannesburg we will be with family....in a house...with hot water...and a toilet which flushes.....and real milk and fresh coffee and meat and chocolate and home comforts and familiar faces....zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
PS: I am not going to write up the 3 weeks in SA. Suffice to say we slept a lot when we first arrived, it was WONDERFUL to see all the family again, we rested, relaxed, did a washing IN a washing machine every day and then a lovely black lady ironed absolutely everything, we drank chilled fantastic white wine, we ate too much red meat, we went to a villa in the bush with everyone and fed impala and kudu by hand as they walked past our door, we partied, we slept in beds, we visited shopping malls and the kids played and played and played with their cousins. My folks drove up from Cape Town for Hogmanay, the kids died of happiness to have all 4 grandparents in the one place.
We left this morning with heavy hearts and as I type we are on the first of the planes which carry us back to Cairo, back to our car (hopefully), back to the trip and back to the hardest part of the journey which is about to commence.
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