Still here

We're still here in Turkey. Reid's parents arrived without incident last night and we got Tim off to the airport bus this morning. We're sitting at the marina eating brunch trying to figure out which sailboat we'll be aboard for the next two weeks. After lunch we'll head to the store to stock up on some provisions before getting settled on the boat this evening. We're doing well and will try to update with some photos soon.

Still Good in Turkey

We're hanging out in the Bodrum Penninsula with Tim (Jen left a couple days ago) and will meet up with Reid's parents tomorrow night. We leave on our sailing trip on Thursday. It is beautiful here and we are having a great time with Tim and just relaxing at the beach.

Turkey

We arrived in Istanbul and successfully met up with Tim and Jen. After three nights in the city we flew to Izmir this morning and got on a train for Selcuk. We are hanging out at a hostel here and plan to explore Ephesus in the morning before heading to Bodrum to spend some time on the beach and exploring the nearby areas.

On to Turkey

We spent the last couple days in Madaba resting up for our Turkey adventures, floating on the Dead Sea, and exploring some amazingly preserved ruins at Jerash. It was great and I'll post photos soon. Tomorrow we get on a plane at 6:40 and land in Turkey three hours later. We're meeting up with our friends Tim and Jen and will travel around with them for about ten days before we meet up with Reid's parents for our sailing adventures. We are so excited. Okay, now off to bed with us... it'll be an early start tomorrow.

King's Highway

After finishing up Petra this morning, we showered, packed our bags, ate lunch and headed up the King's Highway to Madaba. (We rented a car in Aqaba, which was relatively cheap and has really allowed us to maximize our time here.) We stopped off at Shoback Castle--a crusader castle built in 1189 AD. We drove by the Wadi Araba desert and took some cool photos out of the car window. We also drove down to a scenic viewpoint over Dana Nature Reserve. And tried to stop at Karnak Castle, but it closed early for Ramadan, so we just took a few photos outside. We then passed over the Wadi Mujib, aptly called the Grand Canyon of Jordan. We were there for sunset and the views were just spectacular. We then drove on to Madaba where we settled at the Salome hotel where we'll stay for three nights before our flight to Istanbul on the 15th. From here we plan to explore the ruins at Jerash, float on the Dead Sea, and perhaps visit some hot springs.

Right now we are sitting at a bar in the basement of our hotel enjoying a couple beers (hard to come by in Jordan) and watching Indiana Jones, the Last Crusade, which was filmed, in part, in Petra. Reid is (basically) in heaven.

Petra - Day 2

Photos to come soon.

This morning we woke up early and headed in to Petra. We opted to enter via the Wadi Muthlin trail (instead of through the Siq), which Lonely Planet advertises as a relatively easy "scramble" that requires you to lower yourself down some boulders. Well... it was interesting. It started out through a river bottom--rocky and not easy to walk on. Then it narrowed and we had to start lowering ourselves down boulders and making our way through corkscrew turns of rock. It was beautiful. But a bit daunting -- I (Dyanne) was afraid we'd somehow wandered off the trail at a number of points. We hadn't and ended up by the Royal Tombs. We wandered around them and got a great aerial view of the Theatre. We walked out via the Siq as the tour groups were arriving and were back in our car by 11:00.

Petra - Day 1

So, I think that Petra may have been our most favorite experience of the trip to date (I may be only speaking of myself though). It was the perfect combination of beautiful natural wonder and ancient man-made monuments. We got a late start yesterday, but were rewarded by weather that was not too hot. We walked through the Siq, viewed the Treasury, and then headed down past the Street of Facades toward the Theatre. Before we reached it, we took some steps on the left that led up to the High Place of Sacrifice. It was about a 45 minute hike to get to the top (second photo), but we were rewarded by some amazing views. We returned on the opposite side and saw more amazing stuff (including my seat in the third photo). At this point we headed down past a few more sights towards lunch in the Basin. It was an expensive buffet, but very good and provided a well needed rest and escape from the heat. We saw a painted tomb before hiring a couple donkeys to take us up to the Monastery (last photo). From there we climbed up to a couple view points and headed back down to the Monastery for some views close to sunset before heading down and back out of the park via the Siq. Boy were our dogs barking!! But it was a simply fantastic day and we enjoyed pretty much every moment of it.

On to Jordan

We FINALLY arrived in Jordan at 11:00 last night. Well, our ferry actually docked around 9:00, but it took another two hours to off load and pick up our passports and get through security. Somehow we missed the 3:00 fast boat. Don't ask us how, we arrived at about 1:40 and were told to wait. We waited around a dirty waiting hall until 6:00 before we were loaded on to the ferry. Yes, your math is correct. That's over four hours after Reid waited two and a half hours getting our tickets that morning. But, we arrived and got driven to our budget hotel proclaimed by the Lonely Planet to be the best budget option in town. Well, I guess we are spoiled, because with the peeling paint, air con that dripped through the bathroom ceiling, and a toilet seat that wasn't quite connected to the toilet we decided that we only wanted to stay one night. We checked out this morning and headed to the Movenpick resort. It's a splurge justified by (a) spending ALL DAY yesterday waiting to get here and (b) celebrating that Dyanne indeed has a job! And it's lovely. We are sitting right now looking at turquoise water that fades to dark blue on the Red Sea and eating lunch. We hope to arrange a snorkeling trip tomorrow morning before we head on to Petra.

Mt. Moses

We made it! Mostly. After an almost two hour delay, we landed at Sharm el-Shiek at 1:00 am. We brokered a deal with a taxi cab driver who assured us that Mt. Sinai (or Mt. Moses as the locals call it) was 2 hours away (not the three hours Reid had thought). In that case, we could make it by 3:00 am and make the three-hour climb before sunrise at 6:00 am. The taxi cab driver agreed to drive us to Mt. Sinai, wait for us to climb it, and then take us on to Nuweiba in exchange for cash instead of our first born child. Score!

We arrived at the base of Mt. Sinai at about 3:30 and started climbing at about 4:00. We were the last ones to start up the mountain and were assured by everyone that we couldn't make it to the top for sunrise. Oh well, we'd come this far. So, we set out in the pitch black alone except for our guide and the camel drivers who insisted that it would be much better to ride up the mountain. We declined and walked on. It was beautiful--the moon was barely a sliver and their were more stars than we had ever seen. About forty-five minutes in, the stars were being chased from the eastern skies by the sun you couldn't yet glimpse beyond the horizon. The advantage of climbing in the dark is that you have no idea how far you have to climb because you can't see more than one foot step ahead of you.

There are 8 rest stops/ tea houses on the way up and we paused for a quick break at each one. Our guide estimated that we could make it to the final tea shop before sunrise and was great at encouraging us at each stop to keep climbing further up. We made it to the last tea shop for sunrise with the tippy-top of Mount Sinai at our backs--it's 750 steps up to the top from where we stopped. And there were about 500 people on the summit. We had the same view and shared it with only our guide, the tea shop worker, and a handful of dozing camel drivers. It was perfect. And beautiful.

We decided not to stick around to tour St. Katherine's monastery and settled for a view from the outside before collecting our taxi driver and heading off to Nuweiba. We arrived at our hotel at 10 am and were graciously allowed to check in to our hotel room. We paid for a buffet breakfast and headed to our room, where we promptly passed out until... 11 pm. Luckily our hotel was still serving dinner and we roused ourselves to eat.

Delayed in Luxor Airport

Not too suprisingly, our flight to Sharm el-Sheik was delayed for over an hour and we are currently sitting in the Luxor airport waiting. Sigh! On the plus side, there is free wi-fi, so I posted a few photos from our last couple days and will try to upload more to our albums. The delayed flight may mean that we don't get to Mt. Sinai (we only have tonight/tomorrow to do it and it's too hot to consider climbing it at any time other than pre-dawn, but our fingers are still crossed that it'll work out).

Sunset on the Nile

West Bank in Photos

Karnak Temple In Photos

Not so Luxor-ious

Luxor is great, don't get me wrong, but (as mentioned in the previous post), it is just too hot (and sandy, and dirty). Reid actually prefers the heat here to SE Asia, where he was constantly drenched in sweat. But I just feel like it's really hot (thank goodness for A/C and showering 3x a day). Anyways, we've taken it a little slow here, between the heat and jet-lag it's been hard to keep hydrated and keep up our energy. Here's what we've done here in the Nile Valley:

DAY 1:

Our train scheduled to arrive in Luxor at 7:10, got in at 9:00. We easily found our hotel and settled in. After lunch, we tried to head to a museum to avoid the heat of the afternoon, but it was closing in an hour. So, we headed back to the hotel and took a nap to rest up for our sunset horseback ride through the desert (pictured). It was very beautiful and we both enjoyed traversing through some Egyptian villages and seeing the sun set in the desert.

P.S. The first photo is of our guide's donkey, he might look cute but boy is he loud! I think I've figured out why they call them asses :)

DAY 2:

We signed up for a "mini-tour" of the West Bank sights that started at 8 am. After collecting all the other participants, we finally arrived at the Valley of the Kings at 9 am--when the sun had just about reached overhead. Luckily, the tombs (being underground/in the mountain) were pretty cool--temperature and otherwise. We then visited Queen Hatepshut's Temple, Habu Temple, and the Collosi of Memnon before getting back at around 3:15. Whew was it hot! Sightseeing basically consisted of looking at stuff for a few seconds before making a bee-line to some shade to cool down before heading off again.

After a shower and a little rest we grabbed some food before heading off to the small Luxor Museum. It was pretty expensive, but well laid-out and had some neat artifacts and we even got to see a couple mummies (which we skipped in Cairo because it was $20 usd each). We then took a walk around Luxor Temple, had a quick beer, and returned to the hotel for an early bedtime.

DAY 3:

We woke up at 7:00 and headed directly to Karnak Temple (we did not stop at GO! and collect $200, oh wait! We did stop at an ATM to re-up on cash. Oh well!) in an effort to avoid the blistering heat of the day. We paid a guide $8 to show us around for about an hour and a half and then we spent another hour taking photos in the Hypostyle Hall. It was one of the coolest things we've seen so far. We returned to the hotel at 11:00 for a late breakfast.

We're scheduled to take a sunset cruise on a Feluca on the Nile at 4:30 and after than we're headed to the airport for our 10:15 flight to Sharm el-Shiek. From there we'll get a car to drive us to Mt. Sinai and clamber up the hill at around 2 am to watch the sunrise before heading down, taking a peak in St. Katherine's monastery, and then heading on to our hotel in Nuweiba (on the Red Sea) and getting some sleep.

More photos soon after we download them. And there are many more photos in our albums, if you want to see more of our adventures.

The Hendersons of Arabia

We opted to explore the pyramids of Giza in the traditional (ahem! touristy) fashion and road in on camels. I think it was worth it just for the photos and to avoid walking around the desert in the middle of the summer in the middle of the day. People, it is HOT here. HOT, as in, try to avoid going outside between 10:00 am and 7:30 pm because you will burn up in exactly 5 seconds. But, I digress. We spent one day visiting the pyramids of Giza (pictured), Saqqara, and Memphis. Saqqara is where the step pyramid of Gozer, a temple designed by Imhotep, and some colorfully decorated tombs. There isn't much left of (Ancient Egyptian) Memphis other than some statues. We also saw many many statues at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, which was... awesome, but overwhelming. Basically, it's like walking into a storeroom of antiquities. Very few items were labeled and the organization was sketchy. There was a lot of really neat old stuff, but we weren't exactly sure why it was so cool (other than because it was really old). We also visited the bazaar and had tea and a sheesha at a 200 year old tea shop. After two days in Cairo, we hopped aboard the overnight train for Luxor.

Snorkeling Dorkeling

While on the beach in Amed and Lovina we took some time to do some snorkeling. In Amed, ther was amazing fish and coral just a few meters off the beach in front of our hotel. It was pretty amazing to see all that colorful life right under the water. We took a day trip to Menjagen island from Lovina and went to a couple snorkeling sights with more amazing coral, blue starfish, and many other colorful fish. We even saw Nemo (a clown fish playing in the reef)!

On the Beach in Amed

Here's the view at sunrise from the balcony of our lovely little beach front bungalow that we were lucky enough to find in Amed.

Dolphins in Lovina

One of the things to do whilst at Lovina Beach (Bali) is to get up super early and head out on a traditional jukung (an outrigger canoe) and watch the dolphins. Our first morning it was pouring down rain, so we cancelled and went back to bed. The next morning we headed out with about 99 other boats. Basically, some dolphins would pop up and all 100 boats would motor to where they were effectively scaring them off. Oh well!! We saw some dolphins and I don't think any were harmed in the experience. Plus, it was pretty cool to watch the sun rise and the moon set over the water.