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Hi again, well from where I left off…we got a taxi from Bcharre (where I posted the last blog update) over the mountains to Baalbek.No public transport travels that route and in winter the road is closed because it's usually covered in snow.So we found a taxi and just had to pay for him to take us.What a hair-raising journey!!As we headed towards the mountains we went through a lot of very serious looking checkpoints, some of which had huge tanks with their canons aimed at the vehicles passing through and of course army men everywhere with guns.The road up the mountains was so narrow, the drop off was sooo steep and there were no fences next to the side of the road and the road was covered in rocks and small boulders that had fallen down the side of the cliff, and parts of the road were icy and covered in snow!Also the car had no seatbelts which wouldn't have made a difference anyway if we'd gone over the side and the driver was swerving all over the place.
The views were incredible and the mountains were quite amazing how they just rose up so steeply from sea level!Just before we arrived in Baalbek our taxi driver picked up a lady who was trying to catch a ride from one of the checkpoints, she seemed nice and smiled a lot at me.When we arrived in Baalbek she insisted on taking us to our hotel, it was hard to talk to her as she didn't speak much English, but she invited us back to her house, we probably would have accepted such a nice offer but we were both feeling terrible with the beginnings of the flu and just wanted to go and lie down. So she took us to a hotel which we found too expensive, then she insisted on taking us to another one which was cheap but dingy, so she took us to a third one which seemed fine and we checked in.She then gave us her phone number and told us that if we needed anything we should call her.We slept the rest of the afternoon we were so exhausted.
That night the room was freezing cold with no heating or hot water which only made our colds worse by the morning.We spent the morning wandering around the old roman ruins at Baalbek which were incredible, I think they would definitely be some of the most impressive ruins I've ever seen!Once again we had the whole place pretty much to ourselves apart from one other couple.While we were wandering around we could hear what sounded like gunfire or something exploding all the time, Greg thought it was fireworks but I was a little more creative and thought maybe it was Hezbollah doing weapons testing or something, since we were in the region that is Hezbollah's stronghold, but no, Greg once again was right and it was just kids letting off fireworks, we eventually found out it was Eid al-Adha which is a Muslim festival at the beginning of the Hajj (the annual pilgrimage to Mecca).One thing we noticed as soon as we had crossed the mountain range from Bcharre down to Baalbek was the difference in political posters, in that part of the country there were posters of the leader of Hezbollah everywhere, but on the Mediterranean side of the mountains you didn't see any of him, just a lot of much more neutral politicians.
At lunchtime we got a minibus to Damascus, we sat next to a girl who was really friendly and wanted to talk most of the way, people here are so friendly and really want to talk to us and know where we're from, they always welcome us when we tell them.The minibus only took us to a town near the border so we had to find another car to take us across the border to Damascus, it took awhile but eventually we squashed into a car and made it to the border, crossing the border was very easy apart from the visa costs which were much higher than we had expected!!On arrival in Damascus we checked in to a slightly nicer hotel than what we'd been staying in so far, we just decided we needed a bit of comfort to get over our colds.We spent three nights in Damascus and just took it easy, we wandered around the old town which was really interesting and has a large souq that is crazy inside with so many people!We also visited the Umayyad Mosque where I had to wear this big brown coat with a hood to cover up.
Greg really wanted to try smoking a water pipe or 'shisha', we've seen people doing it everywhere so we went to a café and Greg ordered one with a cup of tea, and if it wasn't for me would have looked just like the locals!I just sat there and ate my sweets; I can't describe in words how delicious the sweets are here!They make up for the lack of alcohol which is impossible to get anywhere!!There are lots of street stalls selling all types of food from sweets, different types of peanuts, sweetcorn to granola and coconut muesli bars.There was one type of stall we kept on seeing that looked like it sold some kind of chickpea soup.Greg really wanted to try some so while we were wandering around he saw a stall with a big pile of chickpeas and just pointed to the pile and held up one finger for one serving, the man nodded and got to work, Greg thought he would get a nice bowl of hot soup but instead was given this huge plate of hummus with oil, tomatoes and radishes, it wasn't something we could just eat on its own, we needed bread with it.Unfortunately you can't just buy one piece of bread here, they come in huge packets.So we went on a search with this big plate of hummus to look for some kind of bread or pastry so we could eat it, eventually we found something and had an early lunch on the side of the street.I don't think we realised how much everything would be in Arabic here, I thought things would be in French as well, there are a lot of times where we have no idea what we've ordered because it is impossible for us to interpret Arabic, some places have English menus which certainly makes things easy, other times local people are very helpful!
One thing we really noticed when we got to Damascus was all the young kids carrying around toy guns, they look really realistic and you have to take a second glance before you realise, a lot of them are like BB guns and shoot something out of them.We met an Aussie guy who was doing a trip kind of similar to us and he said a kid had actually shot him in the back of the head with one, which not surprisingly really hurt!!Another thing that we can't help but notice are the pictures of the president everywhere, I don't think you can go 5 minutes walking down a street without seeing another picture of him, there are even magnets of him.Also a lot of shops and food places have pictures of the president with the leader of Hezbollah.In Lebanon there were a lot of political posters everywhere too but they have election coming up next year, Syria doesn't even have elections as the country has been in a state of emergency for over 40 years!
After three nights in Damascus we had fully recovered from our colds and were feeling good, we took a bus up to a town called Hama which is two and a half hours north, we spent a couple of nights there.The town was quite interesting with big wooden water wheels and a hill you could climb to get a great view of the town.The main reason we stopped in Hama was to visit a castle nearby called the 'Crac de Chevaliers' which is an old crusader castle.We took about 3 taxis and minibuses to get to the castle and then spent a couple of hours wandering around in there; it was pretty impressive with amazing views of the surrounding countryside.
We had a bit of trouble trying to get back to Hama in the afternoon, the first person who offered us a ride dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, needless to say we were quite annoyed!So we stood on the side of a freeway trying to hail a taxi or minibus, all of which unfortunately were full.There was a guy standing near us who was trying to get to the same place as us, after waiting for awhile with no luck, he eventually ran off and told us to wait where we were, then he appeared with a red car and driver and told us to get in.We were then driven down the freeway in the opposite direction of where we wanted to go, the guy didn't speak English but kept saying it was fine so we just sat there and waited to see what was going to happen.We turned off the freeway to this little town where a couple of minibuses were loading up with people.We didn't have to wait long until we could get in one that was going to a town called Homs from where we could get another minibus to Hama.
When we got to Homs we found a minibus and for the journey to Hama we were sitting next to this young guy who was very friendly and spoke quite good English, him and Greg chatted the whole way back to Hama and when we got there him and Greg decided to go for a coffee, I didn't go because I was tired.The guy took Greg to this coffee shop that was full of men and they had coffee and smoked a water pipe and talked about travel, local politics and their families.They had a really nice time and were there for about two hours!We went out for a nice dinner that night, then the following day we were on the bus again travelling north to Aleppo.
On arrival we made our way to the hotel which turned out to be another freezing room, we've come to the conclusion that most of these budget - midrange hotels aren't used to tourists in the winter months because their rooms are freezing!!They have high ceilings and marble floors and the temperatures are really cold, it is so difficult to heat up these rooms!So for our first night in Aleppo we practically slept fully clothed it was so cold, in the morning we moved to a different hotel that actually had heating!After moving our bags we went for a wander through the souqs to the citadel which sits on top of a hill and has amazing views, as we went in a guy who looked like the manager invited us in to his office (there weren't many western tourists there) and offered us some lollies and asked all about where we came from then sent us on our way with brochures.
Inside the citadel it was mainly all ruins but it was still quite amazing, the view over Aleppo was incredible with minarets from the mosques rising above the city in all directions, it was quite amazing when the call to prayer rang out from all the different mosques while we were sitting at the top of the citadel, the noise was really incredible!
As we were walking through the souqs Greg saw these men eating falafel wraps with chilli so he ordered one and was given some kind of milky-yoghurty drink to cool it down.We also brought a water pipe as a souvenir, it looks really nice and will be more of an ornament than anything else, I certainly won't be encouraging Greg to smoke it!!We had a nice meal out that night and Greg had another water-pipe, he's quite taken with it now and I even tried it once!Our room for that night was much warmer than the night before but as usual had two single beds, most rooms we stay in have that kind of set up and we have to request a double bed in places that have it as an option.We brought some movies to watch in the evenings based on current events and religion in the middle east (since we're in the region), half of them are movies that are half in English and half in Arabic and don't have subtitles so we couldn't watch them, we tried the religious (Hollywood) movie but that ended in a fight before we even reached the intermission when Greg got annoyed at me asking too many stupid questions, but I do think that asking how the polar bears and penguins survived on Noah's Ark for seven months and seventeen days being fed goats milk in a cage full of hay, is a valid question…
On our second night in Aleppo Greg got sick with a fever, we think it was from the freezing room we had the first night, so we decided to get on a bus the following morning direct to Damascus and check back in at the comfortable hotel we stayed at the first time we arrived in the city and let Greg recover, we got here two days ago and Greg is pretty much back to normal now after a lot of rest.As for me, I woke up this morning with some kind of bug which has forced me to stay in bed today and hasn't allowed me to stray too far from the bathroom all day, so we're going to stay here an extra night while I get back to normal!At least we've been able to catch up on emails while we've been here as we couldn't connect to the internet in any of the other towns.We found out that there are quite a few websites that are blocked, about 110, by the Syrian government including youtube and facebook, and of course opposition or minority group websites which is quite shocking.Apparently if people complain that they can't access certain websites the government just blames that person's personal computer!!
Yesterday we posted the water pipe home, which took an hour down at the post office, but at least we don't have to carry it anymore.Tomorrow we're going to stay in Damascus another night just to make sure we're both back to full health before we attempt the 7 hour bus journey to Amman in Jordan where hopefully we'll have some warmer weather! I hope everyone is having a good lead up to christmas, you wouldn't even know its that time of year here! Take care xx
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