Wadi Rum

It's taking me more time than I hoped to get my head back into climbing. I don't feel strong and my head just isn't quite right for multi-pitch climbing on somewhat crumbly sandstone....but I'm coming around and we've climbed some cool lines.

We're hanging out in a town called Wadi Rum. It's southern Jordan desert. The scenery reminds me of Zion National Park, but not as red and the walls aren't as high. The size of Wadi Rum dwarfs Zion. And there is sand. Sand everywhere. Especially in my tent and in my ears. The village is really small. Maybe 1,000 people living there. They're Bedouin and have been very nice though we don't interact with them too much because we climb all day.

The Bedouin are muslim and the men dress similarly to the Pakistani men except that their dresses are more slender. They wear cotton pants under their cotton dresses, but the dresses go to their ankles. I think the slender dresses make them appear more sophisticated than the sloppy baggy dresses worn by the Pakistani's...but appearances can be deceiving.....it's almost like they are all 12 year old boys who were just given a truck and a license to drive. They can't flip a u-turn without peeling out and they can't start the car in the sand without spinning a donut immediately after. Regularly in the evenings we hear gun shots go off. I'm pretty sure they do it strictly for the echo. But I will admit, the echo off the walls is fantastic. The women all wear burkah's and only show their eyes. But the women don't walk around town too often, so we don't see them that much.



After one day of climbing it rained like crazy. One kid told us it was the 110 year storm....but I don't think they categorize them as 110 year storms...but it was a lot of storm. We had to move our tents at about 11 pm. We were camped in this river, before it was a river.






We camp out at a place called the 'Rest House'. I can't figure out what's going on there. There's a handful of climber's camped there, and some tourists come in and out for 2 or 3 days at a time, but there are tons of Jordanian men there, all the time. Some of them work there but most of them seem to just hang out....and not lift the seat before they urinate. It drives me crazy....

For dinner we usually eat at 'Ali's Place'. Boiled chicken, on bones, with rice. It's getting really old....and Ali's story of having a Japanase girlfriend/ex-wife is awfully contradictory....



Jacob jumping the 'Great Siq'.


Wadi Rum Village in the background.




The climbing is similar to Red Rock outside Las Vegas. Though the rock here isn't quite as good. But the climbing is definitely fun. And we've never shared a route with anybody. There are only 8 climbers there right now, which is the most it's been in the 2 weeks I've been there.


Morning sunlight.


Sum coming up.


The mosque blares the call for prayer something like 6 times daily. I love it. I've been in Muslim countries for a while now and I never get tired of the call to prayer. The first one is early, like 5 or 6 am. During the day we'll be way up in the mountains and we can still hear it, echoing off the walls. It's one of my favorite things about muslim countries.

2 Days in Syria

When I start cycling again, it'll be mace, eggs, my feet and guns. Thank you for the ethical help.

Riding buses with a bicycle is a bitch. I got in a huge fight with the bus driver in Damascus. The people who sold me the ticket said the bicycle was no problem, but the driver said it was big problem, so I told him it was his big problem, and it turned out to be all my problem. The bus was completely full and the luggage compartment was too. I yelled and swore and the other passengers all had my back, but that driver wasn't going to budge, and his boss, the manager, was on a vacation in America, of all places. It really did sting my pride as the bus pulled away without me in it, and to top it off, when I walked back to my bike I had a flat tire...

There was a bus leaving the next morning which would probably not be full and would probably not be a problem. Jacob, my climbing partner, was already in Jordan waiting for me, and it would take me 3 or 4 days to ride to him, so the bus the next morning was my best option.

The kid who worked the counter at the bus company let me store my bike in his office for the evening (so I didn't have to ride it the 8 km back into Damascus). And since he was letting me keep my bike there, I decided to hang out with him for awhile, hoping that if we became friends, then any preconcieved plan of stealing my stuff would fade.

We had a very interesting conversation. Khalil is a 24 year old Palestinian born and raised in Damascus. His parents were also born and raised in Damascus and His grandparents were born and raised in Palestine. He never uses the term Israel, except for when he references Israeli's or the Israeli army or Israeli government. The land/country is always called 'Palestine'. Khalil has the key to his grandfathers house in Tel Aviv, which he has heard has since been demolished and turned into a police station. It makes him angry that he can't go to his home. Although he has never been to Palestine, he still considers it home. He loves Damascus and loves Syria, he considers himself Syrian and even if he could someday move to Palestine, he would probably stay in Syria. It's more the point for him. The point that Palestinians lived in Palestine for years and they considered it their land, and now I, an American, can go see it, but he never will. He's seen pictures on google earth and wishes that he could just at least go and see, but he can't.

He's in love with his cousin (we talked for a long time...I really liked the guy). His father's sister's daughter. She was raised and currently lives in Jordan. But while they were engaged she lived in Syria. When I told him that in America that kind of stuff is illegal, he didn't really get it. When I tried explaining that I couldn't marry my sister, for example, he scoffed at me "of course you can't marry your sister, that's crazy...".

They are, however, no longer engaged. She was too controlling. "I would spend at least an hour or two with her everyday, and then when I go to my friends house she calls and demands I come back to see her...I can't live with that...". He's never kissed her. He's held her hand, but that's about it. Being a virgin before marriage is huge over here. He told me that if he married a girl and later found out she wasn't a virgin, then he would kill her. (I didn't really believe him on this one....not that he was intentionally lying to me, I just got the feeling he was trying to really show me how important it was that she was a virgin...).

He didn't steal my bike. And in fact, I accidentally left my lock in his office and he's going to hold onto it for me and give it to me on my way back through Syria after climbing.

Khalil - I hope you and your cousin can work it out...(but really, she'll nag forever....).

I'm now in Jordan. And Wadi Rum is cool....

Syria

I'm in Damascus. One of the oldest cities in the world. And the creepy Syrian internet worker guy is skyping with some english girl (who I'm guessing he me while she was here on vacation) and he's begging her to turn on the video so he 'can see your beautiful face, please Sophie, I want to see your pretty face, come on, please?" On and on and on. It's real creepy.

I'm taking buses at the moment. I'll be in Jordan tomorrow meeting up with a friend, Jacob, who I met while climbing last year in Thailand. We're heading down to Wadi Rum in Southern Jordan to climb for about a month. I'm hoping for good weather and strong forearms.

Oh, here's an ethical question: I've heard from multiple cyclists that the Bedouin kids on the side of the road in Jordan throw rocks at cyclists....when they do this to me, can I mace them? I have a can of mace. I bought it in Istanbul. Ben thought I was buying it for the big dogs in Turkey, and thought I was kidding when I said I was planning on using it on small children. Which made me think about thinking twice about macing them. I mean, I'm going to mace them while I ride away, so it won't be an up close shot, and I'll hopefully be riding fast because I'm hoping for tailwinds, so really they'll just get a wiff of the mace. I'm just trying to teach them a lesson...if someone can give me a better way to teach them a lesson besides mace, I'm open, but keep in mind I've already purchased the mace, so the cost of your idea should be less than or equal to the cost of my idea. Oh, and I'm not looking for a suggestion such as giving them candy. It turns them into beggars, and nobody likes beggars....

Ruins

This is Ephesus. As in the "Ephesians".


The library in Ephesus.


Toilets in Ephesus (note they didn't have dividing walls, however, they had running water...which makes them incredibly more civilized than current Chinese toilets....).






We also went to Pamukkale (Cotton Castle) and saw the ruins of Heirapolis and the travertines.





Travertines.

The water is from hot springs and they have all sorts of small canals diverting the calcium rich water over the hillside to keep everything white and pretty. The was only warm by the time it ran over the side.





Back in Istanbul on the Bosporous.


The Bosporous.

And Ben is now in an airplane hoping like crazy that he doesn't get stuck in a London because of storms....Thanks for coming Ben.

Ben

My brother Ben came to town. He was supposed to be here in October when the weather was beautiful....but a drunk driver in Georgia changed our plans.


Haiga Sophia. You put your thumb in the whole and twist and if it comes out wet, then you get your wish or something. Our thumbs didn't come out wet, which really is probably better...(I got a fisheye lens for my camera...and it's still taking me some time to figure out...).

Blue Mosque.


Haiga Sophia.


Basillica Cistern. Huge, ancient, underground water storage downtown Istanbul.


Ben.


We took a night bus to Cappadoccia. The weather ended up working out for us really well. We got a lot of wind, headwinds of course, but no rain and it was only really really cold in the mornings.


The people here carved houses and churches and castles and food storage facilities into the rock formations.









Derinkuyu, underground city. The Phrygians started digging them out in the 8th century BC. It was a full on underground city with schools, houses, animal stables, churches, food storage, wine making rooms and a huge 60 meter ventilation shaft for air. Each house in the area had a passage leading to other passages which connected everyone. They used food storage year round, but a lot of it was built so that when invaders came through they could hide. This underground city had 7 floors. Only 10% has been excavated, and that 10% was huge.




Soğanlı. Another cave city in Cappadoccia.


A guest house we stayed at that was carved out of a rock.







Our one and only campsite. Camping is hard in Turkey in the winter. Everything is cultivated and it's hard to find empty land. It gets dark at 5 pm which makes for long nights. And it's cold. This night however wasn't bad. Oh, and my crap REI Tent (not the tent I normally use, but the one Ben brought for the two of us) had a really busted pole...I don't think the tent could have taken a second night.




Ghost town in the mountains. Tons and tons of shops and houses, but nobody around. We found out later that it's a summer getaway for people living in Adana.