Ephesus

Simon is back. After a short break in Singapore, he met the 6 of us in Sirince the idyllic town where we are staying. One of the pictures shows the town's rooftops as we view them from our hotel. Sirince is nearby Ephesus.

Ephesus is now ancient city ruins, but they are preserved well enough to give a good idea of how spectacular it must have been. The amphitheatre is amazing, still preserving its great acoustics, which means that tourist groups take turns to sing on the stage: kids, religious groups, etc.

Mercedes

PS: Bart hasn't been kidnapped yet.

PS2: Arlene, since you are our newest reader, we added a few pics of Erick just for you :)

PS3: There's actually a picture of the scooter drivers that was taken in Cappadocia, but after its corresponding blog posting. Since it looked funny we included it here.

Cappadocia

We are staying at the Kelebek Pension, where the rooms are carved into the rocks, just like the locals have done since ancient times. We visited the rock chapels and monsateries, hiked through valleys, and -the most amazing- flew on a balloon. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Mercedes

PS: Message to Bart's family: He has not been kidnapped yet

Mercedes

Istanbul

If I ever live in Istanbul, I think I'll be ok, no chance of getting bored. This city is amazingly full of energy. A perfect respite from our 3rd world travels because it just feels like Western Europe.

I went out on Friday night with my local friend Ertugrul, who was nice enough to show me around Beyoglu and Istiklal street, the area where the city never sleeps. After dinner, we joined his friends for drinks, including "raki", the anise-based local favorite. This drink tasted much better than I expected, so I suffered the consequences on Saturday morning. Everyone was able to speak English, so I managed to mingle with the young and cool Istanbulians (sp?). Ahhh.... Always refreshing to stay out late.

Since I'm joining my NYC friends throughout Turkey, I'm staying at a hotel that is much better than what Simon and I are used to. Sebnem hotel is very cool, especially its rooftop overlooking the Bosphorus. Sultanahmed has something in common with Stone Town in Zanzibar: hotels have rooftops with sea views, so every morning we join the pilgrimage upstairs to get breakfrast. From our own rooftop we can see tourists in other hotels doing just the same. The morning sun and the views are totally worth it.

The NYC crowd is comprised of Bart, Eddie, Erick, Ines and Juan, so 3 Argentineans and 3 Americans. And we visited the touristic highlights: Aya Sofia, Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, Grand Bazaar, Spice Market, Taskim Square, Ortakoy, and Galata Tower. We even went to a hamam: boys and girls were separated in two different rooms completely covered in ancient marble. These turkish baths have been around for hundreds of years. There were several packages offered. Ines and chose one that included a massage, and since we had no clue of what it entailed, we just waited for directions from the hamam ladies that spoke very limited English. The entire experience lasted about an hour, I don't necessarily feel more relaxed, but hey, they kept advertising that it is one of the 1000 places in the world that one must see before dying.

We have every meal: lunch, coffee, and dinner, at a venue recommended by at least the "Style City" guide book, and most of the times, friends of friends that we have decided provide reliable culinary advise. There's no casual: "oh, this restaurant on the corner looks cute, let's eat there". No, every meal is carefully choreographed ahead of time. The result: all meals have been outstanding. Ah, travelling in style.
Mercedes

Red Sea - Mt Sinai

Mt Sinai is a mountain in a range in the Sinai desert, about two hours drive north of Dahab. It is not the biggest mountain in the area, but it has the biggest reputation - it is where Moses is reputed to have received the Ten Commandments. It is a site of importance for both Christian and Muslim faiths and many people make the short "pilgrimage" to the summit. In fact, a thoughtful monk has enhanced the religious side of the experience by carving almost 4,000 steps into the rock which pilgrims can use as a penitential alternative to the gentler camel trail to the top.

We decided to do the climb to the summit - though not via the steps - and, like most people, wanted to be there to catch the sunrise. This meant setting out by van from Dahab around 11 pm. The ride was uneventful except for the rainstorm we encountered. Rain and lightning was not something we had anticipated and it was quite a surprise to see rain pounding on the windscreen in the middle of the desert. It didn't last for long. We reached the foot of the mountain a little after 1 am and, with a local Bedouin guide, began the trek up the mountain. It was an easy trail, but congested with many other people doing the same thing as well as camels and camel drivers offering their "taxi" service. The stars illuminated the trail as we ascended and there was a long line of flickering lights behind and in front of us from the flashlights of other trekkers. The Bedouins have strategically placed shops and resting places at intervals along the trail, so we were never far from refreshments if we had needed them.

We reached the summit around 4 am. You can't miss the summit - in a mark of ecumenism, there is both a small Christian Orthodox church and a small mosque perched side-by-side there. Still two hours to sunrise. After getting warm on the ascent, we quickly got cold in the winds which buffeted the peak. Again, there were thoughtful Bedouins all around offering blankets and hot drinks! We were able to sleep for an hour or so and then the sky began to lighten. We watched as various groups of pilgrims prayed and sang religious songs. Slowly the orange globe of the sun appeared over the clouds. It was a strangely eerie sight. The sun cast an almost surreal glow over the surrounding mountains which were already partly obscured by low-hanging misty cloud.

After spending some time enjoying the atmosphere, we joined the queue of people descending. It was slow progress. We could have taken the steps down but chose the camel trail again to save our knees. We were passed by a few camels carrying tourists - and, seeing their anatomical pain, vowed never to ride on a camel downhill.

We arrived back at the foot of the mountain. St Catherine's monastery, a religious edifice with a very long lineage, is located there and we stopped by to visit. It continues to serve as an Orthodox monastery, just as it has done for millennia. And it houses a large collection of religious icons and manuscripts. The manuscripts in particular were impressive. Beautifully preserved on paper or parchment and in all sorts of exotic languages. The sense of history here was overwhelming.

We returned to Dahab, where we spent another day relaxing and windsurfing (not so relaxing!) before taking a bus to Cairo and boarding a flight for Istanbul. And so ended our travels on the African continent.

Simon

Alexandria - Red Sea

On our last day in Alexandria we took a tram to the western corner of the bay and walked out to Fort Quaitly, a huge white sandstone fortification at the mouth of the bay. The fort is reputedly on the site of the massive Pharos lighthouse, which was one of the seven ancient wonders of the world - although details of it are remarkably scarce. The fortification on the Pharos site was built in the 16th century and commands great views out to sea and back along Alexandria’s seaboard. Later we visited Alexandria’s museum, housed in an elegant restored villa with three floors dedicated to the different phases of Alexandria’s history, the ancient Egyptian period, the Greco-Roman period and the Islamic period. It seems that the significance of the city has ebbed and flowed.

We left Alexandria on an overnight bus bound for the Red Sea city of Sharm el Sheikh. Except for a connection in Cairo in the small hours, we managed to get some sleep and, when we awoke we were almost at our destination. We made a quick change for another bus to Dahab and enjoyed the final hour of our journey through the hot, arid Sinai desert. Difficult to believe that nations fight over territory as unwelcoming as this.

Dahab is a resort town on the Red Sea which is dedicated mainly to diving and marine windsports (since it is mostly windy!). We have spent several days here and sampled most of the offerings. We tried another introductory dive. Very different from our previous dive in Mozambique - this time we had much less freedom to control our equipment, because the instructor was working most of it for us. But that gave us more opportunity to enjoy the reef and colorful marine life which has made Dahab so popular with divers. And divers are everywhere here. We thought about doing a full dive course but that seemed like a serious time commitment. Instead, we opted to try other activities.

We spent another afternoon learning the basics of windsurfing. This was a lot of fun and we were enthusiastic to try more of it. It seems quite technical so, of course, one of us excelled at it while the other spent a significant amount of time off the board in the water.

We also took a day to cycle to a well-known snorkeling location called the Blue Hole. It was a relatively easy ride, even though part of it was off sealed roads in the desert. And although it was very hot, there was a cooling wind and the atmosphere was very dry, so we barely worked up a sweat. Not what we expected. The water was cold. In fact, we could only snorkel for a short time before we were getting cold and emerged shivering, looking for a hot drink. Being cold in the desert was certainly counter-intuitive. The snorkeling was enjoyable. The so-called Blue Hole is a massive hole in the coral reef which goes down 120 meters. It is an incredible blue color, almost fluorescent. We were content to snorkel on the surface and explore the edge of the reef, where the colorful fish were located. But others were trying to see how far down the hole they could go. It was a busy place.

Now we are in training for our next activity, a night climb up Mt Sinai to see the sunrise. The training involves relaxing and doing as little as possible since there will be no sleep tonight.

Simon