It just seems to speed up the further South we get. Syria was fast, Jordan was even quicker! We did indeed stop at the dead sea on the way to Wadi Musa (Moses Springs). Was so cool to be able to sit in the water with no effort what so ever. I normally float at about chin height, in the dead sea I was floating with half my chest out the water. It was quite difficult to keep your legs down and remain upright! Definitely an experience.

We arrived in Wadi Musa fairly late, went and checked out the sight where apparently Moses struck the rock and water sprang forth. It's housed in a little shelter, was a little exciting uintil I found out there's apparently 5 or 6 sites where he's allegedly done this. You never know, maybe he was really thirsty...?

So the next day was what I'd been waiting for the entire trip. The journey into Petra. We had a short horse ride to get to the gate and then we entered the Siq (canyon basically). Really amazing to see the roman paving stones still there. After about 600m of twisting and turning down this canyon, you turn a corner and there it is. The treasury. The great big temple that's carved out of one piece of sold rock. Breathtaking. Took just a couple of photos of that... (sorry haven't worked out how to put photos on this, haven't really had the time to play).

The rest of Petra is pretty spectacular as well. It's an entire city basically carved out of the face of the canyon. Took a stroll (well, climb) up to the monastery - worth the view from the top and then made my way back down to the treasury. On the way bumped into a semi celebrity. Apparently there was a NZ woman who feel in love with a bedouin dude back in 1978. She married him and moved into the cave with him. She wrote a book about it called something like 'I married a Bedouin' (naturally). Anyway, on the way out I stopped with one of the guys to buy a souvenir and met her son. Quite freaky to hear him speaking arabic then all of a sudden break out a full on kiwi accent. Apparently he studied at Nelson Boys. All good!

So from Petra we had a fairly chilled out drive to Wadi Rum. A wicked Jeep safari through the desert followed by free camping in the desert that night. And that was our last night in Jordan. Very much a whirlwind tour. The next day was the fun (?) border crossing. We started at 7am with breakfast at 8, got on the ferry at about 10:30 / 11am and thats where we sat for the next 4 hours, before the ferry finally set sail. It was the slow ferry too so we took about 4 hours to get to Egypt, managed to get off the ferry by 6pm but getting through customs took us till 9pm! Craziness. So we arrived finally in Dahab at 10:30 that night. feeling very much grimy and greasy. But we're having three nights here, so all good!

Yesterday I managed to complete my advanced diving certificate, with the navigation dive and a night dive. Yay! So today I finally dived the blue hole and the canyon. What Dahab is famous for. Just amazing. One more night for us here before we head into the desert once again to climb Mt Sinai. I've done this before, but we're doing it a little differently this time. Starting the climb at 8pm, we're camping up on the top to be sure to see the sunrise. It will be interesting, especially if the toilets are as I remember. I definitely need the practice with the climbing though, as I start my Mt Kili climb on Sunday...Yikes!

I'm not sure when I'll be able to get to the internet again, maybe after Mt Kili. So wish me luck, I'm going to need it after the last three weeks of inactivity.

Hope everyone's well.
Still travelling. Lx

Well, following close on the heels of the whistle stop tour of Turkey, came the even faster tour of Syria!
We arrived in Aleppo after 4 hours at the border crossing in stupid heat. Only to find the hotel (and the whole city) was experiencing intermittant power cuts due to the heat and the over use of air conditioners. Having a shower then jumping out and immediately starting to sweat is not much fun.

Had a walking tour of the city the next day, then enjoyed a candle light dinner (not intentional - restaurant had no power...god knows where they cooked the food!) before getting an early night for the drive to Crac de Chevalier.
Here we had a look around the castle which has been there since 1061 (or something like that) was an outpost for the crusaders and even Richard the Lion Heart has stayed there. Rather cool! Unfortunately the accommodation wasn't so great, somehow the hotel had managed to bump our booking, so we all slept on the roof of the hotel. Again, unfortunately, that was of course the only night it decided to rain! So we were up at 4:30 and in the bus heading to Palmyra. Mammoth drive there, awesome to see though. Absolutely huge ruined city from the 1st Century, cool to see. It was only a quick stop though, cos then we drove on to Damascus. Where I am now. We're staying in a camp site in the middle of an industrial area... although surprisingly you wouldn't know it. They've fenced it off and there's really nice lush green grass. Cos it was so nice we all decided to camp without tents - a bit silly for me esp when there's mossies around. Woke up this morning with two nice big bites on my face! Looking good!

So had a chilled out day today in town - not a huge amount to see though, as it's Friday and apparently Friday is the Muslim holy day - so nothing was open!

Have to get up early tomorrow (5am in the truck) for another mammoth drive to get to Wadi Musa in Jordan. Apparently we do stop to swim in the Dead Sea...which will def be a highlight!

So it's been very interesting to see all the ruins, but not much else to do... I'm feeling a little blah from no exercise and sitting in a truck for 14 hours every second day isn't exactly the most fun. But I'm seeing some amazing places and have had some fun experiences. Try push starting a massive old army truck...

Not sure when I'll be able to get to the internet again - maybe Egypt? Anyway, I'll keep updating this. Hope everyone's all good. Lx