Finally Some Photos

Here is one of our wild campsites in Morocco. Looks quite nice in the photo, but the ground was hard as iron and there were shed loads of burrs and spikes! Plus we had a bit of interest from a load of kids living in a nearby slum.

Just outside Cairo at Giza, checking out the pyramids on some very over-priced camels. We got ripped off so badly! They cost us over 30 quid for just a couple of hours. We must have been seriously dehydrated to get stung for so much!

Sphynx. Pretty standard. A couple of American girls hit on us at the Sphynx, wanting to follow us round all day. No joke! In a move Dan Maranhao would be proud of, we said we already had a couple of camels with us.

Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres are not puncture-proof or flatless as they claim! Here a nail from some Jordanian road went right through the reinforcing and out the other side. Dead flat. A quick road-side repair and we were off in 15 minutes. Duncan got some more sweat out when reinflating in the 40 degree heat!

Here is a typical view of some desert cycling. Road goes into the distance, but what the photo doesn´t show is the heat from the headwind, which felt like a hundred hairdriers blowing over you. We both got very dehydrated that day, with thick slime lining our mouths and throats, and lips cracking.

Here is Geoff Lord, AKA "The Hero", who sorted us out with accommodation, food, and advice throughout our 5 day stint in North Cyprus. Great lad, and some stories probably aren´t best shared here!

A good recovery meal! A keg of lager, Turkey´s finest Efes no less, five frozen breaded cods each, and 500 grams of pasta. Lovely. Hopefully that fish went to our legs and heart, and that booze straight to our brains!

The weather girl on a channel called Star in Greece is amazing. She does some sort of dance while doing the weather, has a great uniform, and clearly has an erotic background. Perfect. I didn´t catch whether it was going to rain or not.

The Beginning of the End

We've had a few comments about the amount of blue on the map. Let me say, yes, we are ashamed! However, now we are on the return leg, I can guarantee that there will not be any more, unless the powered vehicle in question is an ambulance!

Morocco is a very dirty place, particularly when you cannot wash and sleep rough for 3 nights in a row. We are covered in filth, but because we aren't anywhere near a tourist, amongst the rural lot we fit in quite well! We've just had 250kms of just flat, straight road surrounded by fields, it's been the most boring cycling yet.

Duncan has managed to pop his inflatable matress, and in Cairo caught a fairly robust fom of 'The Pharoah's Revenge', so he has been ejecting matter from all orifices and sweating profusely. In fact, on the plane to Morocco 4 days ago he had 4 of the 7 symptoms you should report to limit the spread of swine flu. Like a true hero, this hasn't stopped him doing 100+ kilometers each day! We just managed to get hold of some Gaviscon, woefully inadequate for the severity of his symptoms but hopefully that'll settle his bowels.

We are now out of spare inner tubes, so if we get another puncture before Spain, we're in trouble.

Keep checking the site because we have some excellent photos to upload when we get the chance!

Islamic Weddings and Boat Cruises

We've done all the usual Cairo/Egypt stuff. Pyramids, museums, statues, camels etc... You've probably already done all that yourself so I'll cut to the more interesting stuff!

We took a riverboat on the Nile the other day, to see some belly-dancing and have a good meal in the evening. Cost us about 12 quid each, buffet and entertainment included. When we arrived, the place immediately didn't look like our kind of place. A load of chinese tourists and us, it was almost empty! But, turns out there was a huge Islamic wedding on the boat! Now, I've had the pleasure of attending a few weddings, and they're good fun, but mixing with all your family members can be pretty taxing. Islamic weddings are seriously lacking in Vitamin Booze, and those long rants by the boring uncle/stepmother/whatever are clearly even worse, and long-standing familial grievances even harder to bear! People looked miserable.

To make matters worse, in this culture public displays of affection are a real no-no. There is a tale going around of wife kissing her husband on the cheek as she left the car, when another woman driving past spat on her. This means the bride and groom pretty much can have a very sedate dance but nothing more, mostly they ignored each other. Looked to me like the worst possible wedding and a very tedious evening.

Then an Egyptian singer came to the floor as entertainment. He tried really hard to whip up the crowd, to no avail. There was one Chinese guy who had drunk a bottle of beer. He was absolutely smashed and started dancing on stage. No one followed him. You know that cringing feeling you get while watching The Office for the first time? It was like that.

The rest of the entertainment was ok, with a Japanese guy taking some seriously zoomed-in videos of the belly-dancers enormous breasts. Plural, he had a video camera, and a mobile for some on-the-move personal administration (he later went on stage, went for the grope, when the dancer prompty left). Another dancer did some really cool spinning stuff, but otherwise a it was a waste of money. Food was the same as you could get for maybe 2 or 3 quid in town.

Overall 3/5.

PS. Everyone in Cairo who talks to foreigners is either trying to rip them off directly, or trying to get business for friends or family members. Bunch of crooks, you have been warned!!

Middle East Adventures

So much has happened since the last blog post, I can't describe it all so they'll just have to be memories and stories to tell.

Lebanon, Syria and Jordan have been amazing places to visit. It is sort of summer here (although I don't think they get anything that counts as winter), so there isn't many tourists around and it's been very, well, authentic let's say.

It's been quite warm and we've had without a doubt our hardest cycling yet. We have been drinking about 9 litres a day each, and are constantly thirsty. Had some close calls on the roads where we are in the middle of a desert and there is no way of getting more water.

Out of Beirut there was a short, 30km long, 1500m climb which at 39 centigrade caused some slight perspiration! 2 hrs later we'd nailed it though and got a few good photos of the desert terrain. Other highlights:

1. Bobbing like corks in the Dead Sea, which is wonderful for our health apparently
2. Talking to very rural arabs for directions out of a Palestinian refugee camp
3. Getting a full meal in for two, for 3 quid
4. Having a Syrian Bath in the oldest Hammam in the city/world
5. Getting free tea from some crazy old guy who once taught arabic in Cambridge
6. Listening to banter from people we've hitched lifts off about women drivers
7. Being marched straight to the male dining room in a restaurant and watching the women eat outside!
8. Seeing an American failing to get a Syrian visa, and who tried to rectify the situation after 5hrs waiting by telling them she'd come back and teach them English. We just turned up and got a visa in 10 minutes.

Very eventful few days and well worth the added expense, trouble and considerable calories! Going to Petra tomorrow, then flying to Cairo.

Durex, Blast Damage, and Tanks

We arrived at Beirut airport at 11pm as expected. The place was pretty empty but they were obviously pretty paranoid about bombs because there was barely any seating and quite a few troops wandering around.

We went outside and slept rough behind a concrete pillar. Got about 30 minutes kip before a soldier woke us up by yelling. He didn't speak any English but it was clear he wanted us to move! We followed him back into the airport waiting room and got our heads down behind a bench. People were giving us some pretty funny looks!


Despite the annoying music and constant announcements regarding flights we got another couple of hours sleep before heading into Beirut centre at 8am.

Now, we didn't have any maps and our arabic is pretty ropey at best, but after a good two hours cruising around some of the rougher parts of Beirut trying to find a hotel, and doing some excellent tank spotting, the tiredness took us, and we stopped for a coffee at Cafe Deek. Very local place full of Lebanese guys, perfect.


We sat down with a couple of espressos to wake us up, and asked about cheap hotels. I was placed next to a guy who 'speaks good english', and this guy was quite friendly but clearly a total nut-job! "We are shackled by the people, the trees around us" etc.. with crazy eyes boring into my head. I just nodded and agreed with everything he said! Phew, interesting first few hours.

We found a hotel, got 3 hrs kip, then headed out for a meal. En route, a lady spoke to us asking us if we fancied auditioning for a Durex commercial. At first I thought this was an obvious scam for a mugging, but they were both arty, well-dressed, French types, and they detailed what we'd be doing so we went for it! Pretty fun actually, not as hands on as we were after, but lots of photos, profile shots, 'sexy' shots with our legs around a chair, that sort of thing. Then the acting part!!! Hilarious, we had to imagine we were reading a new and large bill, get frustrated or something, then our wife would come through the door and start stripping. We'd put the bill down, wink at the camera, and go off for some sex.

I got a good look at the ladies that had already auditioned on the director's laptop, they were stunners!! We acted our parts as well as we could, but, I'll be frank, I'm fairly confident we were shit.

Had a meal at a cafe with some real character, dead cheap and good. We went back and tried to sleep, failing beacuse of the ridiculous heat, high humidity, and the 7,000 mosquitoes eating our faces.

Today we looked at the many damaged buildings around Beirut, fascinating place, it must have been totally destroyed by the civil war. Now it's half brand-new, half buildings destroyed by gunfire of all calibres. In the photo below, the Holiday Inn in the background was a favourite spot for snipers. The whole building is peppered with small arms fire, and there are some very obvious spots where RPG's have smashed in some poor fellow and his room!

Nicosean Kisses, Hitching, and Hezbollah

Cyprus has been great fun. We started off travelling across the island to try and get a ferry to Port Said in Egypt. Turns out thats a no-go, only cruises operate and they are expensive! You have to buy a cabin. Over a couple of beers we decided instead to check out ferries to Beirut.

The journey from North to South is about 120km so it took a while. In Nicosea, the divided capital that seperates the Turkish North from the Greek South, there were a couple of fairly hot students wandering around in nice tight white Erasmus t-shirts. We had a bit of an oogle at their arses then walked past. They pounced on us as we passed them

'Heyyyy.... can we get a photo with you! It's an erasmus thing, we need to get photos with as many strangers as possible!'

We agreed of course. They wanted to do it pecking our cheeks. As they were taking the photo of Duncan with the Spanish chick, Duncan dived in for the pull, maneuvering for the mouth-to-mouth dock. Totally shot down! Pretty funny though. My bird was a bit chubbier but she didn't think I was a creep!

Wednesdays are a bit slack here in Cyprus, all the Kombuses (cheap, communal taxis) and buses stopped going between towns at about 7pm. We got back a bit late and the buses had stopped. We talked to the world's slowest ticket collector about our options (he spoke Turkish, Arabic, and Kurd. We speak English, Spanish and French, our Kurdish is a bit weak, so you can imagine how it went), and ended up on some random bus. He was blabbering something about a Oto-Stop and then dumped us at a roundabout 20km from Kyrenia. Needless to say we ended up hitching.

After 10 minutes we got a lift with a couple of Turkish Uni students, 22 and 24 yrs old. As soon as we got in, they handed us a cold beer! Legends. The driver was also taking some serious swigs too so we followed suit. Very friendly lads though.

The next stage involves a flight to Beirut on Sunday. A monumental tactical error, turns out that is election day for one of the most closely-contended in Lebanese history. If Hezbollah get some more power it could seriously kick off there, and half the population absolutely hates the other half after their 15yr civil war. And they are all armed to the teeth. Also, all the hotels are full with returning citizens to vote.

We spoke to Geoff Lord's brother-in-law, who lived in Beirut for a long time, and he thinks our timing is sub-optimal. However, on Monday, our first full day, it should have cleared up a bit, and as long as we avoid the town square we should be ok.

Here is a room in the Holiday Inn, it has a great view which is why it is a well-known sniper hang-out. Hopefully we should get a good price!

Here are some of Hezbollah's public relations team in Tripoli a little north of Beirut. They'll be out in force come Monday with a few Syrian and Iranian assault rifles. Shit. Luckily Duncan has a very sturdy pair of flipflops as his only pair of shoes so he can run really fast.

Cyprus

We've managed to make it across to Cyprus, and are currently reviewing options for the next leg. Most likely is a trip to Beirut in Lebanon and work around from there.

Geoff Lord (Dan Lord's dad) has sorted us out with a couple of awesome rooms, we each have a double bed and there is a full kitchen in his plush apartment in Kyrenia! Looking forward to cooking up some massive meals and gaining weight.

Cyprus is pretty hot. At the moment it is 37 degrees and we are dead keen for some midday cycling up the ridge to the South! Good training for the coming weeks. We have become quite adept at sweating, Geoff met us at the port and we cycled after his car to his apartment. We were absolutely beasted by him up the hills. We felt fine doing it but when we stopped in still air the sweat started streaming off us at a pretty disgusting rate. We need that baking hot wind to evaporate that stuff off us! No wonder we've had some fairly significant salt and urea crusting on our clothes and helmet. Some of those crystals are so large hippies would think they were healing.

All is well apart from some sweat rashes and minor burn of the noggin. I too have had quite a short trim in the name of hygiene (combined with an incredible Turkish shave), so the sun is annihilating my scalp. The yeasts are dying though so that is fine.