The Caves of Cappadoccia

We have been living like troglodytes in a cave hotel and today (Monday) has been spent on the tour exploring the subterranean heritage of the Cappadoccian region. The early Christians fled persecution in underground cities and we explored part of the maze of underground tunnels and rooms in one of these cities. We ate lunch in an underground restaurant and visited an array chapels built into the hillside at the Gorrem Open Air Museum. Above ground it was taking in spectacular vistas of the unique fairy chimney rock formations. The tour also managed to fit in inspections local handcraft production: pottery, carpets and jewellery.

Istanbul and Constantinople

We arrived in Istanbul on Thursday and settled into our hotel in the Sultanahmet area in the old city. This is the area that was once Constantinople. We are in walking distance of many of the attractions of the city and there seem to be more tourists than Turks on the streets.

On Friday we were awed by the Sultanahmet Mosque better known as the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia (once the largest church in Christendom, later a mosque and now a museum) and the Topkapi Palace. At the palace we saw some of the treasures of the Ottoman Empire including jewellery, furniture and clothing studded with emeralds, rubies and diamonds some as big as golf balls; holy relics: the staff of Moses, the head and arm bone of John the Baptist, and the footprint, whiskers and other items of the prophet Mohamed. We even toured the Harem; Adrian was quite disappointed that there were no scantily clad girls in Jeanie pants, not even a eunuch

Saturday it was the Basilica Cistern, an underground water storage built by the Romans, followed by the Grand Bazaar (the first undercover shopping mall) and then a couple more mosques. In the evening it was off to see the Whirling Dervishes.

Today (Sunday) we have flown to the Capadoccia region to commence a tour of Turkey.

Experiencing Cairo Culture

For our final day of sightseeing in Cairo we decided to brave the taxi services. So we researched the price of a fare to the citadel on the internet and the hotel desk and decided our top price was 30 Egyptian pounds. You could have blown us over with a feather when the first taxi driver we spoke to offered a fare of 20 pounds. Mind you it cost 40 pounds to get a fare from the Citadel to the Islamic area (about a quarter the distance we travelled to get there). The taxi driver negotiated a climb up a minaret at mosque that is not open to the public as part of the fare so it ended up being good value at $11.69 Aussie dollars for the two fares.

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After the minaret climb we wandered through a local bazaar where all manner of local produce was on sale including live rabbits, fish, sheep, chooks and pigeons. This was good to see as we ate grilled pigeons for dinner last night. At the citadel we were a big hit with the local children who there for school excursions. They lined up to take our photos.

Walk Like An Egyptian

We knew that getting to our hotel in Cairo was going to be a challenge as the map on the bookings website was different to the two other potential sites shown on the internet. But we came prepared with our Google maps of the downtown area. Adrian had researched that the cheapest way to get downtown was to transfer on the free bus to the domestic terminal, take the public bus 246 to Egyptian Museum and then take the metro train 2 stops. All the potential locations for our hotel were within walking distance of this metro station.

Things started out well at the airport. We obtained some local currency, our visa and bags, cleared customs without problem, found the shuttle bus and successfully transferred to the domestic terminal and found what we thought were the local buses. We asked a bus driver where to find the 246 bus, “to downtown?” we thought we heard him clarify and we nodded, “here” he said and motioned us to the door. We had thought we had done pretty well as by this time we had fended off offers from about 20 taxi drivers.

We took our seats and the bus took off and later came to halt in a back street where it was time to pay the fare. Joy handed him a 20 pound note expecting 16 in change but the driver wanted another 20 pounds. As we were in no position to negotiate we handed over the money and proceeded to be taken to a bus stop in central Cairo. We quickly learned that pulling a suitcase is arabic for ‘I want a taxi’ and a continuous stream pulled up to offer us a ride. We sought directions to the Metro from passersby but eventually gave in to the advances of taxis and negotiated a price to take us to our hotel.

Once in the taxi, the driver tried to negotiate his services for a tour of Cairo, “just take us to the hotel” we asked. We crossed the Nile several times and then down some back lanes and before coming to halt outside a hotel. “This hotel very good, very cheap, you want to look?” It wasn’t our hotel, nor was the next one he took us to and eventually we asked to be taken to the Metro station. He said the station we wanted to go to didn’t exist but eventually we did get to a station from where we took the train one stop to our station and managed to find our hotel after a couple of phone calls (it was option 3 on the Google map).

In the evening of our first night we took a stroll through downtown Cairo and found the site where we were dropped off by the bus (about 15 minutes walk away). Cairo gets busier by the hour and when we returned to our hotel after 11pm the streets were teaming with people, the coffee shops were full and the shops were doing a roaring trade.Yesterday we toured the Egyptian Museum and wandered the back lanes of Old Cairo and learned our first Arabic word ‘bahkish’. “Bahkish, bahkish” said the cleaner who opened the door to show us an ancient chapel, “Bahkish, bahkish” said the Tourist Police who showed us a good spot to take a photo, “Bahkish, bahkish”. We learned quickly that bahkish is the bribe you pay for accepting unsolicited advice or services it is different to a tip which you pay when you initiate the service request.

Today was tour of the pyramids and sphinx on horseback, a visit to the stepped pyramid, Saqqara and an excursion inside a pyramid at Dahshur. Tomorrow is our last full day in Cairo and we are planning on visiting the Citadel.

We are enjoying the local cuisine, have managed to survive crossing the streets and are getting used to the sweet acrid aroma that permeates the air.

Only one more sleep

Yes, its only one more sleep before our next exciting adventure. We fly to Sydney at 7:30am, fly out of Sydney at 2pm and all going well arrive in Kuala Lumpur 8.5 hours later, wait 5 hours then board our 10 hour flight to Cairo.

We've got the bags packed, checked the list for the umpteenth time and are ready to go.

Homeward Bound

After our fill of Bundy Rum and ginger beer, we based ourselves in Hervey Bay for a couple of nights and went on a 4WD tour of FraserIsland. The tour took us to some Fraser Island’s scenic highlights and for the mandatory drive along the beach highway. We managed not to get eaten by dingos but we did see a few.

Next it was a stop over with Linda and Will at Maroochydore. Had an evening of laughs and catching up on what has happened since we last saw them.

We then crossed the border into NSW last Tuesday and turned the clock back to 70s for a few days in Byron Bay.

We must look like aging hippies because one local shop keeper was sure we must have come from the Northern Rivers. We took an excursion across to Nimbin where Adrian had to buy some hemp. (It was a hat that was woven from the plant.)

While at Coffs Harbour for a couple of days the local sea life took a liking to us.

As we moved further down the North Coast we got the feeling that spring was in the air and felt the draw of home.

We only gave poor Gemma 2 days notice of our home coming and she really did need a week to clean up. Tim was around tonight and he is getting excited about his imminent trip to Hong Kong, Macau and China. We are a bit jealous, maybe its time for us to start planning a holiday!

Sparkling Company, Sparkling Gems and Now the Booze

We’ve been treated to some Queensland hospitality over the last week or so. We camped on Chris & Mike Rogerson’s front lawn in Townsville for a few nights and then visited Adrian’s cousin Wendy in MacKay. It was good to catch up with old friends, get some local knowledge and experience some gourmet delights in both households. While in Townsville we spent a day on Magnetic Island where we did some Koala spotting. Then it was more fauna at Eungella National Park near MacKay where we saw platypus, goanna and turtles.

Between Townsville & MacKay we spent a night in Bowen where

the Darwin scenes for the film Australia were filmed. We had to see Bowen because Chris loathed the place having been stuck there due to floods during their move to Townsville. We didn’t spend enough time to fully appreciate or loath the place but it did have nice beaches, the best sandwiches we’ve had on our trip and some delectable local tiger prawns.

We then traveled to the gem fields and stayed at Rubyvale. We had heard about the area from other travelers we had met and Wendy showed us a ring with a sapphire she had found there. We had great fun fossicking and from our first bucket we found one sapphire big enough to have cut and set in pendant for Joy. The small towns of Rubyvale and nearby Sapphire are dedicated to the gems and we went to several local businesses set up for fossicking to fossick.

We came away with a small bag of sapphires and zircons that we will send to Asia to have cut. Adrian was almost tempted to stay as in the local supermarket window there was house with 2 mines and all the required mining equipment for sale for $45 000.

We are now in Bundaberg and spent last night at Rockhampton. Tomorrow its rum tasting.

The Capitals and the World

Since arriving in Queensland we have stayed in 2 Capitals of Australia: the Rodeo Capital (Mt Isa) and the Dinosaur Capital (Richmond) as well as a city whose slogan is ‘the World’ (Charters Towers). In Mt Isa there were signs showing distances to various localities around Australia and the World. We realized that, if only there were roads, we could have reached London or Washington in the distance we have traveled around Australia so far.

The Rodeo was on when we reached the Isa so we had to go. It was a little different to the Fitzroy Crossing rodeo: the bulls all had names and knew where to exit the arena after their run and there was a program of events that changed every 15 to 20 minutes. At Fitzroy Crossing we were told the bull riding would be on after lunch, “what time” we asked and the reply was “after lunch” which turned out to be around 4pm. The bulls there were out of the scrub and they had to run in a herd of steers to get them out of the ring.

We tried our hand at mining at the Hard

Time mine in Mt Isa and visited an underground hospital that was built after the bombing of Darwin during World War II.

At Richmond it was a tour of the Dinosaur Museum then a field trip to one of the fossicking sites. We came back to the museum to have our finds assessed, we thought we had found a dinosaur tooth and a fossilized leaf but they turned out to be a stone and a scrape made by a grader. We did however find fossilized fish scales and shells.

In Charters Towers we have toured the town by car and foot and inspected many of the impressive buildings of the gold rush era. Joy paned for gold and found a few specks.

Wetlands to Marbles

Kakadu doesn’t have a good reputation with a lot of the grey nomads we have met on the road. We are not sure why because we enjoyed our 5 days in the park visiting aboriginal art sites, cruising the wetlands, swimming in a plunge pool beneath a waterfall and scrambling to pools above the falls with one of the traditional owners. We even got to watch crocs catching fish.

We then spent a couple of days in the never never at Mataranka where we floated around in hot springs and watched the daily screening of “We of the Never Never”

Then it was a night beside a wetland at Elliott that some other travelers told us about. (If you are in the area: turn west at the cattle grid as you enter the town, ignore the ‘private property’ sign and drive about 12k down the sandy dirt track.) Thousands of birds fly in and out each day: many more than we saw at Kakadu. On our way we had a light lunch at the famous Daley Waters Pub.

Tennant Creek was our next base

and we did a day trip south to the Devils Marbles before an evening around the camp fire with Jimmy the bush tucker man where we had damper and tea made from a native lemon grass. Jimmy recited a couple of poems and told a few tales.

We crossed the border into Queensland today. We both have colds which is no wonder as winter has kicked in with nights as low as 10 and days only reaching into the mid 20s brrrr.