Entry Border crossing at Karkamus.
Car insurance 1 month minimum: $55.
Entry tax: $10
Time: 2 hours.
Petrol price: 0.30 Euros per litre
Diesel tax: $150 per week or E100 per week
Exit border: SW of Daraa
Exit tax: 500SP per person
Not sure if we did it correctly. We bought car insurance, then had our Carnet stamped and then our visas checked and fill out the entry card. On a side note the official who handled our Carnet was the one to ask the all encompassing question which is a follows: “Your car, diesel or benzene?” Of course ours is benzene… not! There isn’t a shred of evidence on either our V5/logbook (well actually it states ‘Heavy Oil’, but that could be anything) or Carnet to prove otherwise. This little white lie would save us 150 Euros per week. I suppose it helps that we entered through a relatively small border. Of course this was all preceded by: “Welcome, welcome!” Apparently Syria has only two border crossings with Jordan, so we plan to take the smaller one on our way out. Once this was done an official came to pack out some goodies, which we were expected to pack back in. Neil is ever so keen to oblige the officials, so I let him pack everything back into the car. First impressions of Syria, the roads are really good, but once again not much can be expected of the drivers. Luckily enough we managed to obey the first rule of overlanding, don’t drive at night. Now Syria isn’t as full of camping places as we’d hoped, so we took a chance and stopped at a large garage in the hope that we could camp there. Well what do you know not only could we put up our tent there, but the owner even brought us some Dutch Import beers. Neil was terribly impressed by this. We had a lovely dinner of coffee and cookies as we were too scared to light the gas stove so near to the pumps. After that we sat and drank our beers. Can you imagine the disgust on Neil’s face when I finally told him that the beers were non-alcoholic beers. Yup! Exactly 0.0% alcohol. Oh well at least we had another nights free and safe camping.
Day 2 in Syria we headed into Aleppo. Firstly we didn’t realise that the time zone had changed back to GMT+2. So we were at the tourist office at about 6:45am. Oh well, ever the optimist we set our watches and went for a walk in the city. We had a lovely stroll and coffee in the botanical gardens watching early morning joggers of all shapes and sizes. We sorted out an MTN phone card for which Neil had to sign a contract not only with ink, but they made him give his thumb print… Huh? Well at least we got to contact family and friends. We eventually got the tourist office open at about 9am and made our way to the Aleppo Citadel. Would you know it, as I walked in the official announced that the citadel was closed, yup it was Tuesday, who knew? Whatever, we had our photos of the main stairway and the surrounds already. Thank goodness we only paid for an hour parking. Alas, we headed NW to do a round trip of the historical ruins. These would include The Ein Darah Temple followed by St. Simeons Citadel. We had lunch before walking up to the Temple as there were quite a few tourists there at that moment. We chatted with the local guardian and fed his puppy ‘Rex’. Syria, like Turkey, is full of dogs both wild and domestic. We were charged a whole 150SP for both to see these ruins; luckily they were Syrian pounds, which are valued at about 65SP to the Euro. St. Simeons was a delight for which we felt happy to pay 150SP each. We spent over an hour there as the sun was setting giving the photos quite a dramatic effect. After quite a successful site seeing day, we headed for our campsite in Dakkour. Every person we passed in the little town waved and was shouting: “Welcome, welcome!” They had obviously seen overlanders before and knew the proper greeting. Upon arrival we were glad to see overlanders we met in Cappadocia. A Canadian couple, Pat and Bill, are driving to Jordan to visit there grandchildren. The camp owners wife, Christal, was a Belgian, so we could speak a little of the ‘Taal’ with her. We set up camp and made a lovely lamb and tomato pot, followed by fruit sherbet tea, a lovely hot shower and we fell asleep to the sound of Terry Goodkind’s “Temple of the Wind”.
The next morning we were woken up by the sound of the call to prayer. We were convinced that the Mosque could not have been further than 50m from us. Plus this prayer was being echoed by another Mosque not more than a half mile away. That is something we have noticed. There are about 3 mosques in every mile in populated areas. Of course we had to head back to the mall we had spotted the previous day. We wasted no time in indulging in our 2nd most favourite hobby that is shopping. The equivalent of 70 Euros later not only had we stocked up on food, we also managed chocolate milk and a box of chocolates, but Neil had a new pair of jeans… Neil’s trousers are always splitting at the crotch for some reason. I think it’s his big bum, but he begs to differ and insists that it’s not that part of his anatomy that is too big. Hmmmm… We spent a good hour afterward surfing the web at the coffee shop and enjoyed our first European style Late of our trip. We even ran into Pat and Bill again. The overlanding community is quite a small one, so it’s always nice to see a familiar face. Eventually we vacated the shopping mall and headed towards the Euphrates River. We’ve always known that the roads on our journey would be hazardous. So we join in the throng of cars hooting and revving our way along the highway. All until we were faced by a mad driver reversing diagonally across the highway. I managed to check the inside of the car while Neil was hooting and swerving only to see that the car had no driver in it! A quick look around and I saw the driver belting it from the other side of the highway in pursuit of his car. We have never seen anything like it! We felt like we were on a Hollywood action set. All this made for interesting conversation when my Dad called from the UK. Now that was a nice surprise! Thanks Dad! We headed for a halfway camp and not before getting a little lost in what seems like a desert. We found a lovely camp outside a restaurant and across the road from one of the most amazing ruin sites we’ve seen yet. It seems like a citadel.
The Rassafa Ruin was as stunning on the inside as we had imagined. I was amazing to see architecture that had lasted as long as this clearly had. We had decided to wake at the crack of dawn. We reasoned that the earlier we rose the more we would get out of the day. Well, the longer the day went on the more we realised that the getting up early and doing stuff, is just not for us. Our intention was to drive up to the Euphrates to the next birding site. The spot didn’t seem like much so we reverted to other hobby fishing. This was also a bit of a mixed bag. Neil at least managed to catch a fish. It was so small the lure he had used to catch it seemed to dwarf it. It’s incredible what they can fit into their mouths if they have the right motivation. All I managed to catch was the bottom of the river as well as every reed in it. So after an hour of fishing all I had managed to do was clear the river of most of debris and to lose two of our prized lures. This did not do wonders for my mood as you might imagine. We were there for about a half hour before what seemed like the all the village children descended upon us. So we moved on. We lunched in Deir Essour on the land next to the train line and went in search of camping for the evening. We landed up a few kilometres north of Deir Essour in the dunes. What a great find this place was. Camped out between the dunes, it was so quiet and we were even visited by a very friendly Wheatear.
After a great nights rest we headed for Palmyra. Not before we changed our front right tire. The tyre was functioning fine except there was what seemed to be a bolt stuck in it. The puncture safe was doing its job amazingly. Had we not done a close inspection of the tyres for stones. We would never have known the bolt was there. To avoid any blowouts at high speed, we changed the tyre and kept it as a spare. We were convinced that wild camping would definitely be quiet easy in Syria what with all the dunes and wide open spaces in the desert region. Onto Palmyra we drove. We stopped at the Tahila Reserve and were quickly guided to the Arabian Oryx and Giselle. They also bragged about their Bald Ibis, but we weren’t interested as they were caged, therefore we could not count them as lifers. This stint into the reserve was quite a funny one with the guide or local vet assuring us that he would do as much as he could for us. On our way to observe the Oryx, Neil was haring it down the track, much to the vet’s consternation. All the vet could manage to say before taking a bite out of the seat was: “Slowly my dear!” Huh? He was talking to Neil, nevertheless, we soon realised that everyone was “My dear” to the vet. There quick show around the reserve was followed by: “My dear, when the sun goes, you go.” Okay fine. We needed to find camping anyway. Since our base map was not up to the task, we ended up camping in the parking lot of a restaurant on the outskirts of Palmyra and not under the date palms. It was just our luck that there were 4 bus loads of university students having a party at the restaurant. Seriously, the speakers were so large and loud that the security lights dipped in time with the beat of the music. We were quite surprised to see the students drinking, more than likely the 0.0% alcohol beer. Then we were approached by some guy and his boyfriend. Huh? Apparently Syria boasts a 100% heterosexual nation. We were pleasantly surprised by this though, as it shows that Syria is indeed moving forward with the times and more liberal than one expects. Nice! We had a comical chat with them and together with the 6 million other students left on the buses. Before supper we sorted out the car and refill our water tank. Neil was on his way to do this when the groundkeeper grabbed the bag from him and disappeared off somewhere. Sometime later he reappeared with the 20 litre tank full and demanded a 10 dollar tip. What!?! I don’t think so. I was livid with Neil for not doing it himself. The guy wouldn’t disappear without a tip, so I just gave him 50SP (50pence). An important rule in Syria is to do everything yourself as every service is tip worthy to them. He seemed happy with this and left. Grrrrr…. Eventually we got supper and showering done and climbed into bed.
The next morning we were caught by the restaurant manager on the way back to the car from the showers. Arrrggg, I was so not in the mood. He offered us coffee and seemed intent to chat. This guy gave me the creeps and with good reason. He insisted we see the Bedouin tent before leaving. Okay so maybe I could fit that in before breakfast. He sent Neil off to get the camera leaving me alone with him. Arrrggg…. Once Neil left he enquired as to whether I was cold and put his arm around me… Geez! Warning bells. I proceeded to shake his hand off me, but continued to follow him to the tent. Great, now I was in this dark tent with this greasy old man. Then he was insisting that I try on the Bedouin wear, which he felt obliged to help me with. This was quite a scary experience without going into detail. Let’s just say that Neil had his jacket off and ready to bust the guys face in. Afterward we packed up really quickly and left the place. At least we came away with a photo or two. Girls beware of this type of thing in Syria, always stay in the company of a familiar male. From then on we decided that we didn’t like Syria. It’s a very dirty, dusty place and very sexist. Honestly, we weren’t expecting much better.
As bad a taste as Palmyra gave us, it did start getting better soon after we left the place. We hadn’t driven to far before we looked in our rearview mirror only to see a big blue Land rover filling it. It soon past and we were following it. In short order the vehicle pulled over and out stepped two friendly Brits by the name of Jamie and Helen. After making our acquaintance with the couple we lead them to a well known rest stop on the road between Palmyra and Damascus. It is called “the Bagdad Cafe” it is a nice enough place and it gave us an opportunity to chat and swap stories. After a cup of coffee the boys showed off their respective cars. Jamie has a whole host of fancy gadgets on his car, it makes ours seem quite plain. We took the all important photo together and were once again on the road to Damascus.
In Damascus there is only one reliable camping spot. Unfortunately our GPS coordinates were off by a bit so we had a few moments of anguish before we found it. Once in we were pleasantly surprised. Not only was it a large clean campsite, but there was an overland prepared Land rover there already set up. It did not take Neil long to start making friends with the couple. It so happens that this couple, Marina and Roger, are from Switzerland and are driving virtually the same route as us to South Africa. That evening we shared our first meal with them. Unfortunately Roger was under the weather, but after supper and with Neil’s insistence we played board games until late in the evening.
The next morning saw us bundle, together with our new found friends, into a taxi and headed for Damascus’ old city. The taxi dropped us off outside the bazaar. It was still early so we meandered aimlessly for a couple of hours. We did manage to see some of the sites including mosques and churches. Lunch time was spent sipping various Syrian drinks and milkshake, quite nice. On with the sight seeing and snack buying. Despite all the old buildings and churches, the site that grasped our attention the most was to see three buckets completely filled with writhing snakes. Gross to the extreme. Animal welfare does not seem to be a big thing in Syria. What made matters worse is they had about 20 kestrels and two other raptors in a tiny cage. That was not cool at all. Anyway we moved on as Roger and Marina had to get some Syrian pounds. So as seems the custom in this part of the world we went off to find the local black market guy. It all worked out well and we were soon back at the campsite.
We woke the next morning and got stuck into cleaning the car. The Courty family arrived at about 10am followed by Roger and Marina leaving for Jordan. We were already into our second week so we would most probably have to pay the extra diesel tax. It turned out that the next day was Jills birthday. We gave her fish fingers and oven chips as a birthday present as this was a family favourite for them. Jill wasted no time and fried us all up some fish and chips for dinner. What a treat!
The next day we said goodbye to Sim, Jill and the girls and headed for the Jordanian border. What a pleasure this border was and they didn’t even ask for the diesel tax. I suppose it helps that the border was the smaller of the two. We paid 500SP each for exit tax. We had exactly that amount as well. All in all Syria was the more unusual of our experiences. I’m not so sure we can come to appreciate the Bedouin Culture, but hey each to their own.
