My travels have come to an end. I had intended to stop over in the US and bike my way from San Francisco to LA but no. Firstly, my account balance said Na, not really going to happen; then secondly, joyful US policy: because my NL passport was issued in NZ while I'm not a NZ citizen, it means that I need a visa- and a 2 week waiting time in the Netherlands didn't look all to good. So now I've got some long flight just ahead of me, leaving Frankfurt early in the morning :-))) So anyway, back to around [View Full Entry]

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My muddy old bike was still muddy and old-looking when it arrived at Amsterdam airport. Austrian Air treated it a bit better than Royal Air Morocco did which was a relief. My sister Rose was waiting for me at the airport, we then jumped on the good old Dutch train system: bike, bags, tent and all and headed north. We spent a day with family in Zwolle and then went up to Friesland where we stayed with more family and celebrated our grandfather´s 80th birthday. It was held on a boat with bar/restaurant on borad, 'the Fresian Queen' (Steve, you know [View Full Entry]

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(not D) The 30-hour train ride from Aleppo clearly did save us time as biking would have taken slightly longer, but it was a bit of a long long long haul. We had a sleeper cabin to ourselves which was pretty good and the scenery of northwest Syria and southern Turkey was pretty amazing. We had a few complications with the Syrian train staff concerning food and money but we got there in the end. What started off as a single-carriage machine from Aleppo (which looked pretty odd) soon turned into a 15 carriage-thing as we cruised through Turkey into Constantinople. [View Full Entry]

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We left Istanbul early in the morning and took a 5hr bus to Eceabat. A tour guide picked us up and we set off on a PACKAGE TOUR. Kees was over the moon at having reached the highest echalon of travelers. It was a fantastic, and often somber experience. We visited the museum, what amazed me most was all the bullets which they had found which had hit one another in mid air. Can you imagine the intesity of fighting that would be neccessary for this to occur on such a large scale. We walked at ANZAC cove, around Lone Pine. [View Full Entry]

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Dan says... This trip started out with a lovely little jaunt down Beirut's equivalent of state highway one. The open road driving here is the undisputed worse either of us has seen. If a car is passing a car, which is already passing another car and the only option for this first car is to drive on the extreme wrong side of the road to get past both cars at once, even if there is another car coming the other way, provided it is smaller than the first car, then its all go! After half an hour or so we managed [View Full Entry]

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"We advise against non-essential and tourist travel to Lebanon as there is high risk to your safety in most parts of the country. We advise against all travel to southern Lebanon (south of Litani River) as there is an extreme risk to your safety in this area." -MFAT warning After having been to Lebanon, I thought I may as well check out the NZ government's travel warnings. Well after reading that joke, I couldn't think of a better place to have gone than Lebanon. The only danger that we experienced was the crazy crazy drivers. They're all over the road, in [View Full Entry]

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How I found Kees...I spent a day checking out Jerusalem then caught a bus to Tel Aviv, on the way who should I see biking along the road but Kees in his bright green Makarewa T-shirt. But the bus driver wouldn't stop. When I arrived in the city I had a feed then biked back to the motorway, found myself a comfy spot near the on ramp to the city, and kicked back reading for a couple of hours. By the time Kees came along it was dark. Tel Aviv is a great mixture of western modernity with Middle Eastern parts. [View Full Entry]

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(K) So what do you know, my bike, again was going no-where. I needed a new tube but Camp Kalia at Israel's Dead Sea did not sell them funnily enough. So I had no choice but to hitch-hike to Jerusalem- with my bike. Eventually three Israeli girls in their 4WD stopped, I threw the bike on the back and was the way to Jerusalem / Al-Quds / Yerushaláyim- whatever you want to call it. They dropped me off on the motorway JUST OUTSIDE the city. Nice of them but how annoying! It was hot, busy and no-one was piking me and [View Full Entry]

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I've been active enough, I landed at Cairo Airport late one night and tried to bike into the city 30 odd kms away and despite plenty of local 'help' I got horribly lost and ended up throwing my bike on the roof of a cab (they have racks) and sharing a ramadan snack with a cab driver who dropped me down town amongst the mayhem, a couple of days in Cairo doing the sights and I joined up with another solo traveller for a train trip to Luxor (the hassle capital of Egypt) for a couple of days and Aswan, on [View Full Entry]

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(K) From Petra I rode, first steep up, then more up and a little more up, then it finally leveled out a bit and I found a castle to explore. Can't remember its name but it was a castle and it was free entry. Following this was the usual hills, goats, sheppards, camps and rocks- more hills and rocks if anything. So anyway, I was heading for Dana (I know, some of you will find that funny). Dana is an amazing little town in the middle of Jordan's version of the rift valley. The town is basically made of stone and [View Full Entry]

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