When we arrived in Damascus, the tour ended for part of the group. So we all had a little party around the truck to say good-bye. I spent most of my time in cities while in Syria. Damascus is said to be the oldest city in the world. It is very large and the people there are very friendly. I spent most of my time wondering around Old Damascus. I saw one of the largest mosques that I have ever seen. The inside courtyard was very detailed with lots of mosaic work. Simone and I went inside the mosque and for [View Full Entry]

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Our first stop in Lebanon was in Baalbek, where we saw what was claimed as the largest rock in the world. The guide said that this was not true but it was still in the top 3 largest rocks. We then went to some ruins which were pretty cool. The guide did share a lot of really confusing facts with us, which at this point I can’t remember any to share with you. We then had lunch at this café that over looked the ruins. I thought the food was really good. We had fish that came out with their heads [View Full Entry]

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Jordan was amazing not only for the history but also for the landscape. The first stop in Jordan was Wadi Rum, which is an old caravan route and is mostly famous for Lawrence of Arabia. We spent about four hours in the desert climbing hill, sand dunes and exploring the terrain. That night we bushed camped in the middle of the desert and passed the time by making pyramids and doing other stupid tricks, it was a very fun night. After Wadi Rum we continued onto Wadi Musa, which a small town where Petra is located. The group spent the evening [View Full Entry]

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Because Mount Sinai is a very common tourist attraction it is best to hike up the mountain during the night and sleep up there until sunrise. We began our hike up the mountain at 9:30 at night. The hike was not that bad, especially when Monica (a fellow traveler) got a camel and took my 8 pound pack off of me. The hike in total was 7km, most of which was switch backs. The only really challenging part of the hike was that it was so dark during the night because there was no lighting except the moon, stars and our [View Full Entry]

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On Oct 7th we left Aswan floating up the Nile on a Felucca, which is sort of like a small sail boat. We spent 2 days floating up the Nile, just relaxing, eating, sleeping and having bon fires during the evening. The boats crew would sing and play drums and teach us to dance around the bon fire. The felucca ride was a very easy 2 days of travel. From the Nile we went to Luxor. My impression of Luxor is that they are so used to tourist that each vendor had there own little scam to try to get you [View Full Entry]

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I had a very busy 2 additional days in Cairo. My first roommate to show up was American that had been doing peace core in western Africa for the last 2 years. I ended up going out my second day in Cairo with her and her uncle. Our first stop was the citadel, which happened to be my first mosque that I visited as well. The view was very impressive, sort of. Cairo is very polluted and it is very tuff to see anything too far away. We toured through the first mosque and then went to a lookout spot, which [View Full Entry]

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Arriving into Egypt was a pain in the butt. To make it through immigration it took me over an hour, very ruff dealings for five in the morning. When I finally made it to my bag it was the only one left on the carousal. Good news was that my airport transfer was there. I arrived very early on Friday morning, which is a holy day for Muslims so the city was very calm. I was overwhelmed by how unbelievable large the city was. All the buildings are this tan color, all have at least 20 satellite dishes on the roof, [View Full Entry]

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Only being in Jo'berg for 2 days I experienced a lot about the history of South Africa and how the Apartheid happened. The Apartheid Museum was very good and provided a ton of information on the history of South Africa. If you are interested about the history you can read more facts about it below. I also visited Soweto which was a large township in the world. This tour basically just consisted of driving around and see things. We only got out of the car a few times. To see the hospital, which is the largest in the world. He showed [View Full Entry]

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So after my emotional, drunk 3 am decision to go home to Ohio. I had the challenge ahead of me to get to the airport to fly home. I woke up early in the morning to see Tiffany and Jen off and then I started to realize what a choice I made the night before. I took a cab into town to book a bus ticket. The first 2 places I went said that the systems were down and I had to go somewhere else. I finally found a travel agent, which sadly charged me a fee to book the stupid [View Full Entry]

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On August 27th, we took Tiffany for her first game drive in Addo National Park. This national park is famous for the number of elephants that you can see there. We found this watering hole just in time to see a large herd of elephants walk up to drink. There were many females with a number of young babies with them. I later learned in a book that because the elephant gestation period is so long that a mom elephant can have more than one baby with her at a time. It was so cool to watch them drink. The really [View Full Entry]

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