Onwards and upwards young man.

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Woke early and had a feed on the roof of Mehmet's apartment. Good views over the fog covered sleepy village of Karakose.

Jumped on the bikes and ploughed our way through the centre of town which was now overrun by a hundred bleeting sheep and dozens of Turkish farmers. Most of whom stopped to have a look at two fools on bikes riding into the thick fog- at least I wasnt wearing bike tights. Ran into Mehmets dad who gave me a hearty hug and kisses on the cheeks- good man.

And thus dear reader we rode into the fog. Onwards and upwards we rode and rode. Getting to the top of one hill revealled another hill to scale. This scene repeated itself for a few leg crunching hours, oh yeah and it was raining as well.

Eventually we rolled into a nice valley and hit a forest of large pine trees. There were a few signs about pointing us in the direction of the Syrian frontier.

Happy days and Syria to come! Well not before a touch of bother.....

As we got closer to the border the rain seemed to kick in a bit harder. Grrrrrr! Turkey was giving us a bit of a damp send off.

Eventually we got to the border and surprisingly we got through relatively smoothly, seemed a bit too easy but we got into Syria without any problems. Well the Turkish border guard seemed to have a problem with one of my Turkish visa stamps after a few moments where a 20 hour bus ride back to Istanbul flashed through my eyes we got it sorted, and after recieving the standard quizical looks mounted the steeds and rode on.

But our old friend Jack Frost was still belting down with the rain.
We pulled into a servo to see if it would relent. It didnt.

With us now both pretty soaked we asked the servo guys if there was a bus to Latakkia. They were top guys and sprung into action. They phoned a minivan organised it all, and plied us with tea to boot. It gave me a great feeling to know that these guys were just doing to be good blokes, the cautious guard I had up when we arrived now dropped and I was feeling pretty good about being in Syria. I gave them both a couple of Australian keyrings, they were blown away at this small gesture. Good cross cultural relationship building.

Fanged it into Latakkia feeling a bit gloomy about the bus ride but stoked to be getting warm and dry. Got a hotel then proceeded to destroy numerous schewarmas, fellaffals and dips. If only we had some cool beers to wash it down with!

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Photos

Samandagi village
Yar, she be a bit chilly today

Leaving Samandagi
Spider wishing his beard was as good as mine

Goats
Goats goats and more goats