Our Anniversary

Well, it's been a year that we've been married now! May 24th that was anyway. Since "normal" life for us isn't so "normal" at the moment, what we really wanted to do on our anniversary was watch a movie at a movie theater. It's kind of funny how you always want a break from the version of life you happen to be living. But not THAT long of a break! We are definitely still loving our amazing opportunities to travel and experience the world. Anyway, we had a nice anniversary :)

Israel and The Palestinian Territories

Israel is a land that many relate to as a holy place with endless historical and biblical sites.  It hosts so many that we could spend forever talking about it, so we'll just leave you to your own studies for that. As for us, we loved wandering around in Jerusalem's old town through windy streets, markets, and arches. We'll try to share a few pictures we shot while we were there.

Above is the famous Muslim Mosque, Dome of the Rock. Hundreds of years after the second Jewish Temple was destroyed by the Romans on site, the Muslims moved in and built this Mosque. To the Jews, Muslims, and Christians, this site is celebrated as the place where Abraham went to sacrifice his son. The Jewish still yearn for their temple at this location and congregate at the western wall of the temple site, known as the "Western Wailing Wall." See the picture below:

This olive tree on the Mount of Olives is almost 2000 years old. It is possible that it is in the location of the Garden of Gethsemane.

The site below is possibly Golgatha. If you look closely you can see a face in the wall. (Golgatha means "place of the skull").

This place is known as "The Garden Tomb," one of the sıtes where many believe Jesus was placed after his crucifixion. There is another site in Jerusalem in the Church of The Holy Sepulchre that many others believe was his burial location.

We took some time to travel to Bethlehem to see the possible birth site of Jesus, pictured below.

Passing through the west bank was very interesting. The Palestinians have painted graffiti all over the wall, expressing their discontent with what they see as an occupation of their homeland by the Western-backed Israelis. We got an earful from both sides on the issues.

The picture below was painted on the wall of a wall around a Christmas Tree, which may seem to tie into the wall around Bethlehem.

For our final stop in the region, we thought it would be fun to visit the lowest land on Earth at the Dead Sea (1349 feet below sea level) since we had been in the shadows of the highest point on earth looking up to Mount Everest. Rusty was able to lather up in the supposedly healthy mud and go for a salty float. Kelsi was only able to go in up to her ankles with her healing knee since the salt water has stories of intense stinging on open wounds. The ocean water during diving was enough sting for Kelsi, so she'll reminisce in the Great Salt Lake one day. (Her knee is fine though - as some readers had expressed concern - thank you for caring :). We enjoyed watching one lady swimming who started splashing nervously when she struggled to get her feet back under her. The salt is so thick it's hard to even stand back up once you're floating.

Rusty trying to sink:

Dead Sea mud is sold in packages as a rather expensive cosmetic mask. Rusty wants to point out to his mom that he has finally managed to gain back a little weight around his middle, although it seemed to disappear once he went swimming again...

Jordan

You might have be familiar with the above picture of the Treasury in Petra, Jordan from the last supper scene in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." Petra is an amazing place, hewn from the sandstone cliffs by the local Nabataean people (and the Romans later), who used this strategic location to control trade routes.

The Canyon leading up to the entrance of the treasury in Jordan makes the site all the more dramatic.

The sandstone cliffs and arid environment reminded us of Southern Utah. The picture above and below were a couple of our favorite views of the beautiful swirling colors we called tie dye rocks.

In addition to the treasury in Petra, the Nabataeans carved numerous other buildings, dwellings, and stables carved into the rocks.

The Monastery that requires a 45 minute hike. It looks a little bit like the Treasury, but notice the differences.

This is another picture in front of the Treasury, but we thought 3 pictures of this stunning view was acceptable, and the donkey pictured above was such a great photo composition by Rusty.

A couple other views around Petra.

Here is our favorite host, Muslah, from our hostel in Petra. When we arrived, he asked Kelsi if she was missing her family and even offered to call up Kelsi's nephews and nieces for a minute... a really nice gesture! (Ashley, this is who you talked to).

As always, we are continuing to read voraciously as we wait for trains, planes, and automobiles. Here is Kelsi waiting for our bus to our next destination. Really good book "Tis" by Frank McCourt. Now we're definitely going to read his other book, "Angela's Ashes."

At The Red Sea

In addition to being the Biblical place where Moses parted the water, the Red Sea has amazing coral reefs for scuba diving and snorkeling. Unfortunately, on our first day at the Red Sea, Kelsi finally took her turn going to a medical clinic after slipping on wet tile and slamming her knee into a tile ledge. In our 8 or so months out we've only had one major medical situation with Rusty's kidney stone in Nepal. Fortunately, the x-rays of Kelsi's knee didn't show a cracked patella and the gash did more smashing than slicing so stitches weren't required - AND the budget hotel even covered the bill as it happened on their patio. They also comped Kelsi one free dive in the Red Sea! Nevertheless, we lost our first day of diving, which left us some time to photograph the area...

"No Camels and Horses"... only on the Red Sea!

From where we stayed in Egypt, we could look across and see Saudi Arabia. At different places, you can see Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. The landscape in all directions was strikingly barren desert leading up to the Red Sea, which was full of great underwater life.

The town of Dahab Egypt had a really nice atmosphere with beautiful restaurants lining the ocean side.

Aside from Dahab Egypt, we also spent time in Aqaba Jordan. We tried the diving in both places, which was really spectacular! Kelsi felt like a mermaid princess during a dive in Dahab called "The Islands" where we swam up and down and through this wall and that wall of absolutely beautiful pastel colored corral after entering the dive through a cave. This site is named "The Islands" because of all the corral formations that are like a bunch of underwater islands. It was the most beautiful corral Kelsi had seen. Rusty thought is was a spectacular dive as well though the corral was more pastel than his liking of brilliant. There was more live corral in beautiful formations than either of us had ever seen though. One amazing brain corral that was crayola blue (the brightest of the corral on this dive) and enormous in size had resident clown fish swimming around in the anemone on top. It's called brain corral because it looks like a brain. There was also soft corral that Kelsi called popcorn corral because there were tons of little round balls opening and closing.

The dive company required that we do an easy dive before this one to make sure we had good buyancy in the water since there were many tight areas where we swam around corral and sometimes we'd be down at 40 feet then we'd swim over a formation at 15 feet, so you had to be careful not to bump into anything nor to pop up to the surface before the safety stop. It was quite an adventurous dive. Unfortunately, we don't have pictures since our waterproof camera broke in New Zealand, but the google picture below may give an idea of what the formations looked like that we were swimming through.


In Aquaba, Jordan, we did a 260 feet long shipwreck dive in amazing visibility. Notice the diver at the top of the ship. Picture from google:


Our second dive in Aquaba, Jordan, we saw the highest concentration of Lion Fish (picture on our Sulawesi blog) we'd ever seen: 10+ at one corner of corral as well as two creepy (and dangerous to the touch) stone fish that looked like the "Pirates of the Caribbean" Black Pearl Pirates. See google image below:

Egypt

Egypt is one of the world's great ancient empires, and has an amazing share of world heritage sites. To go along with it's amazing share of world class sites, Egypt has an ample share of the scams we have encountered. At the end of this blog we'll write about some of the scams we encountered here.

It's difficult to capture the immensity of the pyramids, but it was a surreal experience to walk and ride in our shaded horse carriage around them.

After a long day of site-seeing and being relentlessly scammed, we took pause in the cool of the sunset to take a quiet felucca sailboat ride on Cairo's Nile River.



After Cairo, we took the overnight train to Luxor, where we were amazed at the size and style of the Luxor Temple and surrounding monuments. Walking around the sites in Luxor felt even more surreal than the pyramids as they exceeded expectations. The sun was fairly intense here as you may notice in our expressions.


This walkway of Sphynx's was magnificent! It's Rusty's favorite new animal, replacing the Liger (half tiger, half lion).


Rusty wants to know who's head is bigger? He didn't like Kelsi's answer.

The detailed Egyptian hieroglyphics were stunning:


As we were bicycling in the countryside around Luxor, we came upon this monument, the Colossi of Memnon. It was fun to be biking among so many sites.



We liked the look of this one-donkey-power rig... they got it just right considering the rise in gas prices!

The Land of Baksheesh

Egypt has a few policies promoted by the government that can be a little financially adverse to touristic foreigners. The Egyptian authorities charge foreigners 10-20 times the local price for everything. Although we are accustomed to being charged a 2-3 times higher, "tourist price" by private parties and for some museum entrances, we have never been to a country where even government transportation services charge foreigners more. For a ferry boat ride that would have cost an Egyptian about $7-8, the fee for foreigners was $70. For a train ride that would cost an Egyptian about $10, the fee was $60. This attitude of charging tourists ample fees starts with authorities and extends through may parts of the Egyptian society. The result is that some Egyptians working with tourists ask for money for any little thing they do. The bribe or tip (depending on the situation) is called "Baksheesh."

Baksheesh is requested for anything and everything. In one case, Rusty asked a police officer at the train station to point him toward the bathroom, thinking that an officer on duty was a safe way to avoid the baksheesh request. After walking Rusty 30 feet to the bathroom, the officer asked for baksheesh. Similarly, if a bus driver grabs your bag and lifts it 18 inches into the cargo hull of a bus before you can stop him from doing it, he will ask for the usual luggage charge along with baksheesh of about $1.

Even in bathrooms, "paper towel servers" wait to serve and request baksheesh.   On one occasion, Rusty opted to use the electric air dryer, but the moment he looked away as he was drying his hands, the young boy serving paper towels dashed in and threw a paper towel over Rusty's hands! He gave Rusty a triumphant look and extended his hand, saying "Baksheesh!?" Although the baksheesh was laughed off by Rusty, the boy does get points for his swagger.

The baksheesh is very prominent around the pyramids. If the wrong person gets ahold of your camera to take a picture of you, you won't get the camera back without some hefty baksheesh. If a guide points to a site before you notice it on your own, he'll ask for baksheesh. In some places where photography is forbidden, you are even required to turn your camera into the local guards. Although they receive a salary, the guards ask baksheesh in exchange for return of your camera (we noticed that this did not apply to locals).

We tired of hearing requests for "baksheesh"dozens of times per day for every little thing. Like us, many tourists also become unwilling to continually pay baksheesh.  Because of this, some of the Egyptian tourism workers will devise ways of parting tourists with their money. In one situation, we were told by an animal driver/guide that the pyramids are not entirely accessible without a guide and animal transportation. The guide represented to us that we needed to ride a short distance to see his manager to get the price for the animal service. He got us 4 feet off the ground (camels are really tall) and took us about 10 feet before stopping and demanding a substantial price for the ride. He probably figured we'd rather pay than try to climb down, but he didn't know that we'd already been smartened up a bit in India.  We climbed down.

While we weren't robbed or pick-pocketed in Egypt (many tourists are), we lost a decent amount of money by petty dishonesty. We later realized that on several occasions when we didn't know the correct price of transportation, the government employee at the ticketing counter had charged us many times the regular fare price and pocketed the difference.  In our travels we have encountered numerous scams, but nowhere have they been so ubiquitous as in Egypt.

In the end, there were many very nice people who helped us without thought for money.  Also, Egypt is home to the pyramids so she can get away with quite a bit - people are still going to come visit.