Gday everyone
For the moment we chillin in Amman at a Canadian guy Elliots place. We left Damascus 3 days ago hitting south towards a town called Derra. With the a alarm clock sat on 4 a clock we crossed our fingers for tempretures below 40 and were both happy to switch from mountain terrain to dessert for the coming biking days. We would’nt say we were lucky with any of them. Exhausted and tired we sat down on a kebab place in the middle of nowhere ( Sheik Manseen), with 30 km to go and wished for a motorbike or a place to rest. Luckily out of nowhere a 19 year old student, Hamid, showed up and offered us housing. The owner of the kebab place sended a guy to get us a copy of the Coran and then we joined Hamid to his place and spend the rest of the afternoon playin fotball, eating food and smokin sheesha. The hospitality of Syrian people is fantastic and we sometimes have problems to really accept how friendly everyone is without wanting anything else back. We could write a Phd about the cultural differences but we stay with the fact that even if we consider ourselfs confident with some knowledge basics and experience we really did’nt know how to act in some situations. Anyway the night ended up in a photostudio were we dressed in syrian uniforms sorrunded by tigers and lions.
The next morning (yesterday) we took of early again to stay away from the worst heat, targeting an ancient city called Jarash in Jordan. Bye bye Syria- Hello Jordan. Once again we realized that its mountains not dessert down here. The landscape is simply not made for tandembiking. After 10 h on the bike we reached Jarash. We needed a place to crasch so we stopped a cab and started to negotiate. 1 h later we were putting up our tent in his garden and had an entourage of 10 kids helping or climbing on our tandem. The taxi driver was a retired sniper from the army and showed us a trophy. It was not a head of an Isreali but just a deer. Loads of laughs and cups of tea later we went to bed.
Today we had the last part left from Jarash to Amman. It was once again a challenging terrain. After 5 h we reached what we thought was the highest point- finally some downwards! 5 minutes later our breaks stoped work and the eurforia to go downwards disappeared. We have had some problems with the breaks before but nothing serious. Now we where stucked at the highway with steaming breaks and 20 km left…..The next 5 minutes 3 cars stopped to offer us help. The 3:rd one was a pick up truck so we hitched hiked with all our stuff sitting on the truck back to Amman. Halfway on the highway we get stoped by the police. We both think someone must be kitting with us. The driver talks to them and suddenly the policemen turns towards us and says: ” hold on to the truck guys (basically don’t fall off) and welcome to Syria”. The nice guys dropped us of at a bikeshop so we are back rollin. Tomorrow we will go to Petra, one of the 7 wonders, “In shaalaa” ( if god will)
Stay tuned everyone Viktor and Philip
We are having some problems with WORDPRESS at the moment so you will not be able to read older posts. We will try to solve the problem as soon as possible.
Our friend Hamid offering us a place to stay
- Hitchin a ride because of brake failure, close to Amman
