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Handing on your hand-me-down Lonely Planet is always a moment to be treasured. So, after seeing us through Turkey, Syria and Jordan, we gave our Book to two happy-go-lucky scuba divers from South Africa. The official handover ceremony was conducted in the Aqaba International Ferry Passenger Terminal. Johan and Mauritza, good luck!

Weird. We met some people in the Jordanian desert that are Canadian travel dopplegangers of us.
Seriously. Of the catalogue of similarities:

Jerome and Caroline started their trip in Europe, came through Turkey, Syria and Jordan (so did we)
They’re now in Egypt and are en route to India with a stopover in the Gulf […]

We swam at Amman Beach “Number One”, a newish compound to the south of the Dead Sea’s megahotel complexes with some chlorinated water swimming pools to cool off in after swimming in the very warmish Dead Sea. Here there were the obligatory range of beauty products available featuring minerals from the Dead Sea. Personally, I am dubious about the health benefits offered by a body of water which operates as an ancient terminating drain, 400 metres below sea level, fed by the Jordan River in which all manner of dissolved solids have accumulated over time as the water evaporates away in the harsh heat.

Days 48-54: Crossing over from Turkey into Syria there one immediately noticeable change - it was our first experience on this trip of a country using arabic rather than roman lettering and so a notch higher on the “degree of difficulty” scale. But, with a quick rip through the Arabic numerals, I was ready to […]

Day 47: The only way to beat the heat here is to get up early. Rising at 5.30am we set off from Kose Pension on a walk through Rose Valley, with the pension’s dog Spot (and two of his friends) to guide us on the way.
An unexpected surprise was that Cappadocia’s hot air balloons had […]

Day 46: With one day only in Cappadocia, we decided to take the sights at our own pace by renting a car. Heading east from Goreme towards Urgup, we encountered some of the strange mushroom rock formations by the side of the road. These odd outcrops were formed when a hard layer of rock was […]

A restful spot, well-run by Dawn, who came to Cappadocia some twenty years ago and never apparently left, we were extremely happy at the Kose pension. On our final morning, we took Dawn’s dog Spot out for a walk through Rose Valley and he acted as our guide. Highly recommended.

Eagle-eyed correspondents have rushed to point out a remarkable physical similarity between two of the recent subjects of this blog. Is the figure on the right a distant relative from ancient Roman times of the figure on the left? Readers, you be the judge.