Roman Sahara
Due to internet connectivity, I will post each days adventure later when i return to NYC. in the meantime, here is an overview of what we have done so far and what remains.
Tunisia was occupied by the Carthagians, Romans, Ottomans, Byzantines, and French. Each civilization built on top of the others, which created vast cities throughough Tunisia. The Roman amphitheater in El Jem is said to rival the Colosseum in Italy. True to the name of the tour, it is roughly divided in half. The first part is an exploration of the Roman/Carthagian/Byzantine ruins throughout Tunisia and the other half is trekking through the Sahara to sleep under the stars at a Bedouin camp. In addition to the camping, we explore the Star Wars sets, see mirages from salt flats, and basically try to not get sand in our shoes.
So far, we are a couple days away from the end of the tour. The timing of the trip is in conjunction with Ramadhan, the fasting of the muslims during the 9th month of the Islamic calendar. There are pros and cons to Ramadhan. Pro: the markets aren’t overwhelmed with people, con: everything is closed except for a few places. However, the cities come alive after 7pm when the muslims have had their barley soup to break the fast.
The main highlights of the trip include the Roman mosaics, the seaside village of Sidi Bou Said, the temple at Dougga, Star Wars set and desert four wheeling, and getting to understand and watch the people of Tunisia. The country is fairly westernized. Women have equal rights in the workplace, but the family traditions of man/woman hierarchy remain. they are friendly but underneath the friendly smile is a dollar sign or a dinar sign. it is pretty poor country and they do what they can to make money like offer a photo opp in exchange for money.
Internet access is a pain in the ass to find and when you find it, the keyboard is in the french configuration making your w = z, your periods = colons, and your brain = insanity. luckily, sonia from the group brought her netbook, which i am using in the lobby of the grand hotel oasis in tozeur. i have uploaded all the pics and i am writing everything down and will transcribe it to the site soon.
england
for the next adventure, john and i are headed to england and tunisia from 9/3 to 9/13. we made it to england on the red eye and i slept the entire time. a first for me. usually i can’t sleep on planes but i was so tired from work and moving into the new place on macdougal that i would have slept standing up if i had to.
anyways, we made it to london. checked into the le meridien at piccadilly circus. since i am a gold member, they upgraded us to a club suite. and it is suite. huge room with a foyer. we met up with john’s friend conrad at the airport and he showed us around central london. it was a great day, but chilly. i am glad i packed some warm clothes even though in a few days i will be in the desert.
london is a beautiful city and has the same feel as new york city. we walked around the embankment, crossed the millenium bridge to the tate modern, back around the embankment and crossed to head up to liecester square to wrap back around to piccadilly. after conrad departed, we aimlessly walked around and had a couple drinks on old compton street. i love the architecture of the city and the amazing similarity to new york’s villages. our itinerary is wide open but we are planning on meeting up with more of john’s friends who will guide us in the direction of cool places. plus, ali gave us some great ideas on where to go, so we will check those out as well.
one annoying aspect is finding cheaper/free access to the internet. it is going to be a challenge. i’m sure it will be an even greater challenge trying to find a place in tunisia. i will update when i can, but the pictures may have to be added when i return. bummer.
blue
ugh, departure day. iceland is an amazing country and i want to spend more time exploring it. but we have to leave. in addition, leaving means returning to work. boo.
our flight was at 5pm so we had some time to visit the last item on the itinerary; one of the most visited attractions in iceland, the blue lagoon.
it was tough waking up early this morning, but i wanted to see adrian and lydia one more time before we parted ways. i wished i had spent more time with them. the 2 car situation influenced who you hang with greater than i had anticipated.
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dry suit diving
oh boy, here was the one day that had me full of anxiety and nervousness. adrian and i were going to dive in 2 degree celsius glacier water between the north american and eurasian tectonic plates. it is the first time i will have dived in a dry suit, and even though the diving manual suggested it wouldn’t affect my bouyancy, the functions of the suit added another complexity to the already equipment overload that diving requires.
on the way to the dive site, our instructor, let’s call him jeff (cause his icelandic name is a tongue twister), stopped at the tourist lookout over thingvellir to view the rift between the tectonic plates and the lake where we would be diving. it is tough to capture scale in photos but the cliff next to the path is 26 meters (78 feet) high and is part of the rift between the plates. the entire area is being pulled apart by centimeters every year.
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bright lights, small city
the drive to the capital, reykjavik, wasn’t too difficult. we made it in about 2 hours. the scenery was beautiful and we drove through a tunnel that spanned a fjord. after exiting the tunnel, the feeling of getting close to the city increased with the traffic’s density. we were in a couple traffic jams, the first ones in 10 days.
the directions to the hotel were a bit spotty but we lucked out by taking an educated guess on the turnoff from the highway. the directions said to take a right on a one way street going the other way, so we had to improvise on how to reach the hotel. a more concerning thought was where to park the car, but that was quickly resolved when we noticed a huge parking lot across the street from the hotel.
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black church in a lava field
another day of long distance driving in the icelandic countryside. chris suggested to check out some turf houses, but that meant another hour added to the already 5 hour drive. no thanks. instead, we headed for the seaport city of Stykkisholmur. the city is surrounded by 10,000 islands and has a spaceship church. plus, harbor towns are so beautiful and quaint.
the drive through the countryside was beautiful. i kept thinking that my sister would love this country since she is outdoorsy.
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huffin and puffin
yesterday was an easy day in the respect of having only one scheduled activity; a guided boat tour of an abandoned, grassy high cliff island called Drangey. the island hosts one of the largest puffin colonies. a puffin is a bird that looks similar to a toucan. the sea captain has been featured in national geographic magazine for his tours. the boat leaves from the hot pools near a town called saudarkrokur.
on the way to saudarkrokur, we passed through the 2nd largest town in iceland with a population of 12k called akureyri. i think that many live on my block in NYC. i was surprised to see a cruise ship docked at the town. i was even more surprised to see a deloitte building.
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midsummer celebration
yesterday was a special day for icelandic people. june 21st was the summer solstice, and yesterday the icelandic people celebrated midsummer. midsummer is considered to be one of four most powerful days of the calendar. the other three are christmas eve, new years eve and jan. 6, which is the end of the christmas season. a tradition for midsummer celebration is if you have an illness or sickness, you will be cured if you roll around in the morning dew naked.
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zoom zoom
it is growing increasingly harder to post on the website due to internet connectivity or finding the time to write. i spend roughly 70% of my time driving. if only i had been wise enough to know NOT to insist on renting a 5-speed car, the driver pool would be much bigger and i could possibly write while riding like i did on the F.E.L.L. trip. course, chucky and diane aspire to read in the car but end up staring out the window at the ever changing, amazing scenery.
regardless, i love driving and it doesn’t really bother me. yesterday was mostly driving. we went from the east side of iceland driving along the coast in and out of fjords and then drive straight into the upper middle of iceland.
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continuous sun
it is an experience that i will never forget. the effects of continuous sun. it is 11:30 pm and i’m sitting on the terrace of the hotel where the sun looks like it is,um, 7:00pm. essentially dusk. the sun won’t set. it will be dusk for a couple hours and then it will rise again. in fact, June 21st was the summer solstice. not that it mattered since the sun won’t set for another 3 weeks.
i woke up this morning to sunlight behind the shades and suddenly had anxiety of being late for the departure. not that we had a departure time but that we wanted to get an early start to the day. i jumped out of bed and checked my friends watch. 10:30am! oh shit. however, instead of waking chucky and diane, i got dressed to find a local time source to verify. i finally found one on the alarm system in the lobby. 4:30am was the local time. oh brother. 10:30am looks like 4am upside down. it was seriously daylight outside and i was completely out of it. as much as i wanted to stay up to work on the site, i couldn’t. instead, i recalculated the correct time and set the alarm on my iphone. i quickly fell asleep until the alarm went off around 8am (iceland time).
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