On the Road to Petra / ×ى فاث قخشي فخ حثفقش

.El viaje de Madaba a Petra nos tomo 6 horas aprox. Lo hicimos par el "camino de los Reyes" Dicha carretera va serperteando atravez de las montanas del desierto lo que hace que el viaje de 6 horas valga la pena. Este Camino existe desde hace miles de anos y se supone este fue el camino que Siguio Moises desde el monte Sinai hasta el Monte Nebu que fue en donde vio la tierra prometida asi que como ya se estaran imaginando el camino cuenta con muchas cosas que ver.

Atravez del camino vimos muchisimos campamentos de Beduinos con sus tiendas y camellos... dentro de dos dias vamos a hacer un viaje en el desierto con guia Beduino asi que dentro de poco les platicaremos mas de ellos.

En el camino paramos en diferentes puntos con paisajes increibles donde se podia ver el desierto, el mar muerto y Palestina.....

Tambien paramos en un castillo , Karak, que fue utilizado en las cruzadas tanto por cristianos como por musulmanes. El castillo, por cierto, fue construido por uno de los generales de Alejandro Magno...

The Journey to Petra from Madaba took all day...mostly because we went along the King's Highway. Although from the name you might think this must be a superhighway or something don't be fooled. However, although this is not the fast route, it is absolutely the most scenic route through Jordan

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The King's Highway was an important trade route across the ancient Middle East. It began in Egypt, stretched aross the Sinai Peninsula through Jordan and Syria to the Euphrates River. The highway has been used as an important pilgrimage route for Christians as it passes various important biblial sites including Mt Nebo. Muslims used it as the main Hajj route to Mecca until the 16th century when the Ottoman Turks built the Tariq al Bint. Now, tourists use it to see some of the most important sites in Jordan as they travel north or south.

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The highway winds its way through different ecological zones including forested highlands, farmland plateaus, deep ravines, the edge of the desert, and the warm tropical gulf of Aqaba and so at every turn there is something unique to see. We saw many bedouin encampments across the landscape. More to come on the bedouins in a few days when we actually travel on camels through the desert to visit some bedouin camps...

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We stopped at various beautiful scenic viewpoints over Wadi Wala, Wadi Mujib( Jordan's mini Grand Canyon), and Wadi Hasa. The view across these immense valleys is undescribable. There is nothing like it. It is truly awe-inspiring!

We also stopped at Karak to visit the massive crusader fortress built in 1136. A few km south of Karak, we passed Mu'ta and Mazar, major Islamic shrines at the site of the first battle between the armies of Islam and Byzantium in 632 AD. In a few days we will return to Mu'ta and Mazar to explore these and other shrines in more detail.

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Finally we made it to Petra, the unique rock cut Nabataean capital city, center of the ancient world's spice and incense routes for 400 years. We will explore this tomorrow!

Cappadocia...Land of Unearthly Volcanic Rock Formation

Culaquier adjetivo que utilice para describir a la region de Capadoccia no le haria justicia, simplemente es una area extraordinaria y espero que las fotografias hablen por si solas.

La region de capadoccia tiene una extension de 400 km este-oeste por 200 km norte-sur asi que para tratar de ver lo mas posible tomamos un viaje por globo la experiencia es inolvidable. Esta region tiene aprox 36 ciudades subterraneas, 20 valles y cientos de cuevas e Iglesias adentro de las formaciones volcanicas algunos de los frescos de las Iglesias hen permanecido casi intactos.

Ademas de la experiencia de esta region increible tambien tuvimos oportunidad de conocer y hacer amigos con 2 mujeres de Hong Kong (Carol y Connie), una chica de SurKorea(Heong Ju) y Pascal un chico de Francia. Con ellos cenamos 2 noches que estan dentro de las noches mas divertidas que hemos tenido en el viaje hasta el momento. Con la chica de Korea del Sur intercambie unos pesos mexicanos por huons, las chicas de Hong Kong nos ensenaron cantones y con el humor especial de Pascal nos la pasamos riendonos de nuestros problemas de comunicacion con la chica de Korea del Sur.

Con ellos regresamos a Ankara (la capital de Turquia) el viaje fue igaulmente divertido... todos aprendimos cantones, frances, urdu y espanol lo unico que recuerdo ahora es Ni Ay Wo (Tu em amas) yWo Ay Ni (Te amo). Tenemos unos videos... Cuando encontremos una coneccion mas rapida a internet los voy a subir... esten al pendiente

Cappadocia...Its hard to find words to describe this region of Turkey. Hopefully the pictures will do some justice to the incredible landscapes that make Cappadocia what it is. The regios extend 400km East to West and 200 km North to South...its huge!!!!

In order to see teh most we could in our short time there, we decided to take an early morning hot air balloon ride. (the first and probably last time on this trip that we were awake at 5:30am). This regions has 36 underground cities, 20 valleys and hundreds of caves and churches built right into the volcanic rock formations.

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In Cappadocia we met and befriended 2 young women from Hong Kong (Carol and Connie), one from South Korea (Hyeon-Ju) and Pascal, a guy from France. We had dinner with the four of them on two nights and those two nights are definately among the most fun evenings we have had on this trip so far. Carol and Connie taught us Cantonese. The only thing I remember now is Wo Ay Ni (I love you) or my personal favorite...Ni Ay Wo (You love Me) said sort of like an order! Hyeon-Ju tried to teach us Korean but that proved to be futile. Pascal's unique sense of humor, Heong Ju's crazy antics and Carol's devious comments kept us laughing nonstop whenever we were together.

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We drove back to Ankara with them and the ride was just as entertaining as the previous evenings. We all learned a bit of Cantonese, Urdu, Spanish, French, and Turkish. It has to be said that hearing our friends from Hong Kong try to pronounce the French letter "J" was quite entertaining...we have a few videos of that..hopefully we are able to upload them!

Konya

Konya es la 5a ciudad mas grande de Turquia, Tiene muchisima historia pero lo mejor de esta ciudad son 2 cosas: La religion Sufi y la comida.
Aqui estuvimos solo dia y medio que fue suficiente como para que subiera 3Kgs... :) La comida es increiblemnte sabrosa y tienen un platillo que es preparado y sabe exactamente igual que la barbacoa mexicana. Aqui conocimos a unas personas maravillosas que nos invitaron a cenar a un restaurante que se supone tiene un platillo que esta dentro del top 10 de los platillos mas sabrosos del mundo (mi lengua es pagana y a mi personalmente me gusto mas la barbacoa...) tuvimos una platica muy interesante con ellos sobre la filosofia de Fetula Gulen.... el cual resulta ser un muy interesante personaje turco... pero no me quiero desviar del tema.

Esta ciudad fue la capital del imperio Seljuk (imperio itermedio entre los bizantinos y los otomanos) en medio de una colina esta la mezquita de aladino (no el de la lampara maravillosa) el cual fue el emperador Seljuk que mas construcciones hizo en este periodo de emperadores.
En esta ciudad murio Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī mejor conocido como Rumi fundador del Mevevli Order o mejor conocidos como Whirling Dervishes Los cuales son monjes musulmanes Sufis que rezan mediante bailes y oraciones su tumba esta aqu y es realmente impresionante.
Hay muchisimo que decir sobre los Sufis pero voy a tratar de ser breve. El Sufiismo esta dentro del Islam sin embargo hay una polemica entre si el Sufiismo es un tipo de filosofia de vida del Islam es una rama dentro del Islam (como ser Suni o Chiita). Los Sufis se consideran parte de todas las religiones y el mejor ejemplo es la definicion del Sufiismo dada por el creador de los 7 principios Sufis (Shaykh Ahmad Zarruq) “El sufiismo es una ciencia cuyo objetivo es la curacion del corazon para alejarlo de todo excepto de Dios”

(En las fotos abajo de la torre verde turquesa esta la tumbar de Rumi)

On the way to Cappadocia from Antalya we spent one day in Konya, the capital of the Selcuk Empire and home of Rumi . Rumi has been described by the BBC as the most popular poet in America. After Rumi's death, his followers founded the Mevlevi Order, better known as the Whirling Dervishes who worship in the form of music and dance.

We visited many sites including the Mevlevi Museum (a museum dedicated to the Sufi tradition and housing Rumi's tomb along with those of many of his family's), Alaeddin mosque (the royal mosque of the Selcuk Sultans), Inci Minaret Medrese ( a 13th century school with a higly ornamented facade),

We ate a Konyan specialty, etli ekmek(a long Turkish pizza which can be 1 meter long)..to me it seemed very similar to Pide found in other parts of Turkey, but we were assured by a local Konyan that Konya's etli ekmek is better than any Pide!

In Konya, we met up with another friend of a friend...actually my Turkish teacher's Turkish teacher, Mekmet bey. :) We had a great evening with him and other fellow teachers from his school. They treated us to a wonderful Konyan style meal of lamb prepared in just about every way. My favorite was a dish that is served in weddings of lamb cubes served over pureed roasted eggplant. This dish supposedly put this particular restaurant on the list of top ten restaurants in the world! Again as no day in Turkey would be complete without a sweet ending, we were invited to enjoy baklava at a local cafe before heading back to our hotel to sleep. Alejandro had 10 pieces! He loves baklava :)

About the hotel...well lets just say it was not one of the nicer places we stayed on this trip. Our Lets Go Guide failed us on this one!

Antalya

Ataturk (el padre de la ındependencıa Turca) descrıbıo a Antalya como el lugar mas bello del mundo. Yo no lo calıfıcarıa ası pero sın duda esta dentro de mi top 15.

La cıudad de Antalya esta dıvıdıda en la cıudad vıeja y la cıudad nueva. Nosotros solo exploramos la cıudad vıeja porque solo estuvimos 1 dia ahi. Con sus calles adoquinadas estrechas, casas del imperio otomano de madera, ruinas de iglesias y mezquitas recuerdan un poco a las calles de Guanajuato o San Miguel de Allende pero, a diferencia de estos dos, Antalya tiene unas vistas increibles al mar al final de cuentas es el mediterraneo.....
El mar es increiblemente azul, azul turquesa, y con solo eso se entiende porque un color hace referencia a un pais especifico.
La noche la hicimos lo mas turca posible…. Junto con un amigo australiano, Mark, que conocimos ese dia en el hostel, fuimos a jugar backgamon, fumamos en un nargil, vimos un partido de foot ball Beshiktaş vs. Liverpool, bebimos çay y cafe turco mientras escuchabamos nostalgicas canciones turcas cantadas por un trio turco con instrumentos tradicionales: saz.. un violin y un tambor.... :)


Ataturk, the father of Modern Turkey described Antalya as the most beuatiful place in the world. Alejandro doesn't seem to agree with this comment, but I would probably have to wait till a visit in the summer when we can really appreciate the mediterranean to comment on this :)
We only explored the old part of Antalya, as we were really only there for half a day. Since it was cold and raining, going to the beach was out of the question. Its cobblestone streets, wooden houses from the Ottoman empire, and ruins of ancient churches and mosques can only be matched by the beautiful blue, Turqouise blue of the Mediteranean!

This evening, we had as much of a Turkish night as possible. With our new Australian friend Mark, we went to a local nargile cafe to play backgammon, drink çay (turkish tea), watch a Besiktas vs Liverpool soccer game, and of course smoke nargile. We moved on to a bigger restaurant and ordered kahve (extremely concentrated and thick Turkish coffee!) and clapped along to live Turkish Folk music performed by a trio. One played a stringed lute like instrument called the saz, the second played the violin, and the third sang. What an awesome night.

Pamukkale

Una de las cosas que mas me agrado sobre los Museos arqueologicos de Turquia es que no hay una ruta establecida, la ciudad esta ahi y tu la exploras a tu antojo y Pamukkale / Hierapolis es uno de los mejores ejemplos.

Para ser mas claro voy a dividir Pamukkale en dos atracciones: las ruinas de la ciudad antigua de Hierapolis y las aguas termales con calcificaciones.

Las aguas termales con sus caprichosas formaciones de calcio es la principal atraccion de Pamukale. Se supone que Cleopatra se bano en estas aguas. Nosotros solo metimos las piernas y caminar sobre las blancas formaciones de calcio con el agua caliente cubriendote las piernas es una sensacion que realmente vale la pena.

Hierapolis es una de las ciudades romanas mas grandes y mejor conservadas en Turquia. Se piensa que aqui fue martirizado San Felipe (uno de los 12 apostoles) y en su memoria, en el lugar de su crucifixion se construyo una impresionante y muy diferente (arquitectonicamente hablando) iglesia de estilo bizantino. La iglesia tiene un centro octogonal rodeada de 8 cuartos rectangulares cada uno accesible mediante 3 arcos centrales. Aunque la Iglesia esta en ruinas es muy facil imaginar como fue en el pasado La Iglesia estaba afuera de la ciudad de Hierapolis asi que para visitarla hay que caminar aprox 10 min cuesta arriba. La manana que la visitamos habia neblina asi que la naturaleza colaboro para darnos una ambientacion de misterio a la ya de por si intrigante muerte de San Felipe con la, tambien, intrigante Historia y arquitectura de la Iglesia. (Ya que la iglesia esta construida sobre otra Iglesia, ademas fue incendiada y dinalmente destruida en un Terremoto, Los restos de San Felipe no se han podido encontrar a la fecha)

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On the way to Pamukale and Hieropolis we stopped in Aphrodisias. Aphrodisias was a small townin Asia Minor dedicatd to the Greek goddess of love Aprodite. Some interesting marble statues and parts of buildings have survived. We really weren[t in the mood this morning to see more rocks so we didn;t spend too much time here. I did however use my bargaining skills to get an evil eye necklace for 1 lira.

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ok on to Hierapolis and Pamukkale. Both are recognized as UNESCO World heritage sites.

Pamukkale means cotton castle in Turkish. Hot springs containing a high quantity of chalk led to the creation of these cotton castles or limestone formations. Even though the formations have been largely destroyed by humans, they are still an amazing site. Near the formations is the ancient city of Hierapolis. Hierapolis was founded as a thermal spa in the 2nd century BC.

One cool thing about Hierapolis is that you are pretty much free to roam around wherever you want. There are no ropes, guards, or anything to control where you can walk and where you can't, so we were able to climb and explore to our hearts content. However, its probably exactly this type of freedom to explore that resulted in the damage done to Pamukkale.

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We stayed in a queit family run pension near pamukkale. That evening, we tried to watch the news about the Bush Erdogan meeting in Washington DC, but my limited Turkish skills failed me. So we just played some backgammon and went to bed.

The Seven Churches of the Apocolypse

Las 7 Iglesias del Apocalipsis segun San Juan del nuevo testamento se encuentran en la region de Anatolia en Turquia.

La Apocalipsis se encuentra escrita de tal forma que pueden darsele muchas interpretaciones o mas bien ninguna interpretacion. Quizas la palabla Iglesia en el libro del apocalipsis refiere mas a la doctrina o poblacion del area a la que fueron dirigidas las cartas mas que a una Iglesia fisica. De cualquier forma 7 Iglesias Catolicas fueron construidas en las regiones a las que San Juan escribio las 7 cartas de la apocalipsis.

Las 7 Iglesias estan en ruinas unas mejor conservadas, pero todas ellas, o almenos las que visitamos, guardan cierto aire de misterio.

Las 7 Iglesias son: Eskihisar (Laodicea), Efes (Efeso), Bergama (Pergamo), Izmir (Smyrna), Akhisar (Thyatira), Sart (Sardis) y Alashehir (Filadelfia).

Nosotros visitamos solo las primeras 3. arriba las fotos de cada una.

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In the New Testament, seven churches of the Apocalypse are mentioned. These churches are all located around the area of Izmir, Bergama, and Pamukale. Saint John wrote seven letters of the Apocolypse and sent them to seven churches (which might actually be interpreted as 7 congregations of Christians rather than physical buildings... in any case Catholic churches were eventually built in each of these towns.) The Seven Churches are Eskihisar (Laodicea), Efes (Efeso), Bergama (Pergamo), Izmir (Smyrna), Akhisar (Thyatira), Sart (Sardis) y Alashehir (Filadelfia). The churches are now mostly in ruins... however some are a bit better preserved than others. We visited the first three.

Bursa and Bergama

Desafortunadamente nuestra visita a Bursa fue muy breve y no vimos mucho de la ciudad pero pasamos un excelente tiempo con un amigo que tenemos ahi. Llegamos de Itsambul a Bursa como a las 5 pm y nos encontramos con Cengiz el nos llevo a comer Iskender Kebaps que es un platillo de carne de cordero con una salsa turca delicioso... Despues fuimos a su casa jugamos OK con reglas que me invente, nos sirvio un platillo Bulgaro (el es originario de Bulgaria) platicamos de la vida, de deportes, de religion, del amor mientras el bebia Wisky y yo vodka al estilo turco..... medio vaso del licor con un par de hielos y ya!
Al dia siguiente partimos a Seljuk haciendo una parada en Pergama una ciudad antigua griega en ruinas en donde visitamos el templo de Dionisio, el templo de Zeus y el Santuario de Asclepius

En las fotos esta nuestro amıgo Gengız en bursa una foto del templo de Zeus (o lo que queda) y una foto de Farheen y yo en el templo de Zeus

We probably didn't really do justice to Bursa...but I guess we'll just have to return next time.

After sleeping in late, taking a bus from our hostel to the airport, renting a car at the airport, driving across all of Istanbul, past the Colgate plant I used to work at in Gebze, to Eskihisar, taking the car ferry over to the other side, and driving another 1.5 hrs, we finally reached Bursa at 5pm. While waiting for Cengiz, a friend of a friend who we were going to hang out with, I took the opportunity to go shopping. The famous Turkish towels are actually made in Bursa so ofcourse I had to pick up a couple of them! We met Cengiz and went out to eat Iskender Kebap...awesome! Then we went back to Cengiz's place, chatted about life, love, etc, listened to Turkish music and played a board game called OK using a combination of Mexican and Turkish rules. It proved to be quite a fun night.

The next day we left for Bergama. There we visited the ruins of the ancient city of Pergamon which is believed to have had a population of 150,000 at its height in the 1st century AD. We didn't eat anything interesting here :) However we did drive on to Izmir the same evening and there we enjoyed midye dolmasi (stuffed shells) again!