escape from the middle east - graeme robin. travel

Karen and Compass, Phe and Me - On Roads Without Lines

Escape from the Middle EastGraeme Robin ... Travel

Graeme Robin travels the world in his trusty old Fiat Tempra, and writes about his journeys. If you enjoy reading this, you should consider buying Graeme’s second book

‘Karen and Compass, Phe and Me - On Roads Without Lines - Book 2

Covering Graeme’s four month journey through:

ESTONIA AND THE BALTIC STATES, POLAND, UKRAINE, HUNGARY, ROMANIA, BULGARIA, TURKEY, GEORGIA, GREECE

- over 300 pages, with more than 600 colour photographs!

To buy BOOK 2, visit: http://www.perendale.com/browse/travel/robin

To purchase Graeme’s Book 2, visit: http://www.perendale.com/browse/travel/robin To purchase Graeme’s Book 2, visit: http://www.perendale.com/browse/travel/robin

About MeI was born in 1937, married Barbara in 1963, but lost her to a dreadful cancer 43 years later. I felt as if the world had stopped. Life was suddenly not as precious as it had been. I didn’t care that much.

But a change sort of evolved. I travelled to Europe. I bought an old car. Then a GPS. Then a compass. That made four of us – Karen (the robot voice on the GPS) and Compass (just that), Phe (for Fiat - a 1993 left-hand drive diesel sedan) and Me.

Suddenly it was not “I” but “We”. It was “Karen and Compass, Phe and Me”.

We started to drive around Scandinavia, Iceland, the Arctic Circle and into Russia all the time on minor roads, avoiding the major roads and highways as far as possible – in other words, “On Roads Without Lines”.

We were just wandering around on winding, single lane roads often unsealed, through small towns and villages, seeing the people at their normal everyday lives and work. Trying to get a feel for each country – trying to put a tag on it. I took a lot of photos and kept a daily journal. So a book evolved. Book 1.

Had this suddenly put meaning back into my life?

It felt good so instead of selling Phe at the end of the first four months I kept her for another four months of journeying this time behind what used to be called the “Iron Curtain” and another book evolved. Book 2.

It felt good so instead of selling Phe at the end of the second four months I kept her for another four months of journeying this time around Spain, Portugal and Morocco and another book evolved. Book 3.

It felt good so instead of selling Phe at the end of the third four months I kept her for another four months of journeying this time to Italy, the Middle East and the Balkan Peninsular and another book evolved. Book 4.

All have been marvellous experiences of discovery - so good that I would like it to continue for the rest of my life!

How long is this old bugger going to last!


Back into Jordan and as Banjo Patterson said “And he turned their heads for home!”

The rest of Friday 22nd October

As soon as we had crossed the border back into Jordan at Aqabah there was a symbolic something because it felt that we had turned the corner on this journey, and were now heading to England and a warm barn for Karen, Compass and Phe. As for Me, I will be on a flight out of Heathrow on 21st November or maybe a little earlier depending on how things turn out. The first hurdle is the one of Syria but I have been very careful not to have anything around that smacks of Israel – no brochures or leaflets, no journal, no ATM receipts or fuel dockets, and most importantly no maps - so fingers crossed, we should be okay.

There seemed to be little point in stopping in Aqabah for yet another night (although I do know a terrific hotel in the main street) as we have already spent too many nights here, and as we will be backtracking over familiar ground we might as well get on with it. Over the next week or so we will head north out of Jordan, through Syria to Turkey and from there via either Bulgaria or Greece to the Balkans.

The craggy mountains coming out of Aqabah really are something else.

It took us all the way until Amman to find a hotel – and at seven o’clock I was really ready for one – and I think Phe had had enough too! It’s odd how it has been so difficult to find hotels since we left Turkey. There are plenty in the big cities and the very touristy areas, but as for the solitary pub in the small country town – they just don’t seem to exist, well at least I haven’t been able to find them. So today we were almost into the centre of Amman before I saw the first. They were full up but the second had a bed for me, took my money and said goodnight.

That was it!

Saturday and Sunday 24th October

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Phe has cost next to nothing for breakdowns and repairs on this trip but there are a couple of things that need attention, such as a front wheel alignment and a pair of new tyres and shockers, plus more attention to the starter motor which has refused to turn over a couple of times recently. A tap with a heavy screwdriver has fixed that problem enough to get her engine ticking but better to get it fixed now rather than later.

Jordan is a cheap country so I thought I would be smart and spend two or three nights back at that nice Hotel Joude in Irbid in the north of Jordan, and have Phe attended to.

Irbid is a big city and I couldn’t find the nice hotel. I had almost given up trying to find it again but then I remembered the name “Joude” and a taxi driver led me to it – for only 3 dinars. His name was Basan and was he a nice Jordanian taxi driver with his smattering of English? He sure was! Once we had found the Hotel Joude and I had checked in, I asked him about mechanics around the immediate area but he said there were none here down-town, but he offered to lead me to the district where the mechanics were and would bring me back to the hotel if we found one to do the work.

But the language barrier cruelled it again because the blokes he took me to wanted to take the car 90 kms back to Amman to get Fiat shockers and I couldn’t get the message through that “non-Fiat” shockers would be fine. So the whole idea died before it was born. As for the wheel alignment and the starter motor – forget it.

Somewhere between here and the UK we are sure to come across a good reliable mechanic who can speak good English and who has a well equiped workshop right next to a wonderful hotel at a cheap price. (Tell him he’s dreaming!)

So Saturday and Sunday were Phe days anyway with a nice car wash and a general clean up inside and out. I touched out the minor scratches with some touch-up paint and a good dose of upholstery cleaner on the upholstery. Who’s a pretty girl now! We are going to head off to Syria in the morning.

And the detail. Last time we entered Syria they wanted a heap of money for a diesel tax for Phe so this time I need to have plenty of Syrian pounds at the ready – but the bank’s are shut until Monday and the ATMs here in Jordan only dispense Jordanian dinar. And this city of Irbid is the last town be-fore the border. A job for Monday morning before we set sail.

My Impressions of Israel and Palestine after Seven Nights

This is going to be a hard task as Israel is a very complicated country and the few days I spent driv-ing around could no more than scratch the surface. Physically the country is not large being around 450kms from north to south and 75kms east to west. The west coast runs down the Mediterranean Sea from Lebanon in the north to Egypt to the south. To the East is Syria and Jordan. A simple rectan-gle.

Not so simple though because much of the country is Islamic Palestinian and it is the Palestinian’s quest for a “homeland” that in recent years has created much of the violence and unrest. My road map shows the areas which are under “Full Palestinian control” shaded in brown – I stopped count-ing at 30 separate areas – and the areas under “Joint Israeli-Palestinian control” shaded in yellow – I stopped counting at 40 of these – and the rest of the country is in Israeli control. Each of the Palestin-ian areas are like little islands in the sea of Israel and it’s army.

Another complication that seems to have come off the boil in recent years is the area in the north-east – the Golan heights – where the population is another mix of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam but this time much of the population are Syrian because the Golan Heights was Syrian territory up until the 6 day war of 1967 when Israel seized it all but offered it back in return for a lasting and meaning-ful peace agreement. This agreement never came about with Iran and radical groups like Hezbolah muddying the waters.

Just at the south of the Golan Heights is the Sea of Galilee with the River Jordan running through it as it wends it’s way for another 100kms southwards to eventually dribble into the Dead Sea 400 metres below sea level. This section of the River Jordan between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea is the boundary between Jordan and Israel. West of the river has become know as the “West Bank” and is a difficult area - most of it in Palestinian control with high unemployment and poverty.


Then over on the coast in the south west corner of Israel there is the Gaza Strip – a piece of land no more than 40kms long by less than 10kms wide. It is under full Palestinian (Hamas) control. I was refused entry into the Gaza strip – not by the Palestinians but by the Israeli army which has border posts with razor wire and armed sentries and tanks and stuff at every road entry into the Strip. There are 6 entry points and we rattled the gates at 3 of them. In this case I guess the hard line of the Israeli army is to do with the equally hard line Hamas, the group which, I understand, controls the Gaza Strip.

Cities that I recognise from Sunday school, like Nazareth, and Jericho, and Jerusalem, and Bethlehem, are all cities under full Palestinian control but in each case the roads into the city are blockaded by an Israeli army post, so it’s almost as if each of these places are under siege. In Bethlehem I stayed at a hotel with very friendly husband and wife (Palestinian) owners. She, Yvonne, had lived for 16 years in the USA so language was not a problem, told me that she had never visited Jerusalem just 10kms up the road because to leave Bethlehem requires an Israeli army permit – a big hassle!

Am I painting a pro-Palestinian picture? I hope not.

We entered Israel from Jordan on a Friday (late) afternoon. The border guards with their rifles slung at the ready were not in uniform and just wore random coloured tee shirts and jeans. These men were not young casual conscripts doing their compulsory service but seasoned soldiers protecting their country’s border from the outside violent world. They were serious, fit, and alert. All countries have their customs inspection which sometimes means a casual look into the Phe’s boot and in rare instances I have to lift the bonnet for an inspection of the engine compartment. Not Israel! Oh no! I had to empty everything out of the boot onto two luggage trolleys and take them into a building and load them through an xray machine the same as in airports. While the xray machine was doing its bit, Phe was driven away into a workshop where they went through her like a dose of salts. She was up on a hoist and examined from top to toe, even the rear windows were wound down and the door cavities examined.

The whole exercise was skilful, thorough and professional. I was put out at having to empty all of my belongings out of the car but then I got to accept that this is their country, and their borders, and their neighbours - most of whom are unfriendly towards Israel – and it is their right to do anything they want, to protect their country.

That’s the Israel I met in the first hour and a half.

Then there was dinner in the dining room of the guest-house I lobbed into just a few miles from the border. As different as chalk and cheese !

It was a big dining room and dinner was from six o’clock. A waitress led me to my table – set for one – which had a carafe of cold water, a carafe of iced orange juice and a bottle of red wine. And I did justice to the wine, orange juice and a wonderful meal.

However the interesting part was learning a little about the Israeli ways. At one table there were two couples and two children. The men had white shirts, black pants and skull caps, and the women were well dressed in street clothes. They covered the bread with a napkin and then they all stood for a prayer before the meal. At another table there was a big family group of twenty adults and children. Maybe a wedding anniversary or a birthday. The group took their time over their meal, said prayers before and sang a number of gentle rhythmic songs during the meal. It all had the air of quiet, of gentle, of softness.

Why not – they have the army looking after them.

It was another 19th of the month and I am at the wailing wall in Jerusalem. I have put on a skull cap and have both hands on the wall. Why I am doing this I don’t know. The tears are welling as I think of Barb. It’s been three years and ten months almost to the hour and it seems just like it was yesterday. I love her so dearly and miss us not being together so badly, it hurts. And the effect of this wall. I didn’t make a conscious effort to be part of it. I just wandered down the ramp to take a photo and there was a basket of skull caps and every one else was either wearing one or were just borrowing one out of the basket, so I did the same. Then into a short tunnel where a lot of men were praying or reading earnestly. I sat in a spare chair and quietly watched for a while and then went back out into the hot sunshine at the base of the wall. I thought of Barb, and the day, and the wall was like a magnet drawing me to it. There was a space, so I placed both hands on the warm smooth soft Jerusalem rock of the wall – and wept.


We were refused entry into the Gaza Strip area and soon after picked up a hitcher – a Jewish bloke, Iesiz, maybe in his early thirties. One thing led to another and he asked me if I liked lamb and I said “Yes – does that mean I am invited home to lunch?”

His wife, Sharma, and he have four daughters under six, the youngest barely a toddler. Iesiz drives a bus to Tel Aviv and back from 5 in the morning until five in the evening with just half a day on Friday and Saturdays off. The lunch was a glass of water, a crumbed lamb steak and some chopped toma-toes with a tasty dressing. Five years ago this couple had been living in the Gaza but were re-located by their government maybe 10kms into a specially built village of around 100 houses outside of the Gaza and into Israeli territory. Their village is one of seven in a small cluster. This family of six were living in a tiny little concrete box with a living room and two other rooms. Outside is hot desert sand. Hardly a tree. Almost desolate. I saw not one other person in the village while I was there. They have no car and even though there were small kids bikes outside I saw no Mum and Dad bikes. He has his job, which he loves, but all Sharma has to look forward to is that maybe, in a year or so, the govern-ment may get them into a bigger house with five rooms in another village. They pay rent to the Israeli Government.

Another face of Israel. At the depressing end.

It is just too easy for me as an outsider to cast judgement on a situation that according to the world press is a tinder box, and I must resist. However I really hope that a long-term and lasting solution is found because the people affected are nice people and be they Moslem, Jewish or Christian they deserve better out of life than they are getting!

The Syrian Border - Yes or No!

Monday 25th October

He just had one look at the passport and said,

“You cannot come to Syria because you have been to Palestine and Israel!”

I really have stuffed this up – big time! All of that trouble I went to to avoid having an Israeli stamp in the passport was all for nought, as even “Blind Freddy” could see that we had been to Israel by just looking at the dates and places of the JORDANIAN stamps.

The stamps showed I had departed Jordan right on the Israeli border and a week later re-entered back into Jordan once again on the Israeli border. Where the hell had we been for that week – float-ing up in the clouds? The only way it could have possibly worked would be to have had the Jordanian entries on loose leaf the same as the Israeli entries. How stupid am I!

But in some sort of punishment or penance I was made to sit for two hours while the passport went to some passport department or other, for whatever. Then we had another lengthy curfuffle trying to re-enter Jordan after being out of the country for barely three hours. So by the time we were back at Irbid I was not a happy camper. Not happy at all!

There was one happy chappy though, and that was the bloke at the Great Western Money Exchange who this morning had made a commission on selling me 15,000 Syrian pounds for the Jordan dinars I had got from the ATM, and then later in the day another commission for taking them all back again.

There really is only one option now and that is to get the boat from Israel to Greece. We are in Jor-dan – we can’t go north to Lebanon because they don’t want any smelly diesel Phes in their country. We can’t go to Syria – have just found that out! We can’t go west to Egypt without one of those bloody “Carnet De Passages En Douane”. We could go east into Iraq and then drive to Turkey that way, but that would mean doing time in Amman trying for a visa and I am not really in the mood for that sort of stuff at this stage of our journey. So that only leaves Israel and the slow boat to (China) Greece.

I could fly out easily enough, leaving Phe here some-place and come back next year with a clean fresh passport, but I am sure the Syrians would be ready for tricks like that.

No, it has to be the boat. I know I am dodging the issue of what to do with Phe when we have run out of journeys in this part of the world, and I don’t think anyone could quite understand just how and why I have become so attached to this old rust bucket. I am not an overly sentimental bloke and certainly never over a car before, never ever!


But Phe and I have been together for more than four months of each of the last four years and have travelled 130,000 kms together – just she and I, alone, the two of us, through mountains and deserts, huge cities and tiny villages, through snow and the heat, rain and hail, night and day.

Warsaw Vienna Madrid Stockholm Bucharest Istanbul

Prague Rome Athens Madrid Kiev Helsinki

and then exotic cities like

Casablanca Damascus Jerusalem Reykjavik Bethlehem Tunis

We have driven in the Red Square right past the Kremlin in Moscow.

We have driven down the Champs Elyees in Paris

We have driven on the Hans Christian Anderson Strasse in Copenhagen

Why would I not love this little French/Italian bird!

I tell her to shut her eyes when we are in a wreckers yard looking for spare parts, so how can I bring myself to selling her to some hoon guy that would love to beat the hell out of her. In the back of my mind I have the thought that perhaps next year we could tackle the journey across the top of Russia from Moscow to Vladivostok, and back around Asia – but that could just be a pipe dream.

No, it has to be the boat. I’ll work out my Phe problem another day.

???????????? - What Now!

Tuesday 26th October

Who would believe that we are at Irbid AGAIN!

I certainly can’t. But we are!

It’s my own fault because I had been warned often and strongly enough that just a sniff of Israel would be enough to bar entry into Syria – and I believed the advice but just had not thought it through seri-ously enough. And in the end we were busted!

We were back at the Hotel Joude (again!) around midday and this time I had no trouble driving right up to the front door – no need for guidance from Basan the cabbie this time. I was really quite proud of myself because Irbid is a big city and difficult for a stranger to navigate. Maybe it was only luck – Barb smiling on us once again perhaps.

It took only a couple of phone calls to Israel to tee up a boat out of Haifa and so we will take off for Israel in the morning.

There are two cargo boats that have regular runs from Israel (Haifa) to Athens but the first one I called will take Phe but not me – no passengers. - so I would have to get down to Tel Aviv and then fly to Athens. Sounds a bit messy and just as expensive as the second option which is the “Hellenic Master” sailing the day after tomorrow. The agents for the “Hellenic Master” were the same people I approached when we were in Haifa more than a week ago and the price-tag was unchanged from then – a neat arm plus a leg!

I had a beaut afternoon in Irbid. Not every tourist’s cup of tea, but armed with a good map of the town I set out for the industrial area where Basan, the cabbie, had led us in search of someone to fit some new shockers to Phe’s front end just a few days ago. It was right over the other side of the city but what a wonderful experience just being shuffled from one place to the next by a few people I came across that could speak English.

One bloke, a Jordanian home on holiday – he said he had lived in Sydney for almost a year and now lives in Canada – told me the first to the right, then first to the right again, then first left, and the third shop on the left. When he said ‘shop’ he meant ‘workshop’ because that’s what they all were, work-shops of some kind or the other – mechanics, panel beaters, tyre places, you name it and it was here in this area.


His instructions were spot on and in no time at all the four wheels had been re-balanced and the front wheel alignment checked. I all but walked out of the place at the start because they had no Eng-lish at all and the bloke wrote a ‘20’ in the dust on the bonnet, and then a ‘70’. I thought he meant 70 dinars which was ridiculous - I am only a tourist sucker for a certain distance and then they have to get real! But then after some more gesturing and loud Arabic – if people can’t understand you there is a lot better chance of getting through to you if they shout! - I got the message that he wanted to know at what speed the tremor in the steering wheel came in.

Of course, a logical question. Does it come in at 20 km/h or 70 km/h? I wrote a ‘100’ in the dust and everyone was happy. They set to work and 15 dinars later the job was finished and the vibration eliminated. I have been meaning to get this done since July would you believe.

Then another series of questions trying to find an auto electrician for the starter motor problem. People were so nice and helpful. I asked one man selling auto lubricants, who promptly locked his shop, hopped into Phe and led me a couple of blocks away to the auto electrician’s workshop – and then disappeared. Unfortunately Phe was well behaved and started perfectly every time so as far as the electrician was concerned there was nothing to fix.

The shocker problem remained unresolved though, apart from another opinion (this is the third) that the ‘clunking’ is from a worn shock absorber. Fiats are known in Jordan but there are very few of them, so spares are not on the shelf. There will be some place in the next three weeks I am sure.

But as I said it was a great afternoon meeting a whole range of the locals all of whom were most friendly and helpful – all of them, with no exceptions.

This is just what I love most about touristing.








Bye Bye to The Middle East

Wednesday & Thursday 28th October

It’s half past four on Thursday and at last I can breathe a sigh of relief because we are all snug as a bug-in-a-rug on board the ‘Hellenic Master’, a cargo ship due to leave Haifa in Israel at nine o’clock tonight. I was nervous about this boat, because if the boat thing didn’t work then I had no idea what I could have done. But it has worked out okay and surely there will be no foul-ups between here and Greece.

The agents in Haifa for the Caspi Shipping Co were really beaut. I got to their office around four yes-terday afternoon and the lady – Milady – inspired confidence. The documents I had were exactly what she needed and all I had to do was to come back with 4500 shekels in the morning and she would tell me exactly where to go and when.

So is now the time to have a last meal in the Middle East?

I certainly had a couple of beers – the first for I can’t remember how long. There was none available in Irbid (although the hashish smoke was so thick from all the “hubbly bubbly’s” at the cafes and hotels that the whole town stank of it,) but there was not a chance of buying a beer for love nor for money. Strange that, because there were a number of liquor shops in Amman and in Aqabah and after all it’s all the same Jordan.

Anyway, getting back to the agents at Caspi. I was back this morning with the cash and got the bundle of documents and instructions to be at gate 5 of the passenger terminal at three this afternoon, and as I was leaving their office the friendly fellow – Francis - said he would see me at three. He was going to be there to hold my hand. And he was, and I was pleased he was too, because the process of get-ting onto a cargo boat is heaps different to the car ferries we have seen so much of.

On the beach just out of Haifa – it’s almost winter but it’s still warm – perhaps 28 degrees with just a whiff of a breeze and people sun-baking and swimming – well not swimming,

they just go in and get wet. But the Israelis don’t like taking their rubbish home with them! The beach was littered with plastic bags and plastic cups and bottles just laying where they have been dropped. I suppose someone has the job of cleaning up after them during the

night or early morning. But the water is clear and clean. Quite remarkable really.


It looks like being a long boring trip though, because this is no cruise liner with lounges and bars and swimming pools. So far I have been introduced to my cabin – plenty of room there – the passenger’s dining room – there are ten chairs but I was the only one for dinner tonight – and the TV room. There is a crew of twenty four – sixteen Filipinos and nine Greeks - but the only one I have met so far is Denis, va Filipinos of around thirty. Maybe he could be called the Purser for it is his job to look after the passengers, (only me), and keep the place tidy and clean, but one of the other Filipinos re-ferred to him as the ‘mess-boy’ which seems a little down the scale from “Purser”. What frightens me a bit is that it’s going to take until Monday morning to arrive at Pireus – the port of Athens – which means three days and four nights of doing absolutely nothing. Now I will get to know how all of those Syrians and Turks and Albanians and Tunisians must feel like with nothing to do and all day in which to do it.

So to get off to a good start I was in bed by eight o’clock and asleep by five minutes past.

Not so fast Robbie!

The next I knew was that Denis was standing next to my bed and saying something about “must see immigration down ship.” It took me a few minutes to remember where I was and just who the hell Denis was but by the time I was back into shirt and slacks I had that awful feeling that things were go-ing to go pear shaped again! Immigration! What could it possibly be about? With jovial Francis by my side we had sailed through the Israeli formalities in record time – just a breeze.

Anyway, I have to flow with the tide, so here I was being marched down the cargo deck by Denis and another small Filipino bloke when there was a car coming up the ramp towards us – and it’s jovial Francis in his cute little Mazda 2, but not so jovial right now having been dragged out of his home to re-organise some foreign drongo who can’t look after himself. He put me in the back seat and we drove down to the dockside where there were a couple of uniforms from the immigration depart-ment waiting. They both dived onto my passport as if it contained the secrets of life, leafing from page to page and firing questions at me all the while. “Why so many stamps?” then “You go to Tunisia!” Yes. “Why?” “You go to Albania!” “Why you go to Albania?” “And Morocco!” “Why so many stamps?’ Then “What is your profession?”

Was that the key? “What is your profession?” So many stamps, so much travelling, so much money - there must be a crook here somewhere.

By now I was starting to relax a bit because it was pretty clear that they were fishing for something that was not there – and that proved right because after quarter of an hour or so they gave me back the passport, jovial Francis started smiling again, and I went back to bed – but not to sleep for quite a while because it concerns me that this is the third or fourth time when a border crossing has fouled up, and I am thinking that it will certainly be a good idea to get a fresh and brand new passport be-fore setting off again. There is not a lot of clean pages left on this one anyway.

The ‘Hellenic Master’ eventually pulled away from the Haifa dock at around eleven o’clock and it was only then that I felt reasonably confident that I had managed to get Phe out

of the Middle East – but I will only be really certain when we clear customs in Greece. It’s certainly looking okay right now though.


Cruising the Mediterranean?

Friday Saturday & Sunday 31st October

It wasn’t too difficult filling in the time aboard the cargo boat because for one thing we had a stop at Lemesos on the Greek side of Cypress for the best part of ten hours to pick up almost a ship full of refrigerated trailers and 40 foot shipping containers filled with I don’t know what – all going from Greek Cypress to Greece.

One of the blokes said the refrigerated trailers could be carrying oranges or orange juice – but that’s one hell of a lot of orange juice. And these are only the 20 or so trailers on the

top deck - plenty more below!

It was beaut having a birds-eye view of how a container terminal operates – even though this one would not be considered large. I remembered a book a friend had given me before we left home and that helped to pass the time quite nicely.

And I have had time to reflect especially on the border incidents. The Syrian one was my own stupid fault and it may come back to bite me in years to come if I want to go to some of the Islamic coun-tries that dislike Israel, but on Wednesday there had been another big fuss while we were trying to get out of Jordan – into Israel – as the bloke could not bring himself to give me a ‘departure’ stamp simply because he could not find an ‘arrival’ stamp for when we entered Jordan at Aqabah from Israel just a few days earlier.

“Why does it matter” I asked. “I am here, Phe is here and we want to get out not to get in!” But no, he had to see the ‘arrival’ stamp. I was shunted into another office with three blokes trying to solve the problem of where the missing stamp was. I suggested that maybe the Aqabah bloke had forgot-ten to stamp the passport. That went down like a lead balloon! They made phone calls to Aqabah, searched the passport over and over again, questioned me about where I was on what dates and did I have another passport? It was made no better with the sparse English.

We were coming up to an hour and a half when I went back to the car and got an envelope with all the old bits of paper relating to Jordan border crossings, took it back to their office and tipped it out onto the desk. They found the stamp in no time at all. It was on a red application form that I had filled in.


Sure, I guess I was wrong in not knowing that the Aqabah bloke had stamped a bit of paper rather than the passport, but really, I think many of these blokes have nothing much to do and all of a sudden “Oh here’s a problem – let’s make the most of this problem.” I don’t know what would have hap-pened if I had not been able to find that stamp or had thrown all the paper out with the rest of the rubbish.

There is a message here though and in future I will be more disciplined in having an envelope for each border crossing and will keep that envelope until well clear of that particular country.

Then only quarter of an hour after that incidence, I had got off to a bad start going into the Israeli border because I tried to take a photo of a security guard with his rifle. And he spotted me.

That put me on top of their list of terror suspects for the day and led to another grilling, but it was only near the end of the process that I did lose my cool when the sheila at their bank robbed me on the exchange rate for my remaining Jordanian dinars and then wanted to charge me 193 shekels for just twenty four hours car insurance. Last time we were here I thought that 250 shekels for a week’s cover was exorbitant – way over the top - and now almost the same amount for just twenty four hours cover. Stinkers. And there was no alternative. Car insurance is compulsory and the number of days insurance then becomes the number of days on the visa – so if you try to cheat it will catch up at the other end.

I reckon I heard Phe say “Calm down Robbie – it’s only money.”

Why is she always right?

Greece - From the south towards the northern border into Macedonia

Monday 1st November

We arrived at Pireus – the port near Athens – just before noon yesterday and a bloke named Kostus, from the Caspi Shipping Company, was there to help with the formalities of getting us all onto Greek soil. Smooth going for me but not so with Phe who needed to pass through customs - being an im-port - and customs don’t work on Sunday arvos, so it’s to be another night on the “Hellenic Master” for all of us. Not that that hurt very much it was just that it was a bit frustrating being in Greece but not being able to make use of the time. However we were out and free before lunchtime today and heading as far north as we could go. The target is Macedonia, but I doubt we could make it in one day, especially with such a late start.

Have had a great run on this beaut road going west from Pireus. The country is green because even on the rocky hillsides the grass has shot up with the help from some Autumn rain. Not much good for agriculture around here – just a few pines and other small trees, but it is a beautiful sunny day, no wind, just nice, maybe in the early twenties. And there is some cotton growing here in Greece and on hilly land too so I guess the water comes in on their big water spray systems you see a lot of. The cotton plants are different to Syria, these a re quite small – barely 60 cms maybe 80 but not up to shoulder height as in Syria.

I wonder if I had mentioned shepherds with goats when we were here last – I have certainly seen a few today in our trip right up the middle of the mainland.

More cotton.

Then I saw these Greek farmers picking the cotton with a harvester that looks a little like a small grain stripper – it leaves the plant intact but picks up a lot of the cotton. There seems to be a lot left on thebut I guess it is only the daggy bits and the main flower has been collected. Straight after the harvester there is a slasher that cuts the plants off 10 cms from the ground and then a plough to till the soil ready for the next crop.


It’s machine cut and then dumped into a wire mesh trailer behind a tractor and carted to a collection point where a vacuum tube sucks it out of the trailer and through a process

(which could include removing stray leaves and debris) into bales.

The bales find their way into trucks and away to the cotton gin. The farmer weighs his load at the weighbridge on entry to the collection point and is weighed empty on the way out for a pretty simple accounting system.

It’s a lot less labour intensive than the manual method in Syria where it is picked by hand and then stuffed into hessian bales but my guess is that there is a lower yield per acre here in Greece than in Syria – that’s my guess!

We are driving on E 65 just north of Lamia right through to Karditsa and beyond, and cotton farming is pretty big time as it has just gone on and on for miles. We may be at the tail end of the harvest.

Just before the turn-off to Ioannina ther are these big spectacular rock formations.


And the towns nearthe rocks appear to be pretty popular destinations for the walkers of Greece.

It’s cold – first time for yonks - but it is certainly cold now.

By the time we got to the town of Grevena I had had about enough for one day so it was a bed at a nice hotel (a choice of two) in the forest just above the town and a simple snack dinner down at a pub in the town itself and an early night. We are less than 100 kms from the northern border of Greece with Macedonia so we should be into the Balkans before lunch time tomorrow.








Last morning in Greece - Macedonia this arvo!

Tuesday 2nd November

Photo coal powered power stations up in the north of Greece – I counted five and then a sixth just over the border into Macedonia. There must be a hefty coal resource in these mountains to warrant building so many stations so close to each other.

The mountains are just a blanket of smog – thick, grey/brown smog . There is no other word for it other than smog.

Airborne filth!

I think this was the first of the five and the polution got progressively worse. I doubt the steam from the cooling towers would be doing any harm, but the stuff coming from the tall

chimneys is not nice!

There has to be another culprit surely! You wouldn’t think the power stations alone could create such a problem – but I could not see one. It reminds me of a couple of months back when we were pass-ing through Elbasan in Albania. At least they had a steel mill or whatever it was to blame, but here I can only see the smoke from the power station chimneys. I wish we were able to get up higher for a better view. The town is Ptolenaida – not a place I would like to raise my kids!

Another thing that struck me yesterday and again today is the corn. It is still standing in the fields – acres and acres of it - and it is dead set brown and so dry that it is hardly able to stand on it’s own. I guess it will be for fodder although I did see one woman collecting the cobs into a wheelbarrow - maybe she will be grinding it into flour for her own use – and on another occasion a harvester turn-ing the whole crop into mulch, for stock feed I guess. There is a lot of corn still standing.

And there is some light snow on the mountain tops – just a whisper.

We should be in Macedonia early this afternoon.

Graeme's BOOK 2 'Karen and Compass, Phe and Me - On Roads Without Lines - Book 2'

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BOOK 2 covers Graeme’s four month journey through:

Estonia and the Baltic States

Poland

Ukraine

Hungary

Romania

Bulgaria

Turkey

Georgia

Greece


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