Author archive
21 May 2006
I had an easy day of exploration today. I walked to town and looked over the caldera. It was a truly stunning view. Somehow I didn’t expect the caldera to be on that side as it was obscured by all the buildings. Text continues after this gallery. While in town, I collected by […]
20 May 2006
Today I make my way from Dubai to my Aegean paradise, Santorini, while Kim turns around to head home to New Zealand. We had to wake at 0530 to get to the airport. We parted ways as we went to our respective gates. My gate seemed far too small for the number of people there. […]
19 May 2006
We have a full social calendar today, after having yesterday free for exploring Dubai’s malls and shops. Not that there’s much we wanted to buy. For lunch, we met Carolyn, Brad and their two children. They are from New Zealand and moved up over a year ago. They enjoy the lifestyle here and wouldn’t consider […]
17 May 2006
Above: Military helicopters at Sana’a airport. Leaving Yemen Leaving Yemen was sad for me. Sana’a had been my home for 5 weeks. I’ve never been to a school that’s been so cool. Where in the world would you find your teacher wearing a gun holster (with bullet holders) to class? I also loved the climate […]
15 May 2006
Visiting Jibla While Ibb is an important town for the region, the historic and touristic value of the area is actually at Jibla about 30 mins away by van. It was a nice hillside town. It is famous for its museum which was the Palace of Queen Arwa (1048–1138). She was reputed to be a […]
15 May 2006
Taizz stopover The plan for the day was to head to Taizz for a walkaround, before continuing to our nightstop at Ibb. We had breakfast of eggs, bread and tea at the hotel. Eelco went for a last walk in the old city of Zabid but we didn’t bother. To get to Taizz, we walked […]
14 May 2006
Getting to Zabid As a final exploration of Yemen, we are headed to the lowlands and surrounding highlands in the west of the country closest to the Red Sea. Kim and I, together with Eelco who speaks better Arabic, headed to the shared taxi stand near Bab Al Yemen around 0800. But we were redirected […]
13 May 2006
This morning, Kim realised that he had lost about EUR200 while in Shihara, made up of Japanese Yen and New Zealand dollars. He suspected that it may have been taken while we had gone for a walk after arrival in Shihara, despite having been given a padlock by our hosts. [Edit: I realised many years […]
12 May 2006
I didn’t sleep very well, waking at 0130 then dozing till 0630. Breakfast was served in our room and consisted of a sesame flat bread and a honey bread. You can’t go wrong with sweet stuff! Kim and I hesitantly used the horrible toilet, somewhat in fear of even worse ones on the road. Eelco braved […]
11 May 2006
Setting off Today we’re off on another adventure. Possibly the biggest adventure we’ll have in Yemen. We’re going to Shihara, halfway towards the border with Saudi Arabia. It’s a tribal region that’s considered the Wild West of Yemen. Yemen has many medieval type cities built high in accessible places. What makes this one different is […]