Day 2

Well .. day two did not disappoint. The adventure got even a bit stranger. Couple of scary times .. but are funny now in retrospect. As it turns out, I ended up with te wrong climb group leaving the Van Airport for Dogubayazit ... the portal town for Mt. Ararat. Lot's of yelling and confusion at the airport .. and no one seemed to know anything for sure .. so I just jumped onto the first van to away from Van .. so to speak. 

Everything went well for about a half hour .. but as my driver was checking his list and found out I was with the wrong group ...  he got a bit upset and was worried he'd left his real passenger at the airport. We were almost to Dogubayazit then, and he just put me out on the side of the road about a mile from town to head back for his client. Saying something like "don’t worry your guide find you!"

Ararat from Near Iranian Border

Wow! That was one heck of a pickle. I had no idea how to dial the trekking company... since all of our correspondences... and could not find a local number anywhere. So I parked myself under a shady cottonwood tree, and used the Android smart phone I borrowed from Deb to set up a mobile hotspot. Then linked my laptop to the internet and sent the manager of the trekking company Joanna Saltik to explain my predicament.

To my amazement she replied almost immediately, saying that my real group and my guide Musa was only about an hour away. Ya! Right! Sure enough about an hour later (a really long hour!) This van pulls up and the guys sticks his head out the window "Tony?”... Yup that's me and I'm damn glad to see you. So I got in and we headed on like nothing ever had happened. 

The amazing thing was here I was, sitting on a military grade green duffel bag under a tree with a laptop out... and 100 cars passed by and did not pay a bit of attention to me! I'm grown my beard out long just to fit it... so maybe they thought I was another Jihadi on my way to Syria!

On a bright note ... I got to meet the other members of my group... all from Poland, and 4 of which are very attractive, single, thirty-something adventurous Gals. Three of which speak outstanding $English, and another that is fluent in French ... so they are being great translators for me. Hope to get each of the group's "story" and post here before the blog is done. Things are definitely looking up!

Trucks Queue up at Iranian Border

Guard Tower at Iranian Border

 Day 3 was much tamer as we hired a driver to take us sigh-seeing... with the obligatory "cultural experience" before beating ourselves up on the mountain. There was where I had another mild scare. Our driver was taking us to see a local attraction... a big hole in the ground caused by an impact meteor. The signs saying "Iran Border" kept getting smaller and smaller numbers... until there we were right at the border crossing... and he just kept going ... "hell" I thought ... we’ve just been kidnapped.  Then all of a sudden he makes a sharp left turn ... not 5 feet from the gate... and heads out into the middle of the desert on this beaten up dirt track. Whew!  I’ve got to say my pulse got above 100 for just a little bit. 

Noah'S Ark? Sorry Lou, no Holy Water yet!

 After the meteor crater, we went back north and up into the mountains on the other side of the valley from Ararat, headed out to see the "Noah's Arc" site that a lot of Evangelical Christians have been pushing as "the place" on Mt. Tendurek for years. I even remember a National Geographic from back in the late 80's or early 90's about the site. The place was way up in the middle of nowhere, the poor old tourist van overheated on the way.  There was even on old, now rundown and more or less abandoned visitor's center at the site. One old Kurdish man... had to be in his eighties.  Acted as the caretaker. We'll I've attached a picture of the site ... you tell me? sorry looks like a big rock to me! I've seen similar if not identical formations near Fossil Falls in The Owen's valley of California. Heck! Maybe Noah landed there too!

Ararat looking back from the Mount Tendurek Site.... Ark must be up there? Somewhere!

Finally, headed back down to Dogubayazit on some old dirt back roads passing through a bunch of Kurdish Nomad villages. Looked a lot like the April in the desert terrain near the Poppy Park in northern LA County of California. Complete with lupines and poppies. Except these poppies are big and red, and contain opium! Domesticated fields of these Things in Afghanistan are used to produce most of the heroin that ends up in Europe and the USA. 

 We stopped off to see a late 18th century Ottoman fortress … Ishak Pasha palace build by built by the Pasha ruling family .. . Between 1685 and 1784. Classical example of Ottoman style architecture. Interesting place complete with harem rooms and dungeons. Those dungeons were pretty amazing. Once you went in there... it was for sure... you weren’t coming out!

Ishak Pasha Palace

The group of us are walking downtown Dogubayazit tonight to catch some of the after-dark Ramadan activities. I just heard the 7:30 call to prayer at the Mosque. So sundown, and the feast of ... are soon to begin. I feel totally foreign here .... but its an interesting culture and I might as well learn what I can. To quote Mark Twain  ... "travel is fatal to misconception, self-righteousness, and bigotry." Hope he's right!

Tomorrow, we begin the climb into base camp... so if I can get cell reception, the blog will be pretty brief. But will try to update.