Action-packed weekend

A courtyard scene, similar to the Al Shabandar Palace Hotel we stayed at in Damascus Syria just before the violence escalated.

We had an action-packed weekend finally putting up our Damascus wallhanging in our middle east corner of the house, and celebrating the arrival of 3 Sling aircraft in Durban. On Friday we partied at Ayre Aviation whose new training plane arrived, our Sling ZDL also being delivered by Mike Blyth of The Airplane Factory, and our friends Marc and Lee whose Sling SAA flew back to Durban the same day too.

Fellow lecturers Tarryn and my daughter Kate-Lynn with Llewellyn at the Ayre Aviation celebration

Around-the-world celebrity and owner of The Airplane Factory delivers Sling ZDL to Dave

Getting back into the pilot seat after a 2 1/2 month gap

Llewellyn has the camera on zoom as we take to the skies

Friends celebrating the arrival of our two planes with instructor Brad

The new rainbow colours of ZDL

Click on the link to see more photos and my flying blog here.

 

Damascus, Syria

For some reason most of my photos of beautiful Damascus seem to have been overwritten by later pics with the same image numbers as my Damascus pics, so I seem to have lost them.

Having toured Jordan, which itself was incredible, we took a taxi up through Jordan on the road to Damascus from Amman. It was ridiculously cheap, like R200, for a 2 hour journey that took us into another country and border crossing all for that price.

Here are my only images of the border crossing and subsequently our palacial suite in the Al Shahbandar Palace Hotel in the old city in Damascus. (pics to follow.. my external drive is suddenly not working)

Al Shahbandar Palace Hotel in Damascus

The Road to Damascus

Next week we fly to Amman, Jordan, via Dubai and will spend a week in Jordan and the Dead Sea and then travel up on the road to Damascus for another week. Exciting stuff. We were going to Beirut but the embassy savages don't want South Africans there so you have to either have a familymember or friend there who will vouch for you before they will consider giving a "general security" approval. So we switched airtickets to Jordan and the people have been amazing and friendly. Through the website Couchsurfing we have free accommodation and will even be picked up at the airport. Amazing hospitality thanks.

Durban to Lebanon and Damascus

Co-incidentally the day after booking our tickets to Beirut and Damascus on direct Emirates flights from Durban -- woo hoo!!! no Johannesburg stop-over and wait-- this story appeared of a guy who hitch-hiked from Durban to Damascus. Our trip won't be so hectic, but am looking forward to see the world's oldest city - and ancient Mesopotamia with the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers of Babylon I learned about in history so many years ago.

Read more about Damascus here.