Road to Palmyra

Approaching sandstorm

On the road to Palmyra

Do not miss this turnoff

April 12

Got the car today, took only five minutes to walk to car rental but much longer to drive back to hotel in traffic. The roads in city are jammed and traffic control nonexistence with no traffic lights, mostly one way streets, no lane lines, and dividers on two way streets. Traffic seems to be a big game of chicken with several vehicles all headed into the same space. Was hoping it would get better outside of town but road construction and blowing dirt complicated things. Then the last one hundred miles was a big dust storm with only a few feet of visibility. Every big truck or bus would rock our little car and there were no shoulders or places to pull over so we just plodded on. We are now in Palmyra and the dust is to thick to see any of the ruins. If you face the wind with you feet together you will be blown over, must really brace yourself. But altogether an excellent adventure which will even get better when the wind stops. Just found out there were two bad accidents because of dust storm, one involved two busses and in the other a car ran into the back of a bus.

Surprise, tried to put up photos on the blog and we were blocked. We were afraid this would happen. My first time in Syria I couldn't get to my web site. Got the message- FORBIDDEN. Last year got the the message- ACCESS DENIED. Was happy to see we could blog when we were in Damascus but apparently things have changed. Now just get a message that says "filtered".  Will be back when we get to Turkey.