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Saudi Arabia and the Hejaz Railway

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Posted 4/3/2014 11:20 AM

MiN
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Date registered: May 2006
Location: Alpujarras, Spain
Vehicle(s): No cars, at all.
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Saudi Arabia and the Hejaz Railway

Some photos to go with this rather long entry can be found here:

http://www.pointedthree.com/disc/forums/showthread.php?tid=21370&po...

I know a bloke, who knows a bloke who knows another bloke that can get you a 30 day open visa to travel by vehicle from the UAE into Saudi Arabia and explore at will. The bloke I know is David ‘Streaky’ Chambers and to him I owe the completion of the best, rarest and most cherished off-road trip I’ve ever done. To say that achieving entry into Saudi in this way is ‘rare’ is like saying Dodo eggs are ‘rare’. The trip comprised four drivers: Streaky in his old Discovery, Manuel Schmidt in his short wheel base Defender, Kim Merritt in his LR3 and me in my old G500. We had 16 days of holiday to play with and our plans were ambitious and based on Streaky’s extensive knowledge of the country, gained from over a decade of living there.

In brief, we were to head from Dubai, through Riyadh and onto the volcanic area around the Wabhar crater, calling on some ancient and historical villages, forts and dams en route, and then head via the outskirts of Medina, through Tabuk and up to Halat Ammar on the Saudi/Jordanian border. From there we were to follow the route of the old Hejaz Railway all the way to its finish in Medina. Any time we had left over would be spent in the South, near Yemen. It had been a life time aspiration of mine to follow the Hejaz Railway, born from slogging through TE Lawrence’s ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’, seeing the epic film and having an unhealthy passion for narrow gauge steam railways. Of course, when Streaky was gauging interest in the trip from a group of potential fellow travellers, and his ideas for it, I signed up instantly.

Once the group had been settled, there was much preparation to do, particularly vehicles and equipment. We were likely to do up 8,000km in the 16 days so everything had to be in tip-top condition. There followed a personal frenzy of servicing and checking my G500 and ensuring I had the right spare parts should any of the ’known’ faults occur. These included; starter motor, water pump, thermostat, crank position sensor, a full set of front wheel bearings, radiator and fuel hoses amongst much else. I also replaced my radiator and one of the centre prop CV joints beforehand. I then felt we were ready. The car was loaded with fridge/freezer, water, dry foods enough to last at least ten days, fuel cans and the ensemble of tools, fluids and recovery equipment to be able to deal with, hopefully, anything, and finally some bedding and some spare clothes. I managed to achieve my normal aim, of keeping everything below the level of the vehicle windows.

We met at the Saudi Consulate in Dubai to go through the rigmarole of getting the visa. This is not as straightforward as we’d expected (nothing like this usually is!). The consulate had the ‘letter’ with our names but said the visa would take 3 days ( we’d already been delayed 3 days waiting for the letter in the first place) so Streaky exerted some personal influence and managed to persuade them to issue the visas that day. Great, but we then had to go to Wafi Mall and the visa service company to get them. To the Saudi Consulate’s great credit we received ‘fast-track’ service and had the visas by 4pm. We left the next day.

From Dubai, the drive to the UAE/Saudi border, is the longest one you can do within the UAE. It’s not the most exciting trip though, consisting mainly of following the interminable coast road through Abu Dhabi emirate. Crossing into Saudi proved to be our first challenge. There are hundreds of trucks at the border but almost no cars, which meant you can go straight to the gates but we were something of an oddity. We had to be processed, with finger prints and photos being required but there was nobody to man the equipment and the usual call for the ‘Captain’ went out. After some help from his staff, we were eventually finished, stamped in and allowed to progress through customs (after what can only be called a ‘cultural’ delay), buy our third party insurance (AED100 for a fortnight) and get on with the trip.

Manuel works for a company in Dubai that has Nokia as a client and they had been so enamoured with the idea of our journey that they had given us all Nokia Lumia 1020 phone cameras to record the trip with. Thus, our first stop in Saudi was to get a Saudi SIM card for the phones and the second was to top up with petrol. Now, one of my colleagues had told me that the cost of living was noticeably cheaper in Saudi than the UAE. He wasn’t wrong but the price of petrol was something of a shocker, though pleasantly so. 0.6 Riyals per litre, that’s basically 0.6 AED, or, for those in Imperial, that’s about 45p per gallon. The prospect of doing 8,000km now didn’t seem like it would be too big a burden on our wallets.

First impressions of a person or a place can sometimes be deceiving or just plain wrong. Once through the border crossing and into Saudi proper, my ‘first’ impressions of the local border town was one of decay and squalor and the roads were in a really poor state. Dismayingly, this first impression would be sustained for the duration of our trip. We turned off the main highway which headed towards Qatar and took the unbelievably straight truck road to Riyadh. It’s a single carriage unfenced road but was not busy and it was the shortest route to Riyadh but Streaky was adamant that we should not travel on it in the dark, and rightly so because of the wayward camels. After several hundred kilometres and as dusk approached, we turned off into the dunes and had out first, noticeably chilly, camp.

Our next stop was to be Al Kharj. Streaky’s steering column was looking a bit worn so we tried to locate a scarp yard, amongst the many, to find a replacement. But after touring a huge one we were to be unlucky. So, after an obligatory group photo by the ‘witches hat’ water tower we headed on to Riyadh. Streaky had a very useful contact in Riyadh who had given us the co-ordinates of a Land Rover spare parts dealer but despite this help we were still out of luck. The next place to try was on the southern outskirts of Riyadh near Al Hair; this is scrap-yard city, miles and miles of them, stretching into the desert. We flagged down a taxi and told him to lead us, in our 4 vehicles, to the scrap-yard, through the chaotic rush hour traffic. It was something of a rare achievement that we managed to stay together in our 5 car convoy and made it, eventually, to a Land Rover graveyard. The part was ‘available’, bought and we headed out of Riyadh and pointed ourselves towards Makkah. From Riyadh the landscape changed and became more dramatic, with mountains, escarpments and ominous storm clouds in the distance.

We turned off the motorway and found ourselves a convenient gravelly plateau to camp for the night. The storm clouds loomed and the sheet lightening began and we thought we could relax and watch this remarkable celestial show as it passed us by to the North but that would have been too easy. The wind picked up and the storm headed our way. There was a comical moment as we dashed for our roof top tents to make sure all was secure and for me to quickly erect the rain cover, and dive in. The wind battered us and the vehicles rocked in the melee between wind, rain and tents. There is something quite calming and enjoyable about being in a good tent in a storm and knowing you’ll be dry and warm while the elements do their forlorn best to force their way in.

Streaky had made an excellent plan to visit, what turned out to be some superb sights as we wended our way to Halat Ammar on the Jordanian border. We turned off the Makkah motorway at Muwayah and headed North. Our first target was the fort at old Al Muwayah; an ancient pilgrimage fort with an adjacent mud village. The fort had been recently renovated and looked immaculate behind the newly erected fence. Sadly no ‘retainer’ was present and we had to satisfy ourselves with a tour of the mud village and look-out post and to take photographs of the fort from outside. The fort is on the edge of a once very active volcanic area where the plateaus are covered in lava and there are numerous classically, cone shaped, extinct volcanoes.

Our next target was to be a volcanic cone that Streaky had spotted from Google Earth and we hoped to be the first to camp inside its caldera. Route finding was challenging, particularly through the lava fields. After an initially encouraging false start and with some help from a group of bedu we encountered repairing a flat tyre, we picked up a rough track heading our way. The scenery suddenly became startling; flat sand/sabkhah plains to our left and volcanoes to our right. Streaky led us further into the lava fields and with his keen sense of direction and the use of a maze of old tracks we eventually saw our target cone about 6km to our right and headed for it. The landscape is best described as ‘prehistoric’ and unlike anything to be found in the UAE or Oman. We discovered a track up the side of the cone but it petered out before the rim, so we walked the short distance and peered down inside; a perfect crater appeared in front of us about 1km in diameter. Despite the use of our binoculars we could see no vehicle tracks inside and the potential descent from the rim looked like we’d never get back out again. We traversed the bottom of the cone and looked for another way in. I had a go at another faint track that led up to the rim but like the previous route it petered out before the top had ever been reached. We instead camped in the lee of the cone and enjoyed a spectacular sunset and our first properly ‘wild’ camp.

We needed to get to a road about 30km West from the crater, which would take us North and Streaky had planned a winding route through this amazing landscape to get us there. Anyway, we decided to abandon that route and take an apparently more direct line which proved to be just as winding as the planned one. You cannot drive over lava fields, you just can’t. So we had to pick up every little hint of a vehicle track to get through, which we eventually did, ultimately joining up with the planned route. We reached the tarmac road only to discover Kim’s rear right tyre had a nasty swelling necessitating a change of tyre. Here we had a little fun trying to get the non-standard Land Rover jack to work in the right place sufficient to lift the car up to change the wheel. We did it with the help of a second jack but knowing that the replacement tyre was slightly larger than the others, we would have to either get the original tyre repaired and refitted or fit the new tyre that Kim was carrying on his roof. Fears of differential over heating and axle wind up were then mooted and then dismissed and then feared again as we struggled with our home mechanic’s knowledge. In the end we just had to get on with the drive, and come what may.

Today’s itinerary turned out to be an exceptional one though with an unpleasant incident that reminded us that we were in a country that likes to ‘control’ its history. The highlight of today was to be the Al Wahba crater . This remarkable geological formation is what every child’s’ drawing of a crater should look like; it’s almost too perfect.. It wasn’t a long journey from where we’d changed Kim’s tyre. The approach is deceptive; you drive along a newish road and then all of a sudden this enormous crater opens up in front of you. We stopped for several hours here, exploring the crater rim and dropping to a lower level where we found a way down; there was no way to drive down to the bottom, which is probably the crater’s saving grace. The crater site would have been the perfect spot for a campsite but we had to press on. We were now heading North towards Medina and at the first opportunity we wanted to find a tyre centre to swap Kim’s tyres.

As non-Muslims we had to keep to the 3rd Ring-Road but found a Dunlop Service Centre anyway. The LR3 was put on the hydraulic lift and the chap in the centre rested the rear wishbone on an axle stand. The wheel was taken off , the new tyre put on and the old tyre patched. As he was re-fitting the wheel, and without the nuts having been put on, Kim was also hooking up the spare underneath, suddenly the car slipped off the axle stand and Kim was knocked to the floor by the rear tow bar. Fortunately the wheel was just far enough on the hub studs and this supported the car and prevented it crashing further to the floor. There was then a bit of a flurry of activity to get the car raised and to make sure Kim was ok. He was, thankfully, and we managed, all five of us, to get everything back together and head on our way.

We headed for Sadd Al Bint, more commonly known as Al Khaybar dam. This is a pre-Islamic dam of quite prodigious proportions. It crosses a steep sided wadi and must be at least 20m high
at the centre. The construction is hugely impressive and the stone work and finishing is superb. It is a fine testament to the endeavours of the civilization that constructed it. There is one down-side and that is that the centre of the dam has been washed away but this allows you a glimpse of the methods of construction and the workmanship involved. There’s no doubt that when this dam was full it would have held back millions of litres of water. Here we had a chance meeting with a ex Saudi Naval officer who accompanied us as we walked around the site. Friendly, charming and hospitable, he was a fine ambassador for the country. Further up the road was the ancient village of Khaybar and that was our next port of call.

Khaybar was a Jewish settlement in pre-Islamic days and there is much history to be found about it, including the stories of battles, sieges and myth. We turned in and found the old village square. As soon as we had we done this, we were intercepted by a Saudi policeman who wanted to know who we were and why we were there. Streaky made a call to our ‘benefactor’, who spoke to the policeman. The village looked as if it had been abandoned in the last 30 – 40 years, perhaps later in some cases, and was remarkably well preserved; being built of stone rather than mud. There was a bit of to’ing and fro’ing and it was explained that the policeman was concerned for our safety because these solid, well constructed buildings were dangerous and falling down, despite the attentions of a French team who were preserving them. We spotted some other visitors heading up to the hill top fort in the distance and indicated this to the policeman. He sped off and this gave Streaky and I the chance to explore until, or if, he came back. It was a well laid out and well sited village with a good source of water and plenty of fertile ground. We then heard a police siren and thought we ought to get back, whereupon we found another police car in the village square and the second policeman rather anxious that we returned. It became evident that it was now time to leave and as we turned out onto the main road again we were accompanied by a car filming us. I’m sure the police were concerned for our safety and I’m sure we were filmed merely because we were an oddity.

Our final target for the day was Tayma. We stopped en route for lunch in amongst some limestone pavement and soft sand and had our only stuck of the trip as Streaky headed off to ablute. Tayma has a famous and finely preserved ancient well and the vestiges of a pre-Islamic town wall and palace. There’s obviously been a concerted effort by the Saudi government to ensure the preservation of these ancient sites because they are well fenced and protected; though why they fenced-in derelict and burnt out vehicles was a bit baffling. The fences prevented us getting close up to the wall and the palace and the visitor centres and gates were unmanned (this was to be a recurring theme throughout the trip. One can only assume it’s because Saudi doesn’t expect opportunistic tourists). We headed out of Tayma towards Tabuk and camped in amongst the most extraordinary landscape, comprising sandstone, weather worn outcrops with an abundance of precariously balancing boulders perched on the top of columns. It was here that the Nokia Lumina 1020 phone cameras really proved their worth. We were to be blessed with deep blue skies for the rest of the trip and these phone cameras were able to capture the beauty of the landscape flawlessly.

Tabuk is the first big town in Saudi as you cross in from Jordan. It is a major area of crop production and there are several hundred large circular fields being constantly irrigated on the outskirts. It was a chance for us to top up our food supplies and take a break. It was also the first major station in Saudi of the Hejaz Railway and our first chance to encounter it. We found a supermarket and then headed to where the station was. It turned out that it was going through a major reconstruction project and a new railway museum was being built. We hovered by the entrance gate, were spotted and were invited in by the museum’s curators and given an excellent personal tour. They were creating a major museum and were very enthusiastic about giving us the ‘full tour’. We had been lucky to stumble upon this opportunity and made the most of it. We were given brochures, shown a video and took many photos at our leisure. Tourism was certainly being encouraged in Tabuk.

The next part of the trip was, for me, the rasion d’etre’ for coming to Saudi; the journey along the Hejaz Railway. We headed up to Halat Ammar, the border village with Jordan, refuelled and then searched for the correct turn to find the track bed. Streaky’s fine sense of direction came to the fore and after traversing a municipal dump we hit the track bed and started, what was to develop into, an exceptional journey.

I’m in danger of using too many of the same superlatives in this part but you’ll just have to forgive me. The track bed was still covered in the original ballast and the indentations from the sleepers and the rails looked remarkably fresh, as if they’d been lifted only yesterday. It was impossible to drive on, so we had to drive alongside in the soft sand, which presented its own challenges and we stopped to deflate. The group indulged me and I was allowed to lead along the track bed and was thoroughly enjoying myself as it traversed the desert. Perhaps at this point is it would be pertinent to explain the railway.

The Hejaz Railway was built between 1900 and 1908 by the Ottomans, ostensibly as a means of transporting pilgrims onwards from Damscus to Medina and the intention was to carry on to Makkah but this extension was never built. However, the less publically declared reason was that it was a strategic military line into the heart of this part of Arabia and was much used for transporting troops and the equipment of war. Small forts and/or large barracks were built every 20km and 3 major stations in Saudi at Tabuk, Madain Saleh and Medina. The line became an obvious target during the First World War and the Arab Revolt, aided by T.E Lawrence, and was blown up and destroyed in parts. After the war, the part of the line in Saudi was abandoned though parts are still in use in Jordan and Syria.

Our first stop was at a really well preserved line-side small station and water tower. Unusually, as we were to later find, it was not fenced in, so we explored and photographed at will. We then needed to find a camp site and tucked ourselves away in some rock escarpments and walked up to an ancient hilltop fort we’d spotted. It was here that Streaky’s ability to be a human metal detector was outed. He picked up a couple of old Arabic rifle shell cases that none of us had spotted. It was cold that night, down to 6 degrees, and we were to spend the following mornings waking on the railway line dressed in coats and hats and huddling round the fire. As the line neared Tabuk it merged with the roads and we transited Tabuk to try and link up with it on the other side of the town. The line headed directly into a military cantonment and I was getting a little nervous about leading four UAE registered cars with expat drivers into this area but ploughed on anyway. The railway diverted from the cantonment road to where a huge new highway was being built but which had not been opened. Having seen such roads being openly used in the UAE and having come too far to be thwarted, we joined the new road and drove several kilometres along it, knowing the track bed was beneath us or, at times, to one side or another. Eventually we reached the end of the road construction and got back onto the track bed proper.

The line had to cross eastwards through a mountainous area to join a long and wide wadi that led South to Madain Saleh. We knew there was a tunnel along the line and hoped that the road construction hadn’t destroyed it. Almost by accident we stumbled upon it after a false turn and had a great time driving through it. From here to about 40km outside Madain Saleh we had an incident free drive. We marvelled at the stunning and varied desert landscapes, stopped and visited the abandoned stations, barracks and pristine viaducts, and explored the ancient pilgrimage forts that lay adjacent to the line. We stopped for lunch on a grassy meadow in the shadow of some extraordinary sandstone outcrops, which after further exploration, became more and more remarkable. Tall, isolated pillars of red sandstone that stretched for miles into the distance. As we approached Madain Saleh it became evident that a worrying sound coming from Manuel’s front axle was getting louder and more constant. We stopped, raised a front wheel and rotated it to try and isolate the sound. His differential sounded like a bag of crisps; in fact it was toast. He took off the front prop shaft, we discussed the situation at length and decided, wisely, to slowly cover the short distance to the town of Al Ula, just South of Madain Saleh and work out a plan. As we approached, the landscape became breathtaking. It was reminiscent of Wadi Rum in Jordan; towering sandstone cliffs in a sea of red sand dunes.

Of all the places that Manuel could have ‘chosen’ to break down this was by far the best. Streaky had been here before and after making a short stop at a very rudimentary garage to assess our needs and make a plan, he got to work on the phone to a friend in Riyadh and to the scrap yard owner we had called on in Al Hair. We then headed to the old town and visited the renovated hill top fort and viewed the partially renovated and incredibly tight-knit mud house old town. Here we were intercepted by another policeman, this time off duty. It became clear he was on our side and discouraged us from camping (some Italian tourists had not fared so well in this area several years before) and suggested we stayed in a local hotel. We booked in and made plans to visit the World Heritage site that is Madain Saleh the next day. Meanwhile Streaky’s friend was planning to go to the scrap yard the next morning and collect a front differential that the scrap yard owner would extract from one of the old Discoveries, which, after some judicial research and confirmatory phone calls, we believed would fit. This was then to be couriered to us at the hotel, hopefully by the next night. In the end the differential arrived the day after, but more of that later.

Most people are aware of Petra, the ancient Nabataean capital in Jordan, and the incredible tombs and civic buildings they carved out of the solid sandstone mountains. Well, Madain Saleh is the Nabataean’s southern most city and they had, similarly, carved out tombs and civic buildings from the local sandstone mountains. It is also, as an added bonus, the best preserved railway station and museum on the railway, hence its World Heritage status. We had the unique privilege of touring the entire area unescorted and unmolested. We spent the whole day here, clambering in, on and over the tombs and sandstone hills and visiting the exceptional museum. At the end of an extraordinary, and unlikely to ever be repeated, day we returned to the hotel to find that the differential would soon be on it’s way but would arrive by about 2pm the following afternoon. We thus had a second spare day to fill and there was more to see in the area (you see what I mean about Manuel’s ‘choice’). The next day we spent visiting the excellent local museum, the Lions Tomb area, which had been carved out of the sandstone cliffs by a civilization pre-dating the Nabataeans, going to Al Ula railway station and its oddly, old, abandoned railway wagons on the side of a residential road, and finally went to Elephant Rock for a late lunch picnic in the shadow of this most picturesque place. All the time we were waiting for the phone call from the hotel to tell us the diff had arrived.

Eventually by 6pm we had the diff in our hands and needed to fit it somewhere. We found a friendly garage, in a petrol station forecourt, who lent us two axle stands and we set to work. This was obviously an odd sight and we were bombarded with questions and greetings by the local youths and the numerous pre-teen children who were doing their best to burn rubber at the nearby roundabout in cars which must have been fitted with booster seats and blocks on the pedals. We worked well as a team and after 4 hours we had fitted the new diff, re-fitted the prop shaft and were good to go (Note, if any garage tells you that this is a 2 day, or even 1 day job, you’re being diddled!). While we worked, a local shop owner had brought us Arabic coffee and sweets and even donated some gifts; the local people were exceptionally friendly. It now being after 10pm, it was too late to leave so we headed out the next morning but Kim had run out of time and so headed home from here, straight to Abu Dhabi, in one go, 2000km! Streaky, Manuel and I headed southwards to rejoin the railway. As a guestimate we’d probably lost 2 days from the trip and realised that we were not going to get to the Yemen border with what time we had left.

South of Al Ula the railway is paralleled by and also built over by a new road for about 40km but then bears off to the right and into the deeper desert. All along the line there are deposits of railway ballast that were placed for maintaining the line. These piles of ballast are perfectly flat and square sided and we could only blame the German engineers for insisting on such precision for rock piles. Why they hadn’t been used since for road construction was a bit of a puzzle.

As we moved on we had another ancient pilgrimage fort to visit about 1.5km from the line and turned off towards it. It was in pretty good condition but fenced. As we stopped to take photos we were joined by a goat herder from out of nowhere who insisted that we could not take photos of this oft-photographed fort and he started to take photos of us, so we took photos of him. The next stop was a major one for me. It was the railway sidings at Al Hadiya. We arrived at dusk to find it well fenced and the two trains, one of which was lying on its side, and the station were well protected. I felt a sense of disappointment but it was now dusk and we had to find somewhere to camp. Have I mentioned the landscape? It was a classic desert-scape mixture of black rock mountains and red sand dunes, and was stunning. We camped in amongst some firm dunes. We had something of a mechanical scare in the morning. Manuel’s fuel filter was leaking diesel and the car wouldn’t start. After a couple of satellite phone calls to some diesel engine gurus, a careful reading of the handbook and some ad-hoc engineering, we got the car going and it never failed again. We headed back to the siding yard and discovered a human sized hole in the fence. As has been said elsewhere, I can resist everything except temptation. Manuel stood close and I squeezed in to take the photos that were the to be the epitome of the trip for me. Streaky joined us, having been photographing old sleepers used as fence-posts, and squeezed in too. This had now overcome my disappointment at finding one of the famous line-side locomotives earlier in the trip having being cut to shreds by opportunistic scrap metal hunters.

There was not much of the railway left as we were nearing Medina but the desert-scape continued to be increasingly impressive; bigger sharper mountains, semi-covered by huge yellow dunes. It’s a staggering area of natural beauty and we wished that we could have spent more time there to explore all its corners. We finally reached the road into Medina, turned off to camp for the night and celebrated the completion of the Hejaz Railway with some sparkling grape juice (seriously). We now had to get home and staged ourselves through Riyadh, staying with Streaky’s friends who’d made the trip possible by couriering the diff to us in Madain Saleh and who were very generous with their home-brew. A quick tour of the sights of Riyadh, one final, chilly night in the dunes South of Al Hotuf, a photo call on the beach opposite the Qatar peninsula, a frankly surprisingly rapid transit through Saudi and UAE immigration and customs, and we were on the final stretch and eventually home.

Clichés notwithstanding, this had truly been the trip of my lifetime; the freedom to explore, the length of stay, the sights and landscapes were remarkable but it is unlikely that I’ll be able to repeat it, and this is the tragedy of Saudi. There is so much to see, so much ancient history, so much diverse and natural beauty but it remains so difficult, if not impossible, to be a free roaming tourist and traveller. Streaky, I owe you a non non-alcoholic malt drink!

#221074

Author

Posted 4/4/2014 6:31 AM

DUTCH
Administrator Doppelgänger

Date registered: Apr 2006
Location: US, GA, Atlanta
Vehicle(s): 2015 Audi Q7 3.0 TDI,2018 Sprinter
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5000

RE: Saudi Arabia and the Hejaz Railway

A great read Mike! Thanks.

Photos posted on a photo website like Picasa or pbase.com would really enhanced the experience.

#221088 - in reply to #221074

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Posted 4/4/2014 10:03 AM

MudMonkey
Veteran

Date registered: Jun 2013
Location: CO
Vehicle(s): '03 G500
Posts: 274
100

Re: Saudi Arabia and the Hejaz Railway

Read the whole thing. Wonderful wonderful adventure. I lived in Oman for almost 7 years in the '90s, and travelled through the UAE, Bahrain, etc (never Saudi, though) - I am familiar with some of the terrain you describe, it is beautiful country. I do understand how very fortunate you are to have done this trip.

I agree that it is a shame to keep this adventure confined to a text box here at P3. I think it deserves a copy 'n' paste into an extended blog, complete with as many pictures as you can share. I would read it all over again just to take in the ambience