7th April Palmyra

Cracs de Chevalier has always been an enigma to us. Whenever we see it on Global Village or some programme on the crusades or perhaps Syria we think that this was the place we didn’t quite get to 30 odd years ago. We were almost there on a wet cold February night in 1975 when we struck a traffic jam caused by an accident or something. We were only a few kilometres away. Fed up with waiting, after a couple of hours and with tired irritable children in the back we turned back. Well we made it today; it was worth the return trip.
Enlarged by the crusaders in the 13th century from an old fort it is almost completely intact. Never stormed by the Muslims, the dwindling numbers of crusaders surrendered the fort after a guarantee of safe passage. They had the provisions to outlast a 5 year siege but when the chances of assistance coming from Europe are virtually non existent why keep up the defence? You’ve got to think back to those times when they would’ve had to send a messenger back to Europe asking for help, and then they would have had to organize an army and march thousands of miles overland. What if the messenger had been knocked off on the way or met some pretty little barmaid in some Bulgarian schnapps house and said ‘Buggar the crusades’? I don’t blame them giving up
It is a magnificent structure with two layers of high walls rising over 30 metres in height. The halls and dormitories are massive to house the 2000 inhabitants. When the surrender occurred there were only 200 remaining.
We spent the afternoon there before heading east across the desert to Palmyra, some 220kms further on.
The diesel situation gets more amusing by the day: as I mentioned earlier, we paid this $100 diesel when we crossed the border then had all those troubles the first day here. I’ve learnt that when your gauge heads towards the half full you start looking for a station that actually sells the fuel. We hadn’t seen one at all today (you look out for the queue of trucks), until I caught a glance of what I thought was one as we sped along the highway though there was only the one truck there. We reversed back and I went to have a chat to the 5 blokes in the office. There were some murmurs when I asked for ‘Dizel’ then they pointed to one bloke who sighed then nodded his head. We went out to the pump, he put in 20 litres but that was it. Appears they were rationing it and giving it to needy looking customers. Maybe it was my greying balding hair that made them take pity on us. Later we saw another queue, went to join the end but with some friendly banter between the staff and drivers waiting, we were sent to the front of the line. We are finding the Syrian people so relaxed and welcoming. Many know only one word and that’s ‘Welcome’.