Tartus

Tartus is a beautiful city located on the south coast of Syria. I never thought we would be walking into a place with such nice people and such familiar customs for me, as an Argentinean.

The bus from Lattakia left us on a wide boulevard and it took us a few minutes of looking at the map to figure out in which direction we should start walking. A few blocks down the street an old lady started yelling at us "Veni, Veni!" (come here, come here!) in Spanish!?!?

For a second my brain froze and I had to ask her, "Are you talking to me in Spanish?" to which she responded "Yes! Argentina yo! Veni! Sentate!" (Yes, I'm Argentinean! Come here! Sit down!") with almost somewhat of a gypsy accent. There were two sisters and one brother. All of them were born in Syria but had lived in Argentina for most of their lives and decided to come back to their natal Tartus to spend the last years of their lives, they are all in their 80s. After spending some time with them and listening to their stories, we headed in search of a hotel.

On our way to dinner a nice young guy asked if we needed help and that ended up in a lovely dinner for three and various encounters with him and his great group of friends for mate!!!. The whole experience was at times, surreal.

We walked the lovely streets of this summer destination city that has very good ice-cream stores, plenty of shwarma stands and outdoor cafes where everyone sits around in the evenings to smoke the narguile (water pipe) and socialize.

We visited Arwad Island and walked around the narrow alleys and visited the old fortress. When going back to Tartus by ferry the mountains of Lebanon were just a few kilometers to our left and we enjoyed another amazing Syrian sunset over the water.

People stopped us in the streets to give us their phone numbers in case we needed any kind of help, and just to be on the safe side we both said we were Argentineans in case someone was sensitive about Bush adding Syria to the "Axes of Evil". We found the kindness of the people amazing and again, we also found ourselves staying longer than expected just to visit with the locals.

We did a day trip to "Krak des Chevaliers", an amazing crusader castle that is 800 years old and according to T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) "the greatest castle in the world". The bus left us in the crossroad and we were lucky to find a taxi nearby that took us all the way up the hill to the castle. We caught a minibus our way back in time to meet with Hamza, a local guy we found via Couchsurfing.

Tartus was a great place and the slow pace of the town, together with the openness of the locals allowed us to kick back and relax while at the same time learn lots about the country and the culture. We definitely enjoyed it very much.

Gaby