Park Hyatt Baku

The relief to enter the harbor at Baku and then to actually dock and not anchor-off as we half expected was fantastic. We could finally get off the boat!<br><br>The actual process of getting off took seemingly hours of course and we were through to the Customs in Baku.<br><br>Fun and games ensued with Pete in particular taking the brunt of the wrath of a couple of 'Jobs-worth' officials with lots of ...

Well, it's taken all day, but we've made it onto the boat. This is one dodgy affair. Happily the few other passengers on this filthy freighter are mostly British, travelling around the world on motorbikes. Everything is filthy, and there is nothing but Molly's ...

Chris didn't feel great, so Damien and I went into town to investigate the ferry, and while we were relieved to discover there was one the next day, we were surprised to find they were after over $600 for the privilege. We got a bit separated ...

... tent with a little help at the critical stage of bending and setting the frame rods. Jerri has been on set-up duties for at least three days now, and has not lifted a finger, so we're interested to see how she goes with both setting up AND cooking (which we have already done a number of times). MP takes enough time off to go and look at the mud volcanoes, which are typically 3 or 4 metre cones or humps with mud pools at the top ...

... me tied fairly closely to the stinky hotel toilets. Thursday night I discovered the 'On Your Bike' section of Lonely Planet's Thorn tree. It is so useful that I'm absolutely spewing I hadn't found it earlier. Post your question up there and you get a handful of answers from people that have already been there and done that. The important point is; one lad had the same 650GBP speedhub as me. He was asking for advice as his was developing cracks around the spoke holes ...

... i menningu Azera. Faninn er raudur, blar og graenn og eg nae tvi ad blai liturinn er litur Kaspiahafsins en klikka a teim graena. Stjarnarn i fananaum hefur lika sina merkingu en tvi gleymi eg fljotlega en nae tvi ad tengsl landsins vid Tyrki eru mikil. Russar og Gorbasjov gamli eru theirra hrydjuverkamenn og thegar madur ser grafreitinn thar sem their hermenn og obreyttir borgarar sem letust i stridinu vid ...

... liked her immediately and she invited Mary and I to come visit for a week end. So on Thursday morning, we headed down to Saramacca Straat to catch one of the many white vans that could take us to Afobaka. This was a two hour drive down a red dusty road to the top of Brokopondo Lake. Brokopondo is a man made lake that was created in the 50's to produce hydro and control the water of the rivers. It flooded a huge area putting millions of trees under water. What is ...

... the old city we went to Yanar Dag (Fire Mountain). This is where there used to be countless natural gas flames burning in the mountain. Mr Polo made note of them in the 13th century but due to all the oil drilling most have been extinguished. There is one set of flames still burning strong. It is quite odd to see fires burning naturally on a mountainside. The story with these flames is that in 1950, a shepherd accidentally set it alight and the 10 metre ...

... view, and at a price (£25) which would probably mean us avoiding having to sit with any Azeri nutters, and headed back into the city to do some sightseeing.    In the event not much sightseeing was done, apart from the inside of bars.   The weather, which had been 25 degree + and balmy for the last couple of days had suddenly turning into a biting, sub-zero wind and sheets ...

... main road. Unfortunately, a police car which was stopped behind us, didn't think it such a good idea. As we approached, the police man shouted and waved us to the side. The driver sighed and stepped out of the car. From the backseat I could only see the middle section of both men as they yelled in Russian. Finally, knowing that he was getting nowhere, my driver removed a stack of 1000 Manat bills from his left pocket discreetly and flipped off 5 bills into his right hand. The ...