Tales from the Dark Side: Day 4

Today, our bags had to be outside our door by 8:45 and we were getting on the bus at 9:30. I went up for breakfast after putting my bags out and finally got some photos of the view from the 21st floor. There was no wireless connection in the breakfast area, so I tried to get a better connection back on the 10th floor. The bellhop on that floor mentioned that we had checked out in some way, but I didn't tell him why I was really there. Instead, I said, "I know," or something, and went down the elevator.

Breakfast of eggs, bread, & sausage.

The elevators in this hotel used an interesting system for selecting your floor. Instead of buttons on the inside, there was a panel at the elevator bank. You would select the range of floors you were going to, then select your specific floor. The panel would then tell you what elevator to get on. Given that this was our first hotel in the country, I thought that this might be how elevators worked in Iran, but it appeared to be unique to the Chamran Grand Hotel. We then got on the bus and I figured out how to calculate my real steps per day, since my phone and hence Fitbit were still on CDT. And we were off!

Necropolis from the road.

We stopped to use the bathroom just before getting to the Tomb of Cyrus.

Click the image of Cyrus to see a video with highlights from his appearances.
**STRONG LANGUAGE WARNING**

No, not that d**k, Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Empire over 2,500 years ago. We took the bus to the unexcavated ruin of a building of some kind, and I got to climb up again. The view was amazing.

Poppies

Oh, the frumpiness. I'm glad I got some use of these shirts, but they are hardly flattering.

Click both photos to see the two videos that I took up here.

I then went down and we were back on the bus to the ruins of castles. Around this time is also when I realized that it is far easier to calculate the time difference (in 12-hour format) by subtracting 2.5 hours from Houston time, then switching the am and pm. MUCH easier than adding 9.5 hours.

A map of the grounds, looking toward the unexcavated building and some flowers.

Click the anthill in the middle for a video of the ants and footage of the landscape.

My shoes were not dealing well with the gravel roads, so I walked to the bus as fast as possible. Our next stop was the tomb.

We then we were off to lunch, but not before stopping at the most hilarious sign. Some of us had seen and read the sign on the way in. Though it was only our third day in the country, we had already encountered enough good will so as to be completely unintimidated by the words. And based on the history of the last 100 or so years, the first statement isn't completely incorrect. However, Muslim nations are not without agency, and they have been completely able to cause their own problems lately too.

Then we had lunch, where we were, of course, welcomed.

These crackers are really the best.

And we were on the road again.

Across the street was an image more stereotypical of this region: a woman standing near an old, rusted, tipped over water tower.

For this part of the drive, I put down my phone for a while to either nap or write in my notebook. After a little while, we stopped in Abarkuh to see a couple sights. First, an old ice house. This had been used before electricity to store ice during the hotter parts of the year.

Click this image for a video inside the ice house.

Next, we drove to see the 4,000 year old Cypress of Abarkuh, or Sarv-e Abarkuh, the third oldest tree in the world and said to be the oldest or second oldest living thing in Asia.

At the tree, a young man approached me saying "Blackberry Priv" and he had an older Blackberry. He knew mine ran Android, and I tried to communicate that it was really great. I did shake his hand at the end as a way of formalizing the conversation. He seemed uncomfortable at first, but shook anyway. That was when I remembered that men and women don't shake hands in Iran, but since he shook anyway, I assume he knew that I was just being an American. He later asked, through our bilingual guide, how much I paid for mine, and if I liked it. I said what I paid, and then said that I loved it, cuz I do. It might have been cool to get his What's App details, but I didn't think of that until later. I was also so shy back during this part of the trip that I didn't even ask to get a selfie with him. This stolen photo is the only evidence I have outside my memory. I have an inkling to see if I can find the guy - Iranian Craigslist Missed Connections? "American woman looking for Iranian Blackberry User who approached her at the Sarv-e Abarkuh on April 19, 2016. Reply to exchange What's App details." That could work, right? Oh well. I guess it just goes to show that Blackberry can bring people together.

We drove by a beautiful mosque, then stopped in town. It turned out that we had stopped to get something from a bakery. They were small, crunchy tan-colored balls that were slightly sweet. The main driver (whose name I did not know at the time, and will later be referred to as "The Model") seemed very enthusiastic about these. I do not have a photo of them to share.

Then our drivers played some Iranian music for part of our drive and served us tea and sweets while I talked with one of the other group members about Arrested Development (the show, not the band). I think another group member brought up The IT Crowd and the episode with the box that they claimed was "The Internet".

I think we were stopped here for a long time while the drivers filed paper related to driving in or out of town? I would ask
them now, over What's App, but my Farsi relies on Google Translate and they don't tend to send substantive responses.

Each of these images links to a different video from the drive, which includes the music the drivers played for us.

Many cool looking mountains were on the other side of the bus. For the most part, the mountains here looked like
enormous (mountain-sized) piles of loose dirt. That's not to be insulting, just descriptive.

We got to Yazd after the sun went down.

Pickled mangoes

When we arrived, I really needed to use the facilities. Finally, we got to the hotel - a gorgeous hotel - and it could meet my needs. We also had some food, including what I thought was ravioli, but was really pickled mango, which were really intense. They also had samosas, and the sauce from the pickled mangoes was really good with them, so I had some more of both. I sat and chatted with some other group members for a while while waiting for our key. When we did get into our room, it was hot, the bathroom lights didn't work, we couldn't connect to the wireless, and we didn't know how to call the front desk. I decided to put my scarf back on and get some answers and solutions from the front desk. Well, the air conditioner for the building was off, so we would need to use a fan to cool the room, we had to stick the card in a little doohickey on the wall to get the lights to work, they gave us the wireless password paper, and we dialed 101 to reach the front desk from the room.

Then I walked around and took some photos to post to Instagram.

I went back to the room and can't remember if I went out another time or not. We discovered that, instead of a Gideon's Bible, we had a Quran, then later, I discovered that we also had a prayer mat, a stone for the forehead, and another small cloth, use unknown.

Then it was time for bed. We were leaving in the morning at 9.