Images from our Trip

Euphrates River

Today we traveled on the Euphrates River. The boat wasn't that big, but we didn't care. The river is 1,725 miles long. Our tour guide sad that at Hit, the river is 750 feet wide. Below Hit, the width of the river narrows out to 500 feet.

Were Back

Wow this has been a great trip. We are really glad that we posted our experiences in the middle east because we probably will never get to go there ever again which is sad. In our next post is a slideshow I made with some of the pictures we took during our trip.

Have a great day and I hope you get the chance to visit to the Middle East some day.

Claire

Oil in The Middle East

Wow as we have traveled we are amazing at the amount of oil reserves that are are here. They produce over 50% of the world oil just in one section of the world. Oil helps the Middle East's economy a ton because they can't plant much because of their climate so having a needed natural resource is very good for their economy. The leading exporter of oil is Saudi Arabia with 10.72 million barrels of oil a day. When we saw that number we were amazed. Sadly our trip is almost over so we will post more pics that we took when we get home.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum
Keep checking our blog,
Claire

Syrian Desert

Wow Today we are exploring another desert, The Syrian Desert. The Syrian Desert isn't completely sand, so it is very rocky and arid here. Today we are getting a tour of the desert from a nomad that is nice enough to help us find our way through the desert with out getting hurt or dehydrated we hope. We also get to ride on some of the camels he herds. The Syrian Desert covers parts of many countries but we are in the part in Northern Saudi Arabia. During our "tour" we have passed many oil pipe lines and oases. We also learned that the full desert is 200,000 sq. miles which we thought was a random fact that we should add so you knew the size.

http://away.com/tripideas/syria-nature-301014.html

Have a great day,

Claire

Lack of Water

Today again we are just chilling in our hotel drinking some bottled water. We were just talking about how funny it is how the Middle East surrounded by many bodies of water but water is scarce there. Well we are really glad that we have plenty of water in the U.S. because if we didn't we would probably have many wars like they do here.Well we research it and the reason is that water is so scarce her is because of all the deserts and the water isn't fresh water. We though back on it and thought we were so stupid not know that. We also learned that they have about 12 million people but only get the amount of rain fall Phoenix, Arizona gets a year. They have to irrigate water to keep their plants alive and they usually get water from underground to drink if they don't live near the Tigris or Euphrates rivers. We hope the United State never have to do that completly but I bet some places like Arizona might have to.

Have a great Day and continue to check out our blog

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2000/07/0714_water.html

Claire

The Persian Gulf

Today we are going fishing in The Persian Gulf. We really wanted to see The Persian Gulf. We thought taking a ferry ride would be a fun and a not that challenging thing to do because our arms are still in pain from rowing the canoe down the Tigris River and climbing the Zagros Mountains. When we got their this morning we went to the dock and loaded the ferry. It was cool because we saw so many weird looking tubes and we found out that those are oil reserves. We learned a lot from a man sitting next to us on the ferry. He told us that The Persian Gulf was the worlds largest off shore oilfield. We also learned that there is both salt water and fresh water in The Persian Gulf which we thought was cool. When we got off the boat we went fishing. We put all of the fish back that we caught because we were not sure if we were allowed to fish there.
We are looking forward to getting back to our hotel because today wasn't as fun as the rest of the days we just really wanted to see The Persian Gulf.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf
Keep on reading our blog and feel free to comment.

Claire