Sept 20-Visas

Location: Baku, Azerbaijan

Today was the last morning in the hotel which meant goodbye to our wonderfully airconditioned room. What a treat it was.

We spent most of the day riding all over town to make visa payments at specific bank braches and calling the Uzbek embassy almost every hour to check if our visa confirmation arrived.
We could pick up the Kazakh visa without problems but at 6pm there was still no news from the Uzbek embassy. The extremely patient and helpful secretary there kept telling us to call back in half hour. Supposedly they were having some technical difficulties that day with their system. So we just sat in Fountains Square park and chatted with an Italian couple who is backpacking from Italy to Southeast Asia. With little hope left we made our last call at 7pm and to our surprise we were told to be at the Embassy in 15 min! Wow great but this is easier said than done because we were down near the waterfront and the embassy is up on the hill past the Flame Towers.
It was a crazy ride along which we probably broke most traffic rules just to shorten the way. We rode down one-way streets in the wrong direction, ignored red lights, took shortcuts around the wrong side of  round-abouts, cut-off drivers etc. It was quite exhilirating actually and since Baku traffic is chaotic anyways we basically fit right in.

Drenched in sweat with beet red faces we arrived at the embassy. We were happy we made it on time but we were a bit annoyed that our freshly washed clothes were already soaked in sweat again. It may be days before we can take a shower and wash our clothes. An hour later we walked out with our Uzbek visas!!! Huge thank you to Shahida and the guy behind the big desk for putting in extra hours to get us our visas!
Now off to the store to get about 4 days worth of food and then try to camp down at the port in wait for the ferry to take us across the Caspian sea over to Aktau, Kazakhstan. The cargo ship ferries to Aktau only sail once they are full so there is no schedule.
We dreaded riding across Baku so late in the evening because the streets are full of holes and cracks which pose a real danger to our heavily loaded bikes in the dark. We were about to leave the parking space infront of the store when a lady stopped to ask where we are from and what we were doing. She spoke really good English and promptly invited us to her house for a beer. We said we would love to but unless we could camp in her garden we should get on our way to the port. She said that camping is no problem.
We were led to a big house with a nice yard surrounded by a tall concrete wall. It turns out that the lady, Ina, who invited us is the wife of a Norwegian diplomat who is currently stationed here in Baku. Grandma Evy was visiting at the moment so the five of us had a lovely evening with a few beers and a delicious dinner. Ina, Marko and Evy were so easy going, generous and interesting to chat with that we felt right at home. Ina treated us to some of her freshly baked, European style flaxseed bread which tasted exactly like my mom's bread. Soooo delicious!
In addition to that we were also invited to sleep inside the house which was beautifully airconditioned. How amazing! The air in Baku is so hot and humid that it was a great relief to not have to sleep outside. We also got to shower and do a load of laundry!!!