DJ - Welcome to Iran and the update with Carl and Don on Thursday evening, October the 2nd, via satellite telephone from the city of Kerman, in the central province of Iran. The city of Kerman has a population of 600,000 and is a regional agricultural city. The primary produce is pistachio nuts. Here pistachio nuts are shipped throughout the world and this region is famous for its orchards of pistachio trees. Also famous for a political figure who is from this province, and for whom a nearby city was recently named. The political figure is Rafsanjani. Mr. Rafsanjani was just within the past month the former president of Iran. There is a community nearby called Rafsanjani City. His family for many centuries has operated the pistachio orchards in this region.

Before arriving in this city late this afternoon, we travel across one of the two vast deserts in Iran. One desert is called the Salt desert the other is called the Dasht e Lut desert. We have a new definition of hot, that would be an Iranian desert. Temperatures in the triple figures as we crossed a very vast desert for two or three hundred miles in our travels today.

The 1954 Packard ran well in the heat as it had been prepared with a oversized radiator and cooling system. So we did that part of preparation well and it worked out just fine. Can't help but think as we drove through the desert with the Packard having a modified radiator from a Mack truck that we were passed on a highway by quite a number of Mack tractor trailer trucks. We found that to be peculiar because there is suppose to be an economic boycott concerning US products in Iran. We understand that in addition to Mack trucks, there is a significant presence here by IBM and by Boeing aircraft, who, through third parties, sell airplanes to Iran Air. One of the interesting experiences of traveling down an Iranian highway is the tremendous enthusiasm that other drivers in the other lanes show for the visiting automobiles traveling from Peking to Paris. I estimate that 90% or slightly even more of every passing car, truck, or bus would flash their lights at every oncoming car. So while in Nepal and China we had a lot of human waves and people turning out to see the cars, in Iran the motoring public shows their enthusiasm by flashing their lights every time you approach in the opposite way. The infrastructure in Iran is filled with highways that are of US standards. That is a great relief compared to the conditions that we experienced in Pakistan, Nepal and China. We would like try and describe for you why driving on the Pakistani highways was so incredibly hazardous. In the urbanized parts of the country, I would say that would be about half of the country, the highways were in decent condition and often two lane and one is called dual carriage way. The sparsely populated and one half region of the country where there is principally desert and very harsh land the highway amounts to a single lane of asphalt. You have to compete with oncoming traffic for the occupancy of that asphalt. The way that works is that during the daytime hours going 40 or 50 miles per hour you encounter an oncoming heavy truck or bus or infrequently another car or typically a four wheel drive vehicle. There is a ritual as you come onto the other vehicle at a decent rate of speed, the ritual is who is going to move over first. Typically what happens is for the last split second both vehicles pull over just enough for both vehicles to pass each other on the highway. That goes on time after time after time. Occasionally you will encounter a more headstrong truck driver who simply will not give way so you are forced to leap off of the paved surface on to some totally ill prepared shoulder. Now that goes okay during the daytime but at night it becomes even more wild. With the onset of darkness and the anonymity of the night the truck drivers simply do not give way at all, so you are compelled to, at the last moment, jump off of the paved surface. That goes on for several hundred miles and it makes for some pretty alert and at times scary outcomes. The Willys jeep driven by a crew from Phoenix, Arizona had an incident where they didn't move over quite fast enough to allow a passing truck and part of the frame of the truck came in contact with the side window and frame of the Willys jeep. No one was injured but that is the kind of scary thing that happens on a Pakistani highway.

We saw the effects of extreme heat and the Iranian desert today, a mirage. The heat and the sand were so intense and the sun so bright that it produced a mirror-like reflection on the surface of the desert. It created the effect of a mirage.

We understand that a number of tours are beginning to take place involving US visitors to Iran. The tour operators here in the country in last many days have had 3 groups of 25 visiting Americans and they expect to have five additional groups of visiting Americans in the course of the rest of this year. We also understand through hearsay that there's some heightened tension involving international politics and military action between the US, Iran and Iraq and air space somewhere in this region. We do not know the details, we just know that there has been a diplomatic threat by the US against Iran, which does not in any way appear in the attitude of the local people. They seem to know little about it and seem to have the attitude that the only problem between Iran and the United States involves the capital cities and not the people of the two countries. Americans are looked on with great favor as being happy carefree people who are welcomed as visitors here in Iran. One has to reconcile the political and diplomatic tension with the reality that the people here, who are noted for their hospitality throughout centuries in fact, seem quite pleased to have Americans in their presence.

We came across something quite spectacular in the course of our travel today. 190 kilometers from Kerman, there exists a city, which in English is referred to as the Emerald of the Desert, the city is Vam. The significance of Vam is that there is this extraordinary citadel, we might refer to it as a fort, that exists there. The citadel was first created on this site 1000 B.C. and it has been restored to an incredible fine condition today. It is said that it is historically every bit as significant as Athens' Acropolis and Rome's Forum and Coliseum and Paris' Versailles. It is called the Arg-e Bam, it displays the inference of 2000 continuos years of dramatic and eventful history that has occurred in this region. It has been archaeologically authenticated that the first coins ever used by human kind were used by early Persian civilizations. Round coins were first discovered in archeological sites here in Iran, predating anything of Greek origin. A famous Persian poet and writer makes reference to that fact that all people pass by in an hour or two of their life and meanwhile the citadel, the Arg, has lived on for centuries. The thing that is so remarkable about the structure, and it is a fort or citadel similar to what you might find in China, in the Forbidden City or what you might discover in some of the Greek Island ruins, is the architecture. It's principally mud and one of the components of the mud is straw. I discovered today a use for straw that I have never seen before. Straw is thrashed and separated into small sizes and then it is used as a component in mud to create dwellings. So this Arg or citadel that we visited and came upon here in Iran is constructed out of mud and straw. Quite a unique construction method and a first for my personal experience to see something like that.

The 1954 Packard had a marvelous day today because of the US-like highway condition here. We were able to travel 500 kilometers in no time at all and move right along. We report to you that we have arrived in the city of Kerman, in the central desert region of Iran. Tomorrow it is onto the very historic city of Esfahan, which we will be telling you more about in tomorrow's update.

Looking back on our visit to Pakistan we want to acknowledge some of the E-Mail messages that we have received from our fellow Rotarians in Fond du Lac, Dr. Pawsat, Joe Reitemeier, Dick Freund, and Louie Andrew. We had the opportunity to attend the rotary club meeting in Lahore, one of the cities in Pakistan. To illustrate the size of that city, they have fifteen rotary clubs in the city of Lahore. Our visit to the Metropolitan Club was eventful because things are quite the same the world over. The speaker and program presenter didn't appear in time for the rotary club meeting and so I was recruited to make a presentation about traveling around the world. So you find that people are hospitable and welcoming just about wherever you go. It is a great feeling to discover that as you travel about.

Our journey is moving on across Iran and Turkey, and we understand that there is a heightened amount of military activity in Turkey. We are cautioned to expect to see a lot of moving military vehicles and tanks once we arrive in Turkey because of some of the both, civilian and international tension in the region we will be passing through. But that is several days away. Right now we are concentrating on our visit to Iran. Carl is in good health and I as well. We thank all of those who have sent E-Mail messages and have made our trip even more meaningful. So we will conclude this update, and until 24 hours from now, say so long from Iran.