Day 33 Esfahan

3:15 pm and on the bus awaiting departure for some local climbing crag - unfortunately I have to do the supper tonight - this is typical of Hot Rock: there's precious little climbing on the trip as it is, but despite there being a number of non-climbers, I and Simon have been tasked with tonight's supper (and tomorrow's too) - when we are at a climbing venue. Really annoying. Anyway went to some local supermarket and bought some bits to cook up: the shop had a truly odd selection of food and non-food - rows and rows of giant cans of cucumbers for example. One problem is that all the prices are labelled in Farsi; they look like this:

Given I have a crazy small budget (1 dollar per day per person for one supper and one breakfast), I needed to try and not spend too much. A difficult task when I couldn't read any of the prices. After about an hour I had 3 kg of cheese in my trolley and nothing else. Fortunately, things improved and I bought enough stuff for macaroni cheese and tuna (for tonight) and some sort of black-eyed bean curry for the next night. Two big trays of eggs and some bread will do the breakfasts. I reasoned that the tuna was on offer - there was a big pile of tuna tins.

11:45 pm - in my tent, camped out below the climbing crag: it's only about 25 km from Esfahan; apparently the crag is known locally as Police Station Wall - probably due to its vicinity to the police station. Like much of the Iranian rock it is simply massive - in particular stretches a long way to the left and right of where we're camped. Did a great climb of great quality - the left hand corner, it's given 5.9+ and is bolted. Simon led all three pitches - a bit polished (limestone) on the first pitch, then fine. Felt much better to be climbing again. The route is called Sepehr 1 - see Day 35 for the Iranian spelling of the route names.