Pictured: In Lalibella about to enter St George’s Church

Pictured: Taking a local boat out to the “Green Island” in Massawa

What to say about Eritrea? Uniquely positioned on the Red Sea coast, there is a lot of potential for the country - meanwhile it seems that they are perfectly content without credit cards, any kind of digital banking (they keep their bank account registry on a piece of paper), AOL dial-up speed “wi-fi”. Plainly put, technology is their last concern - and the well behaved children and respectful adults are a product of it.

Pictured: Hegra

Saudi is working feverishly to make tourism a bigger contributor to their economy. Our favorite stop in Saudi Arabia was definitely AlUla, a short flight from Riyadh. Our last stop in the Middle East before returning home was a relaxing one in the desert with the highlight as touring Hegra.

Pictured: Magic Camp Desert in Wahiba Sands

Oman is such a quiet country, we visited three different parts of the surrounding Muscat area: the mountains, the ocean, and the luxurious Jumeirah Bay. Like Saudi, Oman is still working to develop their tourism industry - and you can see why they haven’t had to as you drive by miles and miles of oilfields and pipelines.

Pictured: Posing with the Yemeni-famous Dragons Blood Trees on the outskirts of the Hajhir Mountains.

Yemen (or Socotra Island) was our absolute favorite landscape visits in all of the Middle East. Their scenery and natural beauty is unlike anything we’d seen before and is almost incomparable to any other place. The diversity of the landscape, mountains, trees, beaches, sand dunes, and rain forest like climate seems almost impossible to all fit on a small island that you can drive around in 5 hours.

Pictured: Fishermen’s boats taking a break in the Biblos mini-marina

We drove across the border from Syria to Lebanon; from Damascus to Beirut. The contrast between the two was stark - Lebanon, although not without their share of conflict, has been given the opportunity to rebuild and construct a beautiful and vibrant main city. The food in Lebanon was THE best in the Middle East (but I do believe all the chefs are Syrian).