Hama on your own clock
Almost everything worth doing in and around Hama runs on a schedule nobody else keeps for you. The wooden wheels on the Orontes turn all day and look best when the crowds thin. The open steppe east of the city rewards a late afternoon. A lunch with relatives runs two hours past when you said you would leave. Shared transport serves none of that well. A rented car does, and Car Zone serves Hama the only honest way a company with a single Damascus branch can: we drive the car up to the address you name, for a flat forty dollars that appears in your quote before you pay anything.
What the car actually opens up
The centre of Hama is compact enough that you will walk more of it than you drive. The car starts earning its place the moment you leave the built-up part. Qasr Ibn Wardan sits about sixty kilometres northeast, a sixth-century palace and church laid up in bands of black basalt and pale brick, standing alone on the steppe with the beehive villages scattered along the way. Shayzar's long fortress ridge above the Orontes is roughly twenty-eight kilometres to the northwest. Neither runs to a timetable, and both are comfortable half-days if you leave in the morning.
Choosing from the fleet
Our twenty-four cars come from Hyundai, Kia, Changan, Chevrolet, DFSK and Mitsubishi, which covers the two very different kinds of driving a Hama trip involves. For the old quarters and the riverside, where lanes narrow and parking is tight, a small hatchback is simply less work. For long days out on the steppe roads, or a route that carries on west toward the mountains, take something bigger with more room in the back for luggage and passengers. Tell us which of the two your week looks like and we will suggest what fits.
Arranging the handover
Send us your dates and where you want the car. We confirm the meeting point and the time, drive it up, and hand you the keys there. A landmark helps more than a street name anywhere in Hama. If your plans end somewhere other than Hama, say so while you are booking rather than at the end, so the return is agreed from the start.
