Jordan: Amman to Petra
Dear All
This is my last day before I head to the Promised Land. The end is almost here and I am not sure what to do with myself. I haven’t worked in over a year and the thought of not having my own schedule, my own feeding routine, my own life is somewhat frightening. Soon, within days, I will need to settle down, do the full time job of finding a full time job and finally concede to the fact that my epic journey is over. For now, I am breezing though the boring country of Jordan.
Again, I cruised past the border with Syria with no problems. A 10 Jordanian Dinar (JD) visa fee and I was set to wander a country I knew had little to offer. Most people fly through here seeing only Petra and Amman. This isn’t a cheap country with the Dinar having more weight than the US Dollar – something I haven’t experienced since England. We arrived in Amman and caught a shared taxi to the hotel.
The owner of our hotel was an asshole and completely uncaring of his clientele. The hotel at this budget level was one of the worst I have been to with unflushing toilets and either incredibly hot showers or unbearable cold ones. Once out of the hotel, Jamie (the Canadian I have been travelling with since Syria and now a good fun friend and great travel partner) and I noticed how incredibly boring this city is with little to interest a tourist so we rested for the day, planned our day tripping and ate often at the Iraqi restaurant.
The one thing about this restaurant wasn’t just the great food but the number of Iraqis there. This was the first time they were able to leave Iraq as now passport are being issued to the people. They told me that they liked Americans and were happy that they put an end to Saddam but that they weren’t fixing the country fast enough and that things are still in chaos. I asked them if it was safe for me to travel there and they all, in unison, said no. So there goes my dreams of being an Iraqi truck driver and therefore my travels go on. The following day, Richard, another Canadian, Jamie, a Malaysian named Thiam and I went to the Dead Sea.
After an hour by taxi through desolate desert and past many police checks, we got to a resort area which we declined to go to. We refused to pay for the entrance so we convinced the driver to go ten kilometers ahead and found a rough rock beach at the edge of the Dead Sea. The water was pleasant and warm and was blue at the shoreline but appeared darkish as it opened into the rest of the sea and to Israel on the other side. The liquid appeared to flow like an oil slick but the water was still very thin. The taste, as expected from water that is so salty nothing can live in it, gave a burning sensation with even a little of its sickening brew on my tongue. Floating, the stereotypical image of the Dead Sea, held true to its word. You could stand upright, not touch the bottom and still be head up over the water’s surface. If you did manage somehow to roll onto your stomach, the salty water would push against your chest and knees to arch your back so that it became difficult to right yourself again. It was an amazing experience and one I plan to repeat when I head to the Israeli side of the sea.
The next day, Jamie and I headed to Salt - a small town with a neat name. This small hillside town has a museum, many concrete block houses and a tourist information centre with no information on the city. We went just to see some small village life and well, we got some and realised why so few people come here. It was a nice place and we did try to by some salt in Salt but the salt came in huge bags so we passed. We came back to the hotel and watched some well needed TV.
The trip to Petra, the red rose city of tombs and temples, was on the first day of Ramadan. Last year at this time I was in India where the need to hide food from the starving locals was unneccessary as Bombay was a mix of Muslim, Hindu and Christians who all partake in eating at various times. This time, in an all Muslim world, we must eat discretely as to not disturb the holiness of the holiday. We by food from the market and eat in the room, we wait for the call to prayer to have dinner and gorge ourselves from a day without grazing on snacks. The city of Wadi Musa, the pop up city that connects Petra and the hotels, is a classic example of a tourist trap. Though the hotel was incredibly cheap due to the tourist decline in the area, the restaurants are overpriced and the touting is everywhere along the route through the city. Petra, the archeological site itself, is amazing as can be seen by the view from the hotel rooftop with a bubbly mountain range covering the ancient site itself..
The entrance leads slightly downhill to a cresent canyon with a flat face and a groove at the bottom to carry rainwater to collection sites. The wall face holds images of camels and soldiers until you reach the first and probably the most amazing sight – the Treasury.
If you are interested to see the Treasury from the comforts of your couch, turn on your TV and rent Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The last scene where Indy goes into the temple to get the Holy Grail was filmed at the Treasury. It has long pillars and a large room guarded from intruders trying to find the holy grail themselves after it was lost in that earthquake that ate that evil German woman who was foolish enough to try and grab the grab instead of saving herself. The entire piece is carved from the stone and is another majestic example of human achivement. The rest of the place is littered with more rocks and junk and amphitheatre and a Monastary which actually looks like a larger and more plainer version of the Treasury as well as being 800 steps up. By the end of the day you are exhausted and need a taxi to get back to the hotel. We bought a two day pass but a small hitch in our plan changed everything.
The next morning we bumped into Molly and Matt. I had met Molly a few times travelling the same route through from Beirut to here and she had managed to get a free ride with a Bedouin tour guide to spend a night in the desert. She invited us to go along and with a little last minute panic we agree. We packed our stuff, shoved it into the back of the 4x4 and we were off into the Wadi Araba sunset.
After dropping most of everything but the essentials for the night, we drove to Little Petra – a smaller version of the main tourist place. We drove over dunes, past jagged mountain and clear sparsely vegetative landscape to get to a small drizle river that twisted around large boulders. We hide from the noon day sun while we smoked floavour tabacco from the shisha and ate a fantastic lunch of potatoes and vegetables cooked in tin foil and placed in the fire. Then, after chasing the sunset, we set up camp near a gorgeous triangular sand dune, ate freshly killed chicken made in the Bedouin style of buring it underground and watched a clear starry sky light the night darkness. We laughed and talked and shared. It was a great time camping, once again, in one of my favorite environments.
We returned back to the hotel by the next morning before it became offensively hot. We rested for a day and then Jamie and I mad rushed to the top of the Jordan to a city called Irbid to where we are now. Tomorrow, if we successfully make it through the Israeli border with our Syrian visas, we should be in a village near the Sea of Gallilee enjoying Israels only lakeside.
Take c are
Oren Jalon
World Traveller
