Salaam,
After my last post I spent a day in Dahab, the independent traveller's version of Sharm el-Sheikh, then the next morning I caught a bus to Nuweiba. The ferry was supposed to leave at 12pm and take two hours...it left at 5pm and took six. On top of this I was travelling with two South African girls who had serious passport complications as none of the officials could fathom where they came from ("there's a South Africa?"), so we finally checked into a hotel in Aqaba at 1am.
I spent the next morning familiarising myself with Jordan and immediately formed two strong impressions; the first, that the people are less prone to ripping off tourists; the second, that things you would expect to be expensive are cheap, and things you expect to be cheap are expensive. A good example of this is that a felafel costs 250 fils while a trip to a public toilet costs 500. It's the first time I've paid less to purchase food than to get rid of it. In the afternoon I caught a minibus to the edge of Wadi Rum then hitched to Rum village, where I met a local Bedouin and negotiated a night sleeping in the desert. It was an amazing evening, though after watching the sunset it became very cold very quickly. I spent the night fully dressed in my sleeping bag with two extra blankets, but still hardly slept. So I enjoyed a memorable night simply staring up into the star-filled sky.
The next day in Wadi Musa I realised that I had left the keys to my baggage in the desert, and had to borrow some pliers to cut through the padlocks. I spent the rest of the day and the next visiting the ancient ruins of Petra (as seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). The complex is huge; there is a path running between the major sites but you can spend hours hiking away from the tourists to see the hard-to-reach Nabataean remains. The Treasury is undoubtedly the highlight – forty metres high, beautifully decorated and glowing red in the sunlight – but the hilltop monastery is a close second. On Thursday I caught a minibus to Amman and in the evening I met up with Shirley (the New Zealander from the felucca) for dinner.
Friday was one of the strangest days of my trip. I met a Polish guy called Pete and we decided together to go to Wadi Majib, the 'Grand Canyon of Jordan'. This involved a minibus to a nearby village and a further two kilometre walk. When the canyon finally came into view it was spectacular. We began our long walk down into the valley, not really caring that it was thirty kilometres to the next town and that we only had a litre of water between us. Fortunately, I suppose, after a couple more kilometres a car stopped and offered to take us across the valley. It was only after we'd got in that we realised the driver was absolutely trolleyed. He and his uncle were on their way to a wedding in Karak and had started the party early. At one stage the driver had a beer in one hand, his mobile in the other and was negotiating the cliffside bends with his knees. In total, he managed to knock back three cans of Amstel during our ten minute trip. We decided to jump out at the first available spot (it was another twelve beers to Karak) and hitched to nearby Wadi bin Hammad. This is a stunning tropical retreat in the midst of the desert, complete with a river, palm trees and a high waterfall and, most impressively, untouched by tourists (the authors of Lonely Planet kept this to themselves). After a couple of hours we hitched back up the valley with a family in a pick-up truck. We stopped briefly so the father could change places with his son, who would continue along the steep, winding, barrierless roads while he played with his daughters. It's worth noting that the son was eight years old.
The kid drove us expertly to the main road, where we had to hitch again. It was now dark and, after the pisshead and the pre-pubescent, we didn't know what to expect. Surprisingly, the first to stop was a lorry loaded with empty crates; surprising as there were already four people filling the two front seats. Two of them graciously climbed onto the roof so Pete and I squeezed into the front. We spent the next hour singing along to Arabic hiphop until we reached a farm. It transpired that we had to work for our lift, so we spent a couple of hours loading two thousand chickens onto the back of the truck. We then delivered the poultry to a couple of shops before finally arriving in Karak. From the sleepy town, two surprised tourists watched a truck loaded with chickens hurtle around the corner, screech to a stop in the street and it's seven (!) passengers tumble out of the front seats. They initially found it amusing, until they realised the two blokes that stunk of bird were checking into their hotel*. We ended the day with an ostrich dinner. It tasted like chicken, though that may have been the psychological scarring.
The following morning we went to Karak castle then hitched our way along the Dead Sea Highway. The views across the sea to Israel were beautiful, and the Jordanian coast was white with salt deposits. In the end we took five lifts to get to a place with hot springs where we could swim for free. 'Swimming' isn't really an accurate term – you sort of flop onto the water and just lie there. The feeling is very odd and quite indescribable (sorry about that). I didn't have a newspaper to take the obligatory photo, but I managed to get a shot of me on my back perusing my Jordan guide.
Last night we came back to Amman and today I've been seeing the sights – namely the citadel and the Roman amphitheatre. Tomorrow morning I am catching a bus to the Israeli border where my fate is no longer in my hands. If I get an entrance stamp into the West Bank then that immediately bars me from various countries, including Syria (my planned route into Europe). In this case I will stay a while in Israel & the Palestinian Territories, perhaps work on kibbutz, and catch the cheapest flight out. However, it is theoretically possible to avoid the evidence if you find a border official willing to stamp a seperate piece of paper. This would result in my time in Israel being limited, but allowing me to travel through the Middle East into Europe flight-free. Whatever happens I'll be very happy to have a break from the unbelievably loud 5am call to prayer.
Salaam,
Joe x
* I was going to have a pun about 'smelling fowl', then realised it's rubbish.
