Salt and the South

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So in the last few days we have had quite a voyage. We (Tad and I) began by taking a trip from the Ghor up to Amman to visit with the step-sister and family of one of the guys that I worked with at Purdue. They have an apartment in Amman and a house out in Salt, so they are probably the best-off people that I have met in Jordan. I guess the people I have interacted with span a pretty wide range of the socio-economic ladder in Jordan.

Anyway, we spent the night with them in Amman in a rooftop apartment, and the following morning they gave us a ride out to their primary home where we helped them with wine transfer and basically chilled out. It was really nice.

After saying goodbye in Amman, Tad and I took a bus down to al-Mazra and picked up our things for our trip to the South of Jordan. Our plan was to take the bus to Kerak and then a bus to Petra, but when we had arrived in Kerak we had missed the last bus, so we settled for a bus to Ma'an, a city in the south. It being Ramadan we couldn't find a place to eat so we waited patiently for the sun to fall from the sky.

Ma'an is a small but nice city in Southern Jordan. Sleepy compared to Amman but a bustling metropolis compared with al-Mazra. We found a place to eat, and sat down around 7:15. We ordered loads of food - BBQ chicken, rice, yogurt, bread, salad, and they brought it all out to us pretty quickly. The tortuous bit is that we were absolutely starving, having had nothing to eat since the morning, and had to watch our food until the sun set.

At the restaurant, our server was Pakistani. Initially Tad tried to talk to him in Arabic, but he wasn't understanding anything. Tad was getting pretty frustrated and it was quite painful to watch. After a while we realized, and he told us, that he doesn't speak any Arabic, only his local language and English. It has got to be very hard for him to work in that restaurant not speaking Arabic. He comes from around Quetta in Baluchistan in Pakistan, and he said something like "George Bush" like he liked George Bush a lot. At least someone likes him (actually he was quite popular in Africa).

We watched the TV in the restaurant as prayers were said in a mosque in Amman. Finally the sun set, the call to prayer was called, and we dug in.

The next morning we made tracks for Petra, and were able to grab a service with another Peace Corps volunteer from the bus station in Ma'an. The Peace Corps volunteer was also unhappy, just like all the other single volunteers that we have met in Jordan. We went out separate ways when we made it to the entrance to Petra.

Petra is quite huge. Tad and I made a serious miscalculation in not going to the hotel before we left for Petra. I had a 15-20 pound pack on and Tad had a bookbag. We were unprepared for the level of hiking up and down hills that was required. In particular, the hike that did us in was from the Treasury to the Monastery. By the time we reached the Monastery we had hiked up and down quite a lot and were quite dehydrated and exhausted - even though we had thrown Ramadan to the winds and had been drinking water all the way. I think we went through 4.5 liters of water in the matter of a few hours.

Once we made it to the Monastery we found a little restaurant that was selling drinks and bought 3 liters of water, a lemon-mint drink for me, a liter of Gatorade-equivalent, and candy bars. Only 3 times the going rate in the Ghor. After that we took lovely naps in view of the Monastery under an overhang where they had laid out rugs and carpets for other similarly wearied travelers.

On the way back to our hotel we had to walk back. It seemed like 5 times longer than the route to Petra due to our fatigue. Once we exited Petra we found a pizza joint and ate a smallish pizza pie. But we were still hungry.

With hunger sated at least for a while, we headed off to our hotel, named Cleopetra, and found a bed for ourselves on the roof of the hotel for 7 JD each. We met another fellow traveler from Strasbourg and the three of us headed off to dinner together.

After dinner we all went to a small shisha place since we couldn't find anything alcoholic due to Ramadan, and we talked for a while after we got back to the hotel.

The next morning Tad and I took a bus to Aqaba and found a small hotel not too far from the water. The girl that we met before was also at the same hotel and we tried but failed to meet up at the beach. The beach was quite nice with the most beautiful colored water since there isn't a cloud in the sky since it is the dry season.

This one super-sketchy guy who was vaguely Italian or Jordanian or something tried to talk to me with the typical line - "Where you from?" "English?" and got all pissed off since I cold-shouldered him. He even had the gall to come up to me and Tad in the water and ask Tad why I was being so cold. Major sketch-ball.

Me, Tad and the girl from Stasbourg met up for dinner finally and finally found a bar in Aqaba that was actually open - an Irish themed bar that was trying to be a pub but was way too nice, and had ceilings that were way too tall. Tad ducked out and she and I talked for a few hours and hit it off pretty well.

Then back to the hotel and we called it a night. In the morning Tad and I headed out via bus for the Ghor al-Mazra and had a quite uncomfortable trip back to al-Mazra since we were covered in other people's belongings and couldn't stretch out our legs very well. I suppose that is what you get for 3JD ($4.4) for about 150 km. At least the view at the end of the ride was quite interesting since we were riding along the Southern section of the Dead Sea where all the potash and bromine and other chemicals are produced. The rest of the ride is through quite arid and sparse landscape where not much is alive. How the driver stays awake with fasting for Ramadan and such boring driving is a mystery to me.

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