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Published: October 5th 2008
Thanks to the ongoing problems not only with my laptop but also with FedEx, I'm writing this from a computer lab... but that's not important. I just returned from Jordan at about 2:45 this morning, after about 5 days in the Hashemite Kingdom. I have quite a bit to tell (this ought to be a thorough entry due to my recent lack of communication), so I suppose I'll start at the beginning:
Four friends and I embark on our trip Monday night, taking the 10:15 pm bus from Cairo to Nuweiba, a Red Sea beach town on the east coast of the Sinai. For an overnight bus trip it's relatively painless, and we arrive in Nuweiba at about 5:30 am. The ticket office for the ferry to Aqaba, Jordan isn't supposed to open until 7 am, so we sit on the curb in a truly filthy part of town. I've heard that the village itself (5 miles south) is a nice little place, but the port of Nuweiba? Not a place you want to get stuck. Sitting outside the ticket office I counted no fewer than SIX massive piles of burning trash in the surrounding area.
At about 8:45
Wadi Rum
In the taxi on the way from Aqabathe ticket office opens, which is our first clue that perhaps things won't go as planned. We examine the price chart, which reads (in Arabic): "Egyptians: 50 LE; Foreigners: $75 USD." We'll have to pay more than 7 times what a local would, but this doesn't surprise us. What does surprise us is being informed, while we're in line (or what passes for a line in Egypt), that the price has been increased to $85 in that 5-minute span. By the time we get to the front, it's $95. I argue but it does no good and I have little recourse. I'm hoping to go to Syria and Lebanon later in the semester and this ferry is the only way to get from Egypt to Jordan without crossing through Israel, and neither Syria nor Lebanon will allow you in with an Israeli stamp in your passport. So I, along with three of my companions, hand over the $95. My friend Brendan loudly protests that 95 U.S. dollars for a one-hour ferry ride is preposterous (he's absolutely right), so he hops in a shared taxi to backtrack north to the Israeli border and overland it to Aqaba. I did not have
Bait Ali
The Bedouin camp we stayed at in the Wadi Rum desert this option.
After we buy our tickets, we're told that a ferry is leaving to Aqaba in 15 minutes and we need to hurry to catch it. After passing through port security, we're directed into a warehouse on port grounds to receive our Egypt exit stamp. Little do we know that this stamp will sign our fate for the day. We get stamped and find out that the ferry will leave at 10 am, in about half an hour. 10:00 comes and goes with no announcements, and at 11:00 one of the 200 or so people in the warehouse discovers that the ferry did indeed leave at 10, with no one on it. This prompts an outcry from just about everyone, and the guards sharply respond that the ferry isn't there (clearly), that they don't know when it will arrive, and that we're not permitted to leave the non-air-conditioned warehouse because we're technically not in Egypt anymore. Thus to go across the street from the warehouse to the convenience store (which was still within the walls of the port) for a snack or a bottle of water is akin to entering Egypt illegally and we'd be arrested.
So
we settle in for the time being, and wait. And wait. And wait some more. At 3 pm, after six hours of confinement, the guards still don't know anything and no announcements have been made. Finally, at 5 pm, they say the ferry would be arriving in 15 minutes. At 5:45 the ferry pulls into the port. At 7, the buses arrive to take us to the ferry. At 8, we get onto the ferry. Surprisingly, the ferry was actually quite nice (it had better be for $95) and comfortable. The ferry finally departs at 10 pm, 13 hours after we bought our tickets. We arrive in Aqaba by 12:30 am (lost an hour changing time zones), and collect our luggage. Once we get into Aqaba everything is much more efficient. The Jordanian port security were exceedingly kind and helpful, and we're stamped into Jordan and get into Aqaba city by 1 am.
In the meantime, Brendan, by backtracking 150 kilometers and crossing through Israel, had arrived in Aqaba at noon and spent all day scuba diving, which is relatively inexpensive in Aqaba. After much back-and-forth text messaging and many roaming charges, we find the hotel Brendan had booked,
drop off our luggage, and, sleep-deprived, hungry, and irritable, go out to get some food.
I was struck by how clean and modern Jordan is compared to Egypt. Well-lit, well-paved roads; safe and courteous drivers; it was almost utopian compared to Cairo traffic. (Although there is something endearing about the chaos that is downtown Cairo.) There were parks, the medians were neatly landscaped and manicured, and there was no trash on the streets. Not even a single cigarette butt! Another thing I noticed, that seemed to ring true over the next few days, was that Jordanians seem to be extremely fond of their king, King Abdullah. There are photos of him literally everywhere, on the streets, on apartment buildings, in restaurants, shops and internet cafes. And why not? Judging from the state of Aqaba, he appears to treat his people quite well.
The next morning we wake up early to make our way to Wadi Rum, where we have reservations at a Bedouin camp in the desert. We take a taxi 45 minutes to Wadi Rum and check in. This is my first time truly in the desert. I don't know how many of you have been out
in the middle of the desert before, but it's really quite an experience, and I must say it's enchanting. The thing that first struck me about the desert is the quiet. The absolute, dead silence of it. You can go far out into the forested wilderness of West Virginia and hear nothing but nature. But it's quite another thing to hear nothing at all.
Wadi Rum is essentially an area of the desert with bizarre, unique rock formations that have been shaped by thousands of years of pretty constant wind. These rocks surround Bait Ali, the camp we're staying at. Jeff and I decide to do a 4-wheeler tour, which is pretty cool, but only an hour long so we don't get to see much. Later on, a Bedouin guide takes the five of us on a 3-hour jeep safari way out into the desert. He stops at a few places and shows us primitive 2,000 year-old dwellings carved out by the Nabataeans (who did Petra). We timed the jeep safari so that the sun is setting as we're returning to camp, and Wadi Rum is a totally different place at dusk. The sky, the rocks, the sand, the
clouds all change colors. Red, yellow, blue, orange, purple; it really is a sight to see. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries halfway through the safari so I was only able to snap a couple of shots of the sunset with Brendan's batteries. By the way, I took a LOT of photos on this trip. I'll put a few on here, but I'm going to use Shutterfly for the vast majority of them. As soon as I get them uploaded you'll be getting an email.
That night the Bedouin staff cook up a veritable feast of grilled chicken and pigeon, shawarma, hommos, baba ghanough, tahina, kebab and lentil soup, of which we get seconds, thirds and fourths. After dinner we climb up the steps behind the camp to the top of a rock and lay under the stars. It's not so much that the stars were brighter in the desert, it's more like I had never seen the stars at all until that night. I had seen one shooting star in my life until that point; in the 30-45 minutes on top of that rock I saw no less than four.
The next morning we pack up
Petra
Me in front of the treasury and catch a van to Petra. The van takes us up through the mountains to the top of an enormous valley and then down switchbacks into Wadi Musa, or as it is more commonly known, the Petra Gate. We walk into Petra at about noon, concerned that we may not get to see everything in one day, but that turns out not to be a problem at all.
I wish I could amply describe Petra in this entry, but it's just not possible. Petra is the most incredible thing I have ever laid eyes on, man-made or natural, because its beauty lies in the fact that it is both man-made AND natural. The pictures you've seen are likely just of the Treasury, which is indeed an amazing sight (I'm including a video of the approach to the Treasury), but Petra is an entire city. There are hundreds, probably thousands of dwellings carved into the canyon walls, along with a Romanesque amphitheatre, a church, a monastery, and many other things. The great part is that you can climb up the rocks and poke around in all these dwellings. You could easily spend three full days exploring Petra, but after five
hours or so our legs were dead and we had seen more than enough.
After much arguing and negotiating, we arrange a cheap ride to Amman in a local's pickup truck. It takes about three and a half hours to get to Amman, where we check into a hotel downtown and I promptly hit the sack with a migraine. Amman doesn't have a whole lot of sightseeing to offer, but in the morning we set out to find the few places it does have. On the way to the Roman theater, I bought a few old Iraqi dinars off a street vendor for 1 JD. The bills are graced with the image of Saddam Hussein and are worth nothing, but I think they're interesting souvenirs. The Roman theater itself is much bigger and in much better condition than I imagined it would be, and a very cool place. We then begin our hike up the side of a steep hill to the Roman Temenos (Citadel) on top. We get there, out of breath, just before it closes, and explore the ruins for a little while. The National Archaeological Museum of Jordan is there as well, where they have some
interesting Paleolithic-era sculptures along with fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the benches on which the Scrolls were written. There's a mosque and a Byzantine church at the Temenos, and the Temenos itself affords breathtaking 360-degree views of Amman. I took a video of the view from the Temenos which may not have turned out well but I'll post it here anyway.
After the ferry fiasco, my travel companions decide they're going to cross into Israel over the Allenby Bridge and through the West Bank, spend a night in Jerusalem, and take a bus south to Eilat and then over the border to Cairo. I seriously consider this but ultimately decide that a day's worth of mild suffering and inconvenience is worth the chance to see Syria and Lebanon. I'm exceedingly glad I made this decision.
I part ways with my group and catch a 7 am bus (I got to the station at 6:58) from Amman to Aqaba. I arrive in Aqaba at about 11:30, get some lunch, swing by an internet cafe, and pick up a bottle of heavy-duty ibuprofen, which I'm sure I'll need for the ferry. I waltz into the ticket office at
Monastery
At the top of a cliff in Petra 1:30, three and a half hours after the fast ferry was supposed to leave, buy my ticket, pay the departure tax, and go outside to wait for what I assume will be at least four hours. Forty-five minutes later, the bus shows up and takes us to the ferry, where we immediately board, and I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Surely they'll keep us at port for hours, it can't possibly be going this well. After an hour, the ferry departs, and we're in Nuweiba by 5:30. I navigate Egyptian immigration and emerge from the Nuweiba port to find a bus to Cairo waiting. I
cannot believe my luck. I run down the street a few blocks to the nearest ATM to pay for my bus ticket and find that none of the three ATMs outside the port will accept my card. Here comes the other shoe.....
Out of nowhere, two Saudi men approach and ask if the ATM is working. I tell them that my card isn't, but they can try if they want. The ATM works for them and they ask where I'm headed. "Cairo," I inform them, "but I have no money to
At the monastery
This photo was taken from the top of the cliff, in front of the monastery/church buy the bus ticket. Sleeping on the beach for the night doesn't sound so bad though..." Before I finish my sentence, one of them hands me 100 LE. "Consider it a gift from my friend and I. If a Muslim can't be generous during the holy month, when can he be?" I thank them profusely, rush to catch my bus (which I board five minutes before departure), and return to Cairo, arriving in the wee hours of the morning.
Pictures are forthcoming, so check your emails. I'm hoping to make a trip to Alexandria, perhaps next weekend, but regardless, you'll be hearing something.
NOTE: I tried to upload the photos/videos and the connection here is too slow to do it. I'll try again later.
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