Blogs from Jordan, Middle East - page 8

For breakfast at the Wadi Rum lodge I raced to be first at the egg station. Since nobody else had yet put odd ingredients into the pan, I got some freshly cooked eggs for a change. One of the chefs was baking flat bread at the next station. I watched him roll out the dough and spread it on a convex oven top where it baked almost immediately. Then he peeled it off the oven and placed it into a basket. Nice warm pita bread and eggs. Plus juice and fruit and cereal. Today I determined to start with a good breakfast and it proved to be a good decision. After breakfast we boarded a fleet of pickup trucks for what they called a jeep safari led by Bedouin guides. Although they were not genuine Jeep ... read more

We had booked to participate in a 3-day tour through Jordan with Petra being the highlight. Unfortunately shortly before the trip, Lesley encountered some difficultly with her leg and it quickly became clear that she could not tolerate sitting in a coach for long journeys nor traipsing the uneven paths we would reach. Don decided to still take the trip with the group. Fortunately the operator Tourist Israel Tours was able to change our double booking into a single. Thus the blog post text and pictures for this trip will be provided entirely by Don, and Lesley should not be blamed for errors in it. The day started with an early taxi ride from home to Netanya where most of the group boarded the coach at 6am. It stopped briefly in Zichron Yakov to collect a ... read more

We can’t help but notice that the breakfast buffet here includes free champagne. This seems a bit incongruous in a country where the overwhelming proportion of the population is Muslim, and alcohol doesn’t seem to be all that readily available anywhere. Our desert camp out in Wadi Rum, for example, was dry in more ways than one. A sign outside reception advises guests that “Outside food, beverages and hubbly bubbly are not permitted inside the Hotel”. I wonder why anyone would feel a need to smuggle in their own “hubbly bubbly” when it’s laid on for free at breakfast. I don’t think there are any non-Muslim university students staying here, but if there were I’m sure they’d be only too keen to start the day by knocking back a few glasses of free champers. Having commented ... read more

I‘ve just managed to fall asleep when I feel a gentle tap on my arm. Issy says that she doesn’t think she’ll be able to find the camp toilet in the dark so she wants me to show her the way. In a half daze I remind her about the torch on her phone, and I’m asleep again before she’s left the tent. I awake to the dawn, and she's nowhere to be seen. I panic. I decide that she must have got lost on the way to the toilet and is now wandering around lost in the desert. I wonder what I’m going to tell our offspring, and worse still her Mum. I throw on some clothes, and am very relieved to find her sitting in the communal tent watching a caravan of wild camels ... read more

Today we have arranged to visit the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Jerash, which is about 50 kilometres north of Amman. Our driver’s name is Haitham. He tells us that as recently as the 1980s Amman was a relatively small city, but it has experienced enormous growth in recent decades. We ask whether a lot of this is due to the influx of refugees. He says that some of it is, particularly Iraqis, and more recently Syrians, many of whom are currently living in two large refugee camps near the border. He says that it has recently become a lot safer in Syria and a lot of the refugees are now returning home. I think that the standard applying to the word “safer” might be a bit different here to that back in Australia. ... read more