Day 1 Jordan

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Our flight on Akira airlines was packed with 20-somethings heading to Eliat to party before Passover. After a five-minute taxi ride we were at the border and quickly were in Jordan. Our guide was waiting on the Jordanian side and got us through immigration and into a car very quickly.

Our 23 year-old driver spoke some English, enough to point out sites along the route. The scenery is spectacular with rock formations rising up from the dessert, very barren and inhospitable. Our first stop was Wadi Rum where we spent 3 hours touring the area in a four-wheel drive. Our driver/guide was a Bedouin who is 32 and has four children. The natural scenery there is fantastic, but since I’m writing this after a day at Petra, it is definitely a #2. We also were invited for a camel ride. The initial experience as the camel was standing up was similar to what it felt like to be lifted in chairs at Jessica’s wedding. I felt like I was going to fall off. Silly us, we didn’t as the price first and it ended up costing $45. We did get a number of good pictures and can now honestly say we have ridden both elephants and camels. There were a couple of reporters there making a video about Middle East cultures. I asked if they had interviewed any Bedouin women. They said no because all the women they approached told them they would need to get permission from their husband to talk to reporters. I told them I was surprised at how invisible women and girls were in the various places I’d seen in Jordan. Being men and men who wanted to focus on the romantic aspects of the Bedouin/Middle Eastern cultures, they weren’t particularly interested in my disruptive comments.



After we had a quick break for lunch, we headed off toward Petra. The first hour was back on the road we had driven from Akabar and the second hour the “King’s Highway”. Having been up since 5 AM and not having slept well the night before, both of us dozed for the first hour. During the second hour we got to look around. The difference between Israel and Jordan is still pronounced, but not anywhere near the difference I had seen 20 years ago. During that visit, I drove along one-lane roads that the bus had to share with ox-carts and we were accompanied by a guard who carried a machine gun in his lap. There are modern roads and lots of stone houses with satellite dishes on the roofs. Don’t get me wrong; this is a developing country with lots of poor people.

Our hotel looks like a Jordanian village with many stone buildings. The rooms are “picturesque” and while it feels nice to be in a place that doesn’t look like a Springhill Suite, the interior of the rooms is a little long in the tooth. (My travel blogs don’t mince words.) We both felt dusty and tired. Adjacent to our room was a Turkish bath with steam and massage. I suggested that we give it a try and it hit the spot. I wish I had a picture of the stone interior…it really looked like what would imagine a Turkish bath looks like. The attendant was a middle aged man with an enormous belly dressed in an elaborately folded towel. After 15 minutes in the steam, it was time for the massage. He had each of us in turn lay down on a marble slab and worked us over. When he had me lie on my stomach and asked me to take off my bathing suit top, it seemed OK since Jack was there. The only strange part is that in this culture women are required to be all covered up to protect their modesty and here’s a guy asking me to take off my bathing suit top.

We rushed through a mediocre buffet dinner at the hotel to be picked up for “Petra by Night”. Hundreds of people walk down the canyon entrance to the site of the “Treasury”, one of the most spectacular of the buildings in Petra, by candlelight. For part of the way the path is covered with the original Roman paving stones that are irregular and slippery. Jack had a hard time because he couldn’t always see to put his foot down properly. When everyone arrived there was a musical performance. We lasted about 20 – 30 minutes and decided to head back. Since we were virtually alone, we used the flashlight in the iPhone which made traversing the paving stones much easier. You couldn’t see much, but you did get a feel for the site and it prepared us for the next day.

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