Sharm, Wadi Rum and Petra

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It is nearly 7pm on Friday and I am sitting in the Kings Way Hotel in Petra, Jordan after two days of extreme lows and extreme highs.

HOWEVER just a note to those interested. We will be out of cell phone coverage for 2 days. We get to Frankfurt at 0530am on Sunday (local time) and will once again be on our NZ cell phone numbers. So if anyone is texting don't expect a reply until then.

I’ll start with the ‘low’, and there haven’t been too many of them after 7 weeks on the road. I suppose I shouldn’t call it a ‘low’ because everything we have done has been an ‘experience’ one way or the other and yesterday was certainly an EXPERIENCE!!!
You might recall that at the end of my last blog I ‘praised the Lord’ that we had a 9am start the next morning for our trip to the port of Nuweiba for our ferry trip to Aqaba in Jordan. The was really the only highlight for that day I’m afraid.
We were checked out and picked up by 9am and headed up through the Sinai desert on much of the same road we had travelled the day before to get to St. Katherine. A different driver (and guide) this time and a decent mini van with comfy seats. Just as well as our drive was the speed demon from hell. He was a total contrast to our man from the day before who had a real aversion to using 5th gear and consequently didn’t get along too quickly in the Toyota Landcruiser 4WD. Our new man only had one speed and that was flat out all the way. I’m not saying it was dangerous, just a little scary at times as over in Egypt they use all the road all the time. The centre line is something you ‘straddle’ unless someone is coming the other way and when you come to a left hand bend you just cut the corner, even though there is no way on earth you know what is coming the other way around the blind bend. We had to cover 200kms to get to Nuweiba and while the road is reasonable, it weaves over many steep mountain passes and is quite ‘bendy’. The van had a ‘beeper’ that went off continuously when the speed reached 120km/h and believe me, we were listening to that darn beeper for 90% of the trip. We made it to Nuweiba by 11am and our driver in his very broken and sparse English told us with a huge smile how very proud he was of his driving ability in getting us to Nuweiba in 2 hours. I just nodded and ungritted my teeth!!!!
That wasn’t the worst part of the day. We then had our tour guide go away and organise our ‘passage’. We had the tickets but that wasn’t all that was needed. I think a fair amount of ‘Baksheesh’ changed hands and a ferry company official took us off the guide and took us into the ferry terminal where we filled out Egyptian departure cards. So far so good. He then pointed us to the customs and immigration desk where someone was sitting in a booth. As we approached, dragging all our gear, he promptly got up and left the booth and walked away. We waited 5 minutes and he came back and told us to take a seat. Which we did for about 30 minutes while he went goodness knows where, possibly to midday prayers but who knows. When he did come back we got put through a bit of a third degree and wondered if we were ever going to get away when he finally stamped our passports and showed us to the ferry terminal waiting room. This was a huge hall the size of a football field full of mainly Egyptian men (going to Jordan to get work) with some women and kids and a few Europeans. Would have been over 200 people waiting on what were the most uncomfortable seats/forms we have ever experienced. No matter how you sat it was just diabolical AND WE SAT AND WE SAT AND WE SAT!!!!! We couldn’t read the ticket as it was in Arabic and we had no idea of a departure time, and neither did any body else including the ferry people. We sat and waited from about 1145am (remember we had arrived at the port at 11am and it took 45 minutes to get through immigration etc.) until 4.30pm when finally people started boarding the ferry. European people were transported in one bus to the boat while locals were kept in a separate one. Boarding the boat was done the same, locals were all shunted to the side while us whiteys were given preferential treatment. However we then sat on the ferry until 5.30pm before it finally sailed by which time it was dark and we couldn’t see a thing.
By this time I had sent a couple of texts to our tour company in Cairo advising them that we were obviously going to be late getting to Aqaba, Jordan, and to advise the rep waiting there of this. They asked me what time we were sailing and, of course, I replied ‘no idea’ as no one did.
The actual ferry crossing of the Red Sea to Aqaba was very good. The ferry was air conditioned and we were able to get an orange juice (no diet coke!!!) and some Pringles to snack on. Two and a half hours on the ferry and we arrived in Aqqba around 8pm. By the time we got off and retrieved our cases (which were thankfully still intact) and met our tour rep, went through Jordan immigration and got our passports BACK (YES, they took our passports on the ferry and those of you who know me know how much I hate having my passport taken from me by some unknown dodgy looking official) and stamped with an entry visa for Jordan and got everything packed into the reps car it was getting on for 8.45pm and we were then informed it was just over an hour drive to the Bedouin camp at Wadi Rum. We were assured the Bedouins had been told we were going to be late and had kept dinner for us, which was at least something. The really unfortunate part about it though was that it was pitch black and we couldn’t see anything around us and I know we drove through some amazing desert countryside.
The drive out of Aqaba is incredible in that it involved THE LONGEST hill climb road we have ever seen ad I am not kidding. The road climbed steeply for many many kilometres and the inside lane was bumper to bumper big truck leaving the port all loaded up. This hill reduced most of them to a crawl for what must have been at least 10 kms or more. Some were slightly faster than others so they would pull out and slowly overtake the slower trucks at which point our driver would just go on the extreme inside and overtake the trucks on the roadside shoulder……INCREDIDBLE stuff!!!!!
We got to the Bedouin camp at 9.45pm in the dark after driving along, first the Desert Highway (SH1 the length of Jordan and 4 to 6 lanes wide, 2 – 3 each way) and then some country side roads and then some kilometres over just sand through the desert. Glad the driver knew where to go!! The camp was in the middle of no where, actually somewhere in Wadi Rum, but they had power supplied by generator. We were shown to our ‘bedroom’ which was room number 24 in a huge big long line of Bedouin tent rooms. 2 single beds with a ‘bathroom’ at the rear consisting of a flush WC, a wash basin and a shower basin with no curtain or anything like that. Only cold water. But for a camp in the middle of the desert it was surprisingly comfortable. The walls and roof of the rooms were very thick blankets and all in all an interesting place. Red sand everywhere!!!although the floors of the room were a red concrete pad. We were whisked off to the dining tent and served dinner, everyone else had obviously had theirs, which consisted of a ‘hangi’ style cooked meal of lamb (yummy), chicken, potatoes, rice and an assortment of local salads and similar things. It was very delicious and very welcome as our only food since breakfast at 7.30am had been some Pringles chips and an orange juice on the boat. I asked how the meal had been cooked because the meat and potatoes tasted just like hangi food and was told that it was cooked in a similar fashion. By the time we finished eating we hit the sack as we had another early morning start. Breakfast at 7am and a 4WD excursion through the Wadi Rum desert for 2 hours at 7.30am.
We both slept quite well in the rather hard single beds but the alarm went off at 6.30am which seemed far too early!!! We decided that a cold shower in the rather chilly desert morning wasn’t worth facing so just a cold water wash and off to breakfast, Bedouin style. Boiled eggs, a soft cheese, breads with coffee or tea. Very acceptable.
We then met our driver, Salman Zawaydch, a local Bedouin who proudly showed us his ‘jeep’, a clapped out, very old Toyota 4WD ute that he had to get out and lock the front hubs on to go into 4WD. But he was a lovely little man who was a genuine Bedouin who lived with his wife, 4 children including a 3 month old, his mother, 2 sisters and 2 brothers in a local village a short distance away across the desert. He was very keen to hear about NZ because he knew about NZ sheep because there are huge flocks of them on farms in the area. (Must have been some of the live shipments that were made). He couldn’t quite get his head around the fact that in NZ we had 4 million people but 40 million sheep and that they all lived outdoors on lush green grass all year round and that we had NO camels at all. He asked us to send him some photos of NZ, something that we have actually been asked for a lot be people in Egypt etc. who may have heard of NZ but have no idea or concept of what it is really like. I asked Salman if he had a computer and ‘YES’ and did he have an email address and ‘YES’ again. Might live in an old fashioned Bedouin village but has the mod cons!!!!! So we have his email address and will send him some photos when we get home. The drive through Wadi Rum was just fantastic. True desert landscape made famous by Lawrence of Arabia and we saw several ‘genuine’ relics of his time in the area. It was incredibly peaceful and so quiet. We stopped several times to take pictures and look at sights and deathly quietness prevailed. Every now and then we heard and saw local Bedouin heading out towards the roads with their camels where they earn a few ‘Dinar’ taking tourists for camel rides. Saw two foxes charging around the rocky outcrops but they were going too fast to photograph or video unfortunately. A wonderful experience that more than made up for the lows of yesterday.
Back to the camp around 9.30am and paid the customary tip to Salman and met our driver for the next 2 days, Sa’ad Farajat, from Petra. Loaded up the bags and set off on the 2 hour drive to Petra. This time we were able to see some of the countryside we had missed in the dark last night. It is almost hard to describe this land. Very red rocks and sand everywhere and very little vegetation. We passed Bedouin villages where they live reasonably traditionally on goodness knows what because there isn’t anything here but sand and huge towering rocky outcrops and mountains devoid of any vegetation. However as we got near to the Desert Highway we suddenly came across a lot of green fields and could see tomatoes growing everywhere. Sa’ad said that there was underground water in this small area and they irrigated the land and grew tomatoes. These were being sold on the roadside for about a kilometre and then the water obviously ran out because it was back to desert. APART from the NZ sheep that Sa’ad also know about. These are in big feed lots, under cover and we could see the buildings and feedlots but fences made it difficult to actually see the sheep although we did spot a couple of big flocks in their feedlots. Interesting thing is that Salman, our Bedouin this morning, told us he purchased one local lamb each month to feed his family and it cost 225 Dinar which equates to about $300US (and we though lamb was expensive in NZ) The rub is that wages here are pitiful. Not sure what Salman earned, bit hard to get that story due to language but our driver Sa’ad said as a full time driver he earns around 250 dinar a month. Our drive last night mentioned similar numbers and said a full time teacher at top of pay scale could earn up to 400 dinar a month. 1 dinar equals 70cUS. Can’t quite figure how their economy works with numbers like that. Jordan doesn’t have any oil so petrol is much more expensive than Egypt and other oil rich Arab states (but still cheaper than NZ) at just over a dinar a litre. However trucks everywhere and cars everywhere and as I said I can’t figure out how they all live. BUT they are nice people and are very happy with their lot in life. Children all go to school for free and there are big new schools everywhere and universities everywhere as well. They love their King who they all describe as a decent, down to earth bloke who really looks after his people. I suppose it’s better than most of the other middle East countries that have undergone bloody revolutions in the last few months. Anyway enough of the pontificating.
We arrived at Petra around 11.15am and were introduced to our guide for the visit to the Nabatean City of Petra. Abdullah was a very bright young man who was an incredible guide for about 3 and half hours. He spoke very American accented English and when I asked where he learned English he said at school but he watched a lot of American movies…..amazing!!
The visit to Petra was something Joy, especially, had been looking forward to the whole trip and she reckons we definitely left the best to last. Google ‘Petra’ for all the historical stuff because there isn’t the room to write it all here. Suffice it to say that all the superlatives in the English language can not do justice to this place. I’ll try to put some photos up with this blog but even they will not give a true picture of the magnificence of Petra. For those who know the place we walked with our guide a short way, then rode on horse back for about a kilometre, then walked for I don’t know how far through the main archaeological bits like the ‘Treasury’ and the Royal tombs etc. etc. and then rode on donkeys to the Monastery, a ride of about 30 minutes through more ruins and then up nearly 1000 steps. We then walked all the way back to the start, and this took well over an hour and a half. Just as well it was quite cool. We have been to the Grand Canyon in Nevada but we reckon the Siq at Petra is far more impressive and a little easier to access. I know that sounds like a bold statement but having been to both places we feel able to make it. Hopefully you get the gist of what we have experiences today!!!! A REAL HIGH for the trip in every sense. We never walked out at the end/start until almost dark at just after 5pm. Poor Sa’ad, when we phoned and said we were ready to be picked up again, thought we had got lost I think.
He took us to our hotel and we checked in and hit the hot shower!!!!!
The end of a FANTASTIC day and there’s more tomorrow when we drive from Petra to Amman and stop at the Dead Sea for a couple of hours for a swim etc. Good news is …… pick up time tomorrow is 12 noon. SLEEP IN morning, at last.
I know this ones another long one but two rather contrasting days but still really great experiences. BOY OH BOY it’s going to be very hard to have to go back to work in just over a week.

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