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Published: November 13th 2007
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Ziv, Dana and I arrived in Jordan at dusk on Thursday night. We walked through the border that connects Eilat with Aqaba with only backpacks and $100. More than enough for our weekend.
First we passed through the Israeli patrol at the border- macho soldiers with stiff faces. As we walked through no mans land over to the Jordanian side, we could already hear the loud shrill music coming from the shops. A large picture of two men on top of the sign- the royal family. The Jordanians, they love thier king.
We were met by two soldiers, one who begged Ziv to let him take Dana or me for him, even just for an hour. The next soldier saw Dana and proposed to her, and told her to think about it, she could get back to him when she comes back through the border to Israel. And ofcourse, four days later as we returned back to the border, this man remembered Dana, and threatened to take her passport until she said yes (all in jest, ofcourse!).
Once we passed through the border, we found a taxi to take us to Aqaba. We told the driver that we
Stopping for coffee.
The cab driver treated us! were going to look for a taxi in Aqaba to take us to a little village in the mountains called Dana (not to be confused with Dana, my friend who I am traveling with. Though both names are spelled the same!) We were only willing to pay 40 JD (Jordanian Dinar). What? So cheap! You will not find such a cheap taxi, he told us. I will take you for 55. My family lives in the village near by. But Ziv was determined to only pay 40. We drove into Aqaba, meanwhile Ziv and the taxi driver continued bargaining. Ziv had a friend who offered 40 dinar, he said, and after phone calls (40 JD to Dana? Impossible!) the taxi driver said that he would drive us to Dana for 40, but only in his personal car. So we took off to his house, he offered us to come in for coffee, but we declined, we'ld stop on the way. And we piled into his tiny ancient subaru, and took to the mountainous kings highway of Jordan.
Now Jordanians are a whole other species, it seems. Everyone is family, everyone wants to befriend you. Everywhere we went, we heard
Nargila.
A favorite pastime. "Welcome to Jordan, Welcome to Jordan!". We stopped on the road at a tiny little stand where they sold coffee, drank our deep dark small cup and huddled together (it was cold!). The young boys who worked at the stand loved us girls, and insisted on pictures of us. Many of them have these very high tech phones with cameras, as phones are very cheap in Jordan. The SIM cards and pay as you go, though, are not. And so young boys will walk around carrying these ridiculous phones with all sorts of gagets, but they will not have a SIM card. The phones become prestigious little cameras, storage for pictures that never leave the phone.
We drove into Dana that evening, and were greated by the owners of the hostel with chicken, humus, pita, salad, baba ganush. We sat on the top floor of an open tower smoking apple tobacco and drinking sweet tea.
Dana is a tiny town in the desert mountains of lower Jordan. The town was abandoned a few hundred years ago, and is only beginning to be restored. Most of the town is ruins, and even the few small houses (and the one
hostel) seem to be standing atop precarious stones. The buildings are the colors of the desert; soft yellow that almost camaflouges with the earth.
The next day Ziv, Dana and I wandered around the ruins of Dana and into the surrounding fields. Among the fields young children were building fires and picking olives. A few of them stopped us, they knew only the words "Hello" and "Come here." We walked up to them and they proudly introduced themselves with the english they knew, offered us olives, and held up their sleeping baby sister and waved her around (how did she stay asleep?). They invited us for coffee, but we had a taxi called in an hour so we couldnt stay.
We camped that night at the opening of Wadi (canyon) Bustan. We spent the next two days hiking the canyon, subsisting mainly on turkish coffee, sweet tea with river nana (speriment growing by the river), pita, techina, vegetables, and halvah. And soft cheap cheese. 😊 Our drinking water came straight from the rock, as they say. We collected it dripping down the canyon.
We were woken that first morning by singing and drumming. Three young bedouin girls
on thier donkeys came by us to fetch water from the spring, banging on their water buckets and singing. They shyly giggled in our direction, and continued to lead their donkeys, covered with dulled colored cloths, to the spring.
The wadi was a spectaculor creation. The colors and types of rock changed as we moved through. Sandstone, limestone, charcol, magnese. The canyon was a playground of rocks and water. We hiked following the river through the wadi, avoiding wet feet as much as possible (yey gortex!). Paradise. I will leave the rest of the explanation to the pictures themselves.
Ziv arranged a ride for us at the end of the Wadi, and while we waiting, we sipped water with a bedouin. Between Hebrew, English and Arabic, we were able to talk a bit about his tomato fields, politics, the history of the area. At one point we heard a loud boom, and I asked: "what was that?" The old bedouin answered "Yisrael," and we all laughed. As if to say, in a loving way, that a loud boom wouldnt be here, that's our crazy neighbors.
Our ride away from the Wadi was with another bedouin, who drove
us with his son on a rickety truck which was barely crawing over the dirt road. He didn't use a key to start the car; rather touched two wires together. When we talked, the engine was so loud our voices vibrated. The man turned to us and said "bad road," that is to say: bad road, car is fine :-)
We ended the weekend with dinner in Aqaba. 6 USD for all of us together. Then, restocked with halva, techina, pistacios, and coffee with cardonmin, we returned back to the border.
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