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Published: February 22nd 2014
Hilary's Account of our January 2014 trip to Jordan, beginning with Amman (Tom's account is at the end).
Note: 215 photos in all, so please scroll down at the bottom of page. And do leave a comment if you're so inclined.
Hilary did most of the planning of the trip on the Web, reserving our flights from Paris to Aqaba and back to Paris via Amman on Royal Jordanian Airlines and our hotels through Booking.com. Trip advisor, the “Lonely Planet” and the French “Le Routard” gave helpful advice and came in very handy, but she really made a poor choice of a hotel for the first night in Amman. Billed as an “aparthotel” in a residential area on the Booking.com site, the place turned out to be a real fleabag in a working class area of town. There were no sheets on the bed, the WC ran, and the kitchen hadn’t been installed yet. Using hand gestures to the man at the desk, who only spoke Arabic, we were able to complain about the bedding, and he finally brought us some freshly laundered sheets.
By this time it was well past midnight, our plane having only arrived at
Queen Alia International Airport at 10:30 P.M. (Why, pray tell, does Royal Jordanian schedule its Paris to Amman flight at such a crazy hour?). The night turned out to be very short, but the bed was actually quite good and we slept well. Determined not to let the less-than-satisfactory hotel get us down, we decided to treat ourselves to a good breakfast, so we packed up our things, and took a taxi to the Intercontinental Hotel, where we partook of their delicious brunch buffet described so enticingly in The Lonely Planet. In the dining room, we mingled with richly-garbed couple s from the Persian Gulf. Laughing at ourselves, when the check arrived we realized we were splurging more than twice what we’d paid for the hotel just on breakfast!
Because we were leaving that night by plane for Aqaba, we asked the concierge of the Intercontinental whether we could leave our bags there. He very kindly accepted, so off we went again by taxi, this time to the centuries-old “downtown” of the city. Amman has a population of close to three million; it spans nine hills and is very spread out. The traffic in town was horrible: bumper to
bumper cars and taxis, all of which seemed to be honking as they inched forward. To make matters worse, it seems all of the Kingdom’s highways pass through Amman. We were told a metro system is under construction. They need one! The geography of the center of Amman is curious: It is defined by circles or roundabouts. For example, the old city is at circle one; the Intercontinental is at circle six; and our fleabag hotel is at circle eight.
Despite the drabness of “old Amman”, it has its attractions. The Roman Theater, thought to have been built between 138 and 161 AD by the Roman Emperor
Antoninus Pius, is impressive, and the view vertiginous from the top steps. We also visited Citadel Hill and the ruins of Temple of Hercules which is said to have been constructed under the
Roman EmperorMarcus Aurelius (161 – 180 A.D.). And we spent an hour in the small but interesting Jordan Archeological Museum.
Of course, we couldn’t see everything in the city in six hours, so we had to make some choices. One of these choices was whether to have a nice leisurely meal in town or to visit the Royal Automobile Museum before
we headed out to the airport. Because Tom is very interested in cars, we opted for the latter solution, stopping off at the Intercontinental on the way to pick up our luggage. Although I can’t say cars are my passion, I must say that even I was impressed by the 70+ vehicle collection of the late King Hussein. He had Rolls Royces, Mercedes, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Corvettes and also a variety of motorcycles. A sign says the purpose of the museum is to tell the story of the royal dynasty through the cars King Hussein and his father Abdullah I possessed. Apparently, the present king, Abdullah II, is also very interested in cars and continues to add to the collection.
The Area around Aqaba in southern Jordan
We arrived after 10 PM at the Aqaba Airport and took a hotel to our hotel, the Aquamarina, which is up on a hill overlooking the town and in the distance, the Red Sea and, to the west, the Israeli resort of Eilat.
I had booked a “suite” for a minimal price at the hotel, which had a view of the Sea and also the mountains. After our first night
there, we discovered that we were the only patrons, and because of this, we got very helpful advice and service from the lady at the desk and the rest of the staff during the three nights we stayed there.
Our first day, we toured Aqaba on foot, taking in the fort, the open excavations of the ancient Islamic city Aila, the Royal Yacht Club and the beach front. We spent the following day at Berenice Beach, a private beach about 20 kms south of the town of Aqaba, where we swam and went snorkeling. The whole area is known for its coral reefs and brightly-colored fish, and we were lucky enough to see them through our masks and without having to dive. The next day was spent in Wadi Rum (see below). During the morning of our fourth and last day in Aqaba, we took care of some logistics about our trip (i.e. getting the heat fixed in our rental car and changing our plane ticket at the Royal Jordanian office) and then checked out of the Aquamarina and drove down the south coast again, this time to the newly-developed Tala Bay, where we had lunch. It's brand new
and could, in fact, be "anywhere" in the world. We were also struck by the fact that there was practically no one there. A question we asked ourselves: Has Jordan over-built, or has Tala Bay been affected by the economic crisis?
We wanted to go swimming again, but by the time we finished lunch, the weather had changed, and the water didn't look very inviting. So we left the Red Sea and drove north for two hours until we reached Petra.
Our Adventures in Wadi Rum and Petra
Apparently, T.E. Lawrence, the World War I British hero who earned his nickname “Lawrence of Arabia” for his exploits fighting alongside the Arab tribes that revolted against Turkish rule in 1915, launched many of his attacks, including some on the Turkish railway, from the desert valleys of Wadi Rum. Later, in the early 1960s, David Lean shot his epic film there, and Peter O’Toole in the role of Lawrence, dressed as a Bedouin and riding a camel, helped make the place the popular tourist attraction it is today.
It is with Lawrence in mind that we decided to visit Wadi Rum. Not only had we watched the
film “Lawrence of Arabia” on the flight from Paris to Amman, but we also had been reminded of him in Aqaba. The commemorative flag of the Arab Revolt flies above the city’s Fort, which was attacked by Lawrence and the Arab forces from overland in 1917 and liberated from the Turks.
Wadi Rum can get very crowded in March, April, September and October when the weather is mild and throngs of tourists, backpackers, and mountaineers visit the area. Traveling out of season, Tom and I were not bothered by such crowds; and because it was January and quite chilly, we opted not to spend the night under a tent in a Bedouin camp as many tourists do. Instead, we decided to make our excursion there a long day trip from Aqaba.
The air was crisp outside as we drove for an hour to the Wadi Rum Visitor Center in our rented car. There, the man in the office arranged a six-hour tour for us with a local, English-speaking Bedouin driver, the owner of a 4 x 4, and subsequently followed him by car up the road to the town of Rum, where we parked. Tom was very anxious
to ride a camel, which he had never done before (I had—in Egypt about 15 years before), so our driver arranged for a young relative of his to take us on an hour-long camel ride to the site of “Lawrence’s Spring”, the first stop of our tour of the desert. We both enjoyed the hypnotic swaying of the camel ride, but when the camel got up or went down, we weren’t at all expecting the back/forward/back jerk it made and almost fell off. By the way, as my French Routard guide-book pointed out, it is a misnomer to call the animals in Jordan “camels”; they should be called “dromedaries” because they only have one hump!
Wadi Rum is more than just your average desert. From the flat, sandy “wadi”, a word in Arabic for a valley or dry riverbed, rise up “huge ochre-colored rock pinnacles, weathered into bulbous, outlandish shapes, like island in a sea of red sand.” (D.K. guidebook).The outcrops and peaks are amazing, so much so that T.E. Lawrence apparently described the area as “vast, echoing and godlike.” I can’t give you the names of the places we visited, but I can still, a month later, remember
the over-all impression the landscape made on me. It was “lunar”, but ochre-colored, not grey as I imagine the valleys of the moon to be. More specific memories are of scrambling up dunes of sand to a peak where there was a fantastic view of a “dry sea” and islands below us, and, at another point, walking under a precarious-looking rock bridge.
But the memory that really stands out in my mind is of feeling abandoned at dusk in that desert landscape. Our driver, who was not really a “guide”, had dropped us off at the entrance to a canyon and told us he would meet us at the other end of the canyon in an hour. But when we got to what we thought was our meeting place, there was no driver and no Jeep. The sun had set; it was very cold; there were no roads or cars anywhere to be seen; and not a living soul but the driver knew where we were. We didn’t have a map; nor did we have our cell phones with us. After waiting for what seemed like hours, but was probably only 30 minutes or so, a Jeep came out
Amman: Royal Automobile Museum
King Hussein, Abdullah II, the Crown Princeof nowhere and we were saved! Apparently, we had misunderstood at which exit of the canyon we were supposed to meet, or at least that was what the driver told us. He then proceeded to drive us to what was, he said, his grandmother’s tent, where he had just come from. While we waited in the vehicle, he went into the tent for about ten minutes. Then he came out again, got into the Jeep, and drove us back to Rum Village and our car. I had the feeling our hike in the canyon had been a convenient way for HIM to visit his grandmother, who lives alone far out in the desert, and I whispered to Tom to definitely not give him a big tip. I don’t usually like the way money can “talk”, but this seemed to be an appropriate way of showing the driver our displeasure. Despite it all, I realize that we did have an unusual, albeit scary, adventure feeling abandoned in the Jordanian desert of Wadi Rum.
We had two other out-of-the-ordinary adventures at Petra, the archaeological site and National Park that some call “the eighth wonder of the world.” But before I speak
about these adventures, which occurred on the second day we were there, let me describe Petra.
Not only is Petra remarkable for its monuments and ruins, but also for its natural beauty of red rock and the breath-taking panoramas from its cliffs.
The site of Petra has been populated since prehistoric times, but it was the Nabateans, a tribe of nomadic Bedouins originally from Arabia, who started migrating to the site beginning in the 6
th century B.C. By the 1
st century B.C., they had made Petra the center of a rich and powerful kingdom on the spice and incense trade route from Asia and Arabia to the Mediterranean and had built a city with a population of about 30,000 people. Later, jealous of the Nabateans’ achievements, the Romans took over the city in 106 A.D. The city continued to thrive culturally for awhile, but when the trade routes changed from land to sea, and after several earthquakes, Petra fell into decline-- its numerous caves and dens inhabited only by the local Bdul Bedouin tribe. It lay forgotten by the West until 1812, when Swiss scholar and explorer, Jean-Louis Buckhardt, rediscovered it.
Petra is located in a valley
basin in the Shara mountains at about 1100 meters above sea level. Extremely hot in the summer, it was cool and drizzly when we visited it in January. In fact, when we woke up the first morning, it was raining cats and dogs, so we didn’t start out for the site until the rain abated, which was about 11 a.m. After buying our tickets at the one central gate, we walked about 900 meters along a wide valley known as the Bab el-Siq to the Siq gorge, which is the natural entrance into the city. Dashing young Bedouins on horseback were skillfully racing back and forth on one side of the gravel path, entreating us to climb up on the saddles with them. (Tom, who was very tempted to ride with them, said he would do so on the way back, but by the time we came back the first day, they were already gone, and the next morning, for some reason, they were not there.)
Along the gravel path of the Bab el-Siq, we admired the tombs and huge carved blocks of stone called djinn (spirit) rocks on the valley floor and the caves in the surrounding cliffs.
As we descended through the Siq gorge, we noticed the remains of numerous conduits, water channels and terracotta piping which were built by the Nabateans, who were famous for their ability to control and conserve water. The Siq ravine was getting narrower and narrower, darker and darker, then all of a sudden, through a slit in the walls ahead of us, we caught our first glimpse of the magnificent rose-red façade of the Treasury. Then, stepping out into the open, we saw the monument in its entirety and were struck not only by its impressive architecture but also by how beautifully well-preserved it was after more than two thousand years of existence.
In addition to admiring the Treasury, we spent our first day on the site getting an overall view. We saw the many tombs of the Outer Siq, the Classical Theater, the Royal Tombs and the ruins of the city of Petra, including the colonnaded main street and the sacred temple, the Qasar el-Bint. By this time, it was getting dark. Because of the drizzle, there was no lovely sunset that night as described in the guidebooks, so walked for an hour back to the ticket gate, found
our car, and returned to our hotel, very glad that we had decided to “do” Petra in two days and not just one, as many tourists do.
A word about our hotel. Located in Wadi Musa, the town near Petra where most hotels are, the Amra Palace was a bit of “treat” for us, seeing as we went beyond our budget and splurged on a hotel with three stars not just twp. We didn’t regret it. The bed was comfortable; the room well-heated; the buffet breakfasts and dinners varied and appetizing. I even went to the hotel’s hammam and had a massage, while Tom relaxed in the hot tub. We ended up spending three nights there instead of the two we’d planned –luckily so, since we could hardly have started driving after our escapades the second day.
After a good night’s sleep, we drove back to the site the next morning and retraced our steps back to the Classical Theater. We’d decided that we’d devote the second day to some hiking to places we hadn’t seen the day before. Next to the Theater was a steep rock-cut stairway, which, we knew, led up to the High Place of
Sacrifice. It was an arduous climb up to the top of a 1000-meter-high mountain, where we saw altars the Nabateans had used for animal and human sacrifices. From there we took a rock path winding down the other side of the mountain and admired the Lion Monument, the Garden Triclinium, the Roman Soldier Tomb and other monuments as we descended.
Soon afterwards we had our second big adventure. Half-way down the mountain, after studying our simplified map and thinking we could take a short cut across the rocky terrain, we stupidly started following a riverbed. At one point, high on a cliff, a group of women and children shouted at us not to go that way. In our hubris, we thought we knew better. Down, down, down we walked. The path seemed daunting but so did the walk back up to where we’d started, so we continued descending. Then, all of a sudden, walking up from the direction we were headed—again, as if out of nowhere--came an elderly Bedouin man with a young girl astride a donkey. Speaking broken English, he told us: “Finished, finished, finished”, implying that the river bed we were following led nowhere. Although we wondered
to ourselves “Where are YOU coming from, then?” we accepted his advice and turned around and followed the man and the girl. After a few minutes, the old man came back to us and offered to give me a ride on his donkey. Tom convinced me to accept, and the young girl got down. In the interim, Tom gave her a carton of orange juice we had saved from our lunch box, and she seemed very pleased. As the four of us –or five with the donkey—walked back up the ravine, the old man explained that the 10-year-old girl was his daughter by his fourth wife, who was 28 years-old. He said that he, his wives, children and grandchildren lived up the ravine from where we had come. (We realized afterwards that his wives were probably the group that had warned us NOT to follow the riverbed!) After about 20 minutes of walking together, we parted at a fork in the riverbed. The old Bedouin indicated which path we should take to get down to the valley floor; Tom handed him a few Jordanian dinars; the man put the girl back on the donkey; and they continued on their way
up the ravine.
As for us, having wasted more than an hour trying to find a “short cut”, we finally found our destination: the place next to a café from which a steep ascent (800 steps!) starts out for the Monastery, a huge Nabatean temple carved into a mountainside. By this time it was 4 PM, and we hesitated to start the hour-long walk up the mountain just before nightfall. The guard at the café told us to come back tomorrow, but when we said we were leaving the next day, he exclaimed we couldn’t miss seeing one of Petra’s most impressive monuments and that a donkey-ride up would only take 20 minutes. At first we hesitated. I’d read in a guidebook that Petra’s archaeological authorities would prefer that tourists walk up to the Monastery because the many donkeys’ hooves are seriously degrading the Nabatean-carved sandstone steps on the route up, but the guard told us we’d never make it up and back before nightfall. Not waiting for our reply, he called out to a donkey driver (a cousin of his, we later learned) and assured us he would give us a good price. After two minutes’ of negotiation,
we were “hooked” and our third adventure began.
Tom and I climbed up on our donkeys and began the ascent, the donkey driver walking behind us. We had the impression we were the only tourists walking UP; all the other tourists, donkeys and Bedouins but us were coming DOWN. Up, up, up we climbed, past caves, tents and closed souvenir shops, finally arriving at a wide flat plateau just as night fell. By this time, we had gotten off the donkeys and were ascending the final steps on our own, the donkey driver having told us he was taking the donkeys back to a cave for the night. The façade of the Monastery looks like a less-ornate version of the Treasury’s but it was amazing to think it was constructed at such a height. After observing the monument, we hiked around the plateau, hoping to catch the famed view of the Petra basin and the surrounding plains. Alas, it was too dark to see much, so we decided to begin our descent on the 800 stairs. This was no easy task: the steps were uneven, and the twists and turns made it difficult to find our way. Luckily, Tom
had a flashlight handy, and he held my arm and guided me down the torturous path. (A guidebook I delved into recently clearly states: “The descent is too rocky and isolated even to think about attempting it after sunset.”)
As we were going down, we saw way below lights that looked like the tail lights of a car, and when we finally reached the bottom of the stairs, there was our driver in his Jeep! He had “parked” his donkeys and gone back to his village to pick up his car and was offering to drive us back to the ticket gate and our rental car. What a businessman! He knew we wouldn’t want to do the hour-long back to the ticket gate! Of course, we readily accepted and agreed to the price he was asking. Those 25 dinars were worth every penny!
Driving back to the entrance to Petra, we passed through the town where the donkey driver lived, the cement-block village of Umm Sayhoun, which is built on a ridge overlooking the archaeological site. This is where most of the five branches of the Bdul Bedoin tribe were relocated to by the Jordanian government in the
Aqaba: view of Eilat
taken from the bar of the Aquamarina Hotel 1980s. Abandoning their traditional lifestyle of goat-herding, agriculture and cave-dwelling, they now have electricity and running water and work mostly in the tourist industry. The driver told us that, nevertheless, there are still some families who live illegally in the caves of Petra.
The driver left us off at the gate to Petra and we retrieved our car. Our third big adventure had come to an end. It was cold and dark outside, and we were exhausted. It certainly felt good to take a shower, have dinner and sleep in a comfortable bed that night. The next day we left early and drove to the Dead Sea and on to Madaba.
Dead Sea, Madaba and Jerash
On the way to the Dead Sea, we stopped to view two Crusader castles at Shobak and Kerak and then had a lovely swim in the Dead Sea before arriving at the Black Iris (“backpackers”) Hotel in Madaba for the next two nights. While staying in Madaba, which is about 30 kms southwest of Amman, we visited the famous 6
th-century mosaic map of the Holy Land at St. George’s Church and also Jerash, the well-preserved Roman city an hour to
the north of Madapa. (See Tom’s account below for more details.)
Our Two-Day Trip to Jerusalem
We had read that Madaba was a good jumping-off point for going to Jerusalem.Unfortunately, though, due to time constraints and the fact that our flight back to Paris was soon leaving from the Amman airport, we couldn’t spend more than a night in the Israeli city. So our two-day trip to Jerusalem was brief, but it was also very interesting. From Madaba, we drove to the Jordanian/Israel border, where we left our rented car. We crossed the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge into Israel by bus and then, after about 2 hrs. of hassle, got our "stamps" and took a shared taxi to the Old City.
From the Damascas Gate of the city wall, we walked through the Arab souk and narrow streets until we found our hotel: the Lutheran Guest House, which turned out to be a great address. Our sightseeing that afternoon included the different quarters of the city, the Western Wall, a view of Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock mosque, the via Dolorosa (way of the cross), Holy Sepulchre Church (site of where they say Jesus
Aqaba: Berenice beach
south of the city on the Red Sea was crucified), and the chic Mamila residential neighborhood just outside the wall of the Old City. The next morning we saw the Mt. of Olives and then visited Bethlehem and the Nativity Church with a Palestinian taxi driver/guide, who later showed us a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, the graffiti-covered wall the Israelis have constructed, and several Jewish Settlements.On the way back to the border, the driver suggested we visit Qumran National Park, a site near the Dead Sea where we saw the caves in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. He then dropped us off at the Bridge, and we took the bus across to Jordan, collected our car, and drove back for our last night at the Black Iris in Madaba.
Back to Paris
We left Jordan the next day from the Amman Airport, thoroughly enchanted with our 10-day trip. Although we were somewhat disappointed the weather hadn’t been a bit warmer, we discovered that traveling off-season to Jordan and Jerusalem in January had other advantages: we beat the crowds, didn’t suffer from the heat, and spoke with local people who wouldn’t have had the time, or perhaps the inclination,
to talk to us in “high season.”
(Please read below Tom’s account of our travels. As you will see, we each noticed and commented in different ways on the sites we saw.) .
Tom’s Account of our Jordan Trip
We arrived at Amman at 10:30 in the evening and headed to what turned out to be flea bag hotel (our only bad night) not particularly well located and a bed without sheets, etc. After I politely asked at the front desk for sheets, which first consisted of another bed spread, the house finally came up with clean white sheets. The bed was actually quite nice. We toured Amman with its huge ancient Roman amphitheater and dirty downtown in one day. Taxis were disgustingly cheap. That was nice.
We topped off the day with a visit to the Royal Jordanian Auto Collection and since the former Kings and the present King are all avid auto, plane, motorcycle and techie types it was a wonderful collection. The collection was allayed around the themes of the historic events in the recent history (starting the with old Rolls Royce that Lawrence of Arabia used in WWI and thereafter)
and with all the luxury livery vehicles used for presidential visits and other notable events (with lots of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Corvettes, etc.) throughout the short history of modern Jordan. Lots of motorcycles also. All beautifully restored. I say, the family does have money and spends it charmingly.
The next morning we went to Aqaba (via RJA) and spent a slightly relaxing day in this beach side town. Always travel in the off season. The hotels are empty, the people have time to talk with you and in general, except for the possibility of lousy weather, all works well.
After renting a car, we did a day at Wadi Rum. This old man and Hilary on camels and then lots of walking in the desert. This is Lawrence of Arabia country and part of where the
Arab Revolt was fought. We had a guide for part of the trip and he would drive us in his vehicle, deposit us, and we would walk, walk ,walk and then meet him. At one point we met at a desert tent that he said was his grandmother’s tent. 20 sheep and a massive tent right in the middle of the
desert, no water no utilities and we hear this jabber jabber jabber followed by silence and then more jabber jabber. The old gal was on her cell phone complaining that a wild dog had killed one of her goats, etc! No wires within miles but all the modern technology right in the desert. Bedouin life is quite fascinating. Later on, the hotelier in Madaba, about whom more later, said that the Bedouins have lots of money and property and that one of these fancy tent setups is worth a small fortune. He said not to feel sorry for the desert-living Bedouins.
Back to Aqaba for another day and then off to Petra, the ancient city of Bedouin life for 2K years, with its massive edifices carved into the soft rock faces of the desert and huge rooms behind them for living, etc. An archaeologist’s heaven. Again lots of walking: We hiked two good sized mountains, got lost down a ravine and rescued by a wandering old Bedouin and his 10 year- old daughter (he had four wives and about 10 children). Since I was leading us down a ravine I was sure we would come out at the
Wadi rum
employee at Visitors' Center bottom but he said "Finished, finished, finished, no go, etc". So we turned around, put Hilary on his donkey and were back in civilization in about 20 minutes walking up the ravine. Down was definitely the wrong direction.
We proceeded to climb a substantial mountain (800 steps) riding on donkeys, but it was late and getting dark and we were on our own the last 200 steps. We scouted the hill top, looked into the caves, took pictures, and then it was plain dark. But this old man, trusty as a boy scout, pulled out his flashlight (“lantern” to the locals) and skilfully guided us down the 800 or so steps and walkways across and amidst the rock strewn barren hillsides, with a million twists and turns and dozens of ways to drop into a ravine rather than stay on the trail. On the way up and down we passed the miscellaneous little hillside vegetable, tea and Chinese trinket shops operated in the high season, all of which were closed or abandoned at this time. Fun !
Our hotel in Petra was a very nice place. Breakfast came with the deal and you can steal enough leftovers
to feed yourself lunch by stuffing your pockets with oranges, and boiled eggs and dates and other miscellaneous edibles and off you go for the day. We actually stayed three nights (leaving early morning on the third day) and headed off to the Dead Sea with plans to get to Madaba that evening.
The Jordan side of the Dead Sea is only partially developed. It doesn't have the vast condo complexes that exist on the Red Sea down below Aqaba. (An aside, as you read this you should pull out an atlas and look at the map of Jordan and surrounding countries. Jordan has a lot of neighbors and borders with five or six countries, Israel, Syria, Saudi, Lebanon, and Iraq. How is that for tension and confusion?) On the Dead Sea, there were a couple of beaches that wanted you to pay to swim. This “pissed me off”, especially after a Danish couple who’d been to the paying “public beach” told us as we started to enter that it was dirty and unpleasant, etc. So we jumped back into the car and proceeded down the highway a bit to a spot in the road where a couple of
families had climbed over the iron rails along the highway and were having picnic lunches. Hilary and I parked, climbed the same rails and gingerly walked down the steep rock piles for about 300 meters until we reached the water's edge. We were bare footed and desperately needed water shoes, so we entered the water even more gingerly. The waterline is rocky but, more importantly, it is covered with solidified salt crystals in unpleasant formations that hurt your delicate feet, etc. We managed to get into the water, not to swim, however, but to float with your hands, head and feet out of the water. I read somewhere the Dead Sea is 9 times as salty as the ocean and I want to tell you it is so buoyant that you can't really swim and the water is a bit hard on the eyes, etc. Fun experience. One of the Jordanian families finished their lunch and joined us at the water. Their three kids played a bit in the water and then one got salt in his eyes and started crying, etc. I tried to get their Mom to let them come out into the water with me, but she
was afraid and only let them dabble at the water's edge. Have a look at the pictures showing us floating.
From the Dead Sea, as the sun set, we drove up Mt. Nebo. The roads were actually pretty good, but the curves are dynamite and they have this very funny process that allows you to make left hand u-turns in the middle of the highway so you can go back to make a right turn (which would have been a left turn at an intersection). I am not sure I approve of this method but it sure saves a lot on traffic lights and/or expensive intersections. Jordan also has a lot of dangerous speed bumps, many of which you don’t see beforehand. Anyway, we got to Madaba after dark, made some short cuts into the back end of town and, by golly, landed right at our new hotel. Lucky us.
This was the Black Iris, a three or four story family-owned and operated place where we were again (as in Aqaba) the only customers for our three-day stay. This place was simple but had sheets and heat and was quite suitable. Breakfast was good and we could
steal enough for lunch.
The next day, from our Black Iris homestead we took off for Jerash, where we went in search of old Roman, Christian, tribal and whatever, churches, temples, hippodromes, and miscellaneous columns and roadways, built not once but several times, etc. Apparently, the methodology is that some king builds it first, (it takes a couple of hundred years) and then the successor kings (read turbaned warlords) tear it down and use the stones to build their version of the next theological monument to a deceased big wig (this happens several times in the course of 2000 or so years) and they each leave a bit of what was there, and then the archeologists come along and dig it all up and leave little signs explaining who was there when, and then next, and so on and pretty soon you know the entire history of things. Very elucidating.
The guy that runs the Black Iris was pretty cool. He and I got into some good conversations about business in Jordan etc. He is a trained chef, running the hotel for his ailing father but wanting to get out of the country again. His wife is
of Chinese decent from Bali; they met at cooking school in Geneva and then “chef-ed” around the world a bit before being required to return to Jordan. Our first night in Madaba, he sent us out to a fancy and expensive restaurant (which I thought was lousy), and then he got smart and sent us to a couple of neat one-dish-only local places where you can eat pretty well for nearly nothing, although you wouldn't want to be a health inspector checking up on the kitchen too often! The food in these places was good and the local people were very warm and friendly, but each and every other one was smoking like chimneys. I bet the lung cancer crisis will be horrendous by 2035 in the developing world.
It was now time to head for Israel. We had read about the border crossing being a “bitch” (the Israelis are pretty tough for obvious reasons) but off we went. We drove our little tin wagon down the mountain again to a bridge calleed the King Hussein by the Jordanians, and the Allenby by the Israelis). It is one of the three border crossings between the countries, and there
are all sorts of rules about who can cross, etc. Anyway, we got to the Jordanian side of the bridge at 0815 and ditched our car for 5 Jordanian Dinars (5 “JD”, if you are in the know) in a backyard-parking lot across the street from the Jordanian processing station. Then we walked across the street, showed our passports, bought our bus tickets and milled about waiting for enough people to fill the bus. Once full, the bus headed across the bridge and over to the Israeli border, a distance of about 3km. Once in Israel, you get out of the bus and go into the Israeli processing station, where you get the lice in your hair counted and checked. The gal at the counter asked me why I was coming into the country and did I know anyone in Israel. I started to tell her about Judy Knauer, who had emigrated there 30 years ago but whom I hadn’t seen since then, etc., when Hilary butted in and told me to stop babbling. The gal agreed she didn't want to hear that story, asked us if we were going into the Palestinian Territories (Hilary said,“Only to Bethlehem”. She asked,
“For tourism?”-“Yes, for tourism,” Hilary replied), and then let us into Israel.
We subsequently got into a mini-van (a shared taxi), waited until it was full, and headed for Jerusalem (another 15 or 20 km.) Then boom, suddenly we were in downtown Jerusalem, walking into the "old city" through these massive stone walls 50 or so feet high. We entered through the Arab section, which was a maze of little shops selling all sorts of things. Hilary said it very much reminded her of the souk in Marrakech. The merchants pester you a bit and haggle somewhat and you find yourself saying "no" quite frequently.
By the way, in the taxi going to Jerusalem, Hilary had befriended a lady who turned out to be a school teacher and so blah, blah, blah and pretty soon we had an Armenian Christian friend who lived right in the old city. Well, long story short, she ended up inviting us to her home later that day, and we sat and talked with her and her daughter for a good hour later and learned lots about the trials and tribulations of Christians born in Israel but who are only considered as
“residents” and who can only travel on Jordanian passports. She also found us a Palestinian taxi driver/guide for our next day’s trip to Bethlehem.
As for our hotel in Jerusalem, Hilary had gone on the net and found us a very nice place to stay inside the Old City: a hostel run by German Lutherans! While I was waiting for Hilary to change, I sat in the lobby and looked around me. You have never seen anything funnier than 33 Lutherans milling about the lobby of this interesting building, schlepping luggage, etc. and talking about Oklahoma and Florida and what not. Please remember to shoot me if I agree to go on one of these tours where they stack you in the bus and drive you around with some dude lecturing on the local sites, etc. It is not so much the bus, because they are handy at some moments, but the extra 33 members of the traveling group isolate you from talking with anyone or meeting anyone (except people from Oklahoma, whom you never wanted to meet in the first place) who actually lives wherever you are touring, and I think that defeats 80 or 90% of the
purpose of this sort of travel. So all in all, I was delighted that Hilary made all those crazy arrangements for our traveling, and we rented a car and did most of it ourselves. As I said in the beginning, when you travel in the off-season, everybody is more congenial and has more time to talk to you, etc.
In Jerusalem, we, of course, visited the Wailing Wall, a serious praying place for the Jews, and saw churches and mosques that are all operated by one or other diocese or group, and everybody seems to get along O.K. But once we hit Bethlehem and, after visiting the famous Church of the Nativity, drove through the West Bank refugee camps and saw the cement wall the Israelis have built and the Israeli settlements, things got pretty depressing. And this is not Gaza, I was assured. Gaza is supposed to be really depressing. I could get political and try to pull a John Kerry and solve the whole Middle East dilemma, but then I would turn into a celebrity and be the target of all those who would be unhappy with my solution(s). Enough said.
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Jacqueline
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Great stories and photos, bravo!