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Published: March 30th 2009
There are three ways to get from Egypt to Jordan. As the two countries are not actually adjacent, the traveller has to either make a short run across the southern tip of Israel, or take one of two overpriced ferry options.
Though potentially the cheapest of the options, making the trip across Israel is not advised for anyone planning to travel on to Syria or Lebanon since neither of these countries will allow entry to a person with an Israeli entry or exit stamp in his passport. It's true you can get the Israeli authorities to stamp a piece of paper instead, however, the Egypt port of exit or Jordan port of entry stamp will give you away as having crossed the border anyhow.
In the end we took the fast ferry from Taba to Aqaba. A one month Jordan visa is free at the Aqaba border. We wandered around Aqaba a bit. Found some delicious lunch of assorted mezzes, various humous-type dips with bread and sweet black tea and wondered what to do with ourselves.
Aqaba is a nice looking little city complete with a corniche (prominade) on the waterfront. Apparently it has some kind of beach
area about 10 km south of the town but descriptions paled in comparison to the much cheaper Dahab that we had just come from.
A quick look around confirmed that there was nothing for us in Aqaba except expensive (relatively speaking), dingy hotel rooms. We looked for a bus, however, being past midday on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, and seemed out of luck. We made a deal with a taxi driver and no doubt paid too much for the hour ride to Wadi Rum.
Wadi Rum
Wadi means dried up or seasonal river bed. What we saw was a sandy desert made interesting and beautiful by the various rock formations and mesas.
Lawrence of Arabia spent a lot of time in Wadi Rum. Originally an archaeologist, TE Lawrence became a British intellegence agent in Cairo during WWI. He is famous for working with the Arabs and Brits in driving their common enemy, the Turks, out of Syria and assisting in the formation of Transjordan, modern-day Jordan.
Bedouins still live in this area, though most of them in houses. And many of them drive around in some kind of jeep to take tourists around
the desert.
There are pricey Bedouin-run catered desert camps for tourists away from town. Budget travellers that we are, we opted to stay at the Rest House in the small town of Wadi Rum. For 3 JD ($5) each we had a piece of foam, sheets and lots of blankets in a small canvas tent.
Arriving in the early afternoon, it was sunny and very warm. We checked in and went for a walk into the desert for the couple of hours before sunset.
We returned in the dark with the temperature dropping rapidly. Pleasantly mild nights in Dahab left us unprepared for the freezing night ahead! What a difference moving just a couple hundred kilometres away from the Red Sea. Cold nights and wet weather would continue to plague us on and off for the next month or so.
Turns out that besides desert tours, Wadi Rum is also a popular climbing spot. We met a couple of climbers, ex-patriots working in Jerusalem, in the desert for the weekend, as we waited for some grub being cooked at a little shop in downtown (ha ha) Wadi Rum.
The next day we teamed up with
a most entertaining Norwegian man to do the five-hour jeep tour around Wadi Rum. About the same age as us, Runar is currently working in Abu Dabi. We met a few more ex-pats in our travels weekending away from their jobs in the Gulf cities.
The tour was great. Stunning scenery. Natural stone bridges. Stone carvings. Pleasantly hot. Good conversation. Other than Runar's rental car getting temporarily stuck in the sand as darkness fell, it was a lovely day.
Petra
After one more freezing night in Wadi Rum, we set off for Wadi Musa, the town on the edge of Petra. We were pleased to find a cheap hotel room. Found out later that sometimes you do get what you pay for. Hot water sort of manifested between 6 and 10 in the evenings and there was no heat which was sort of like sleeping outside for another 4 nights.
Food was a different story. After seeing the prices in the restaurants, we reseigned ourselves to yet more bread, spreadable cheese, canned hommous, fruit and dates.
Petra itself was lovely. Keeners, we got up before the cold crack of dawn on day one to arrive
at the gate just after opening. We were amused to find that we had this huge place to ourselves for the first couple of hours. The tea and souvenir sellers were still sleeping under their mountains of blankets.
While we were encouraged to shop and buy tea, the vendors were much more subdued compared to Egypt.
Our first major sight was the Treasury, a beautiful facade and structure carved out of the mountain. You may have seen the Treasury in the third Indiana Jones movie; it is far more impressive in real life.
We spent three days taking in the wonders of Petra. Built by the Nabataeans in the 3rd century BC, Petra was once a properous town at the crossroads of trade routes that passed from Damascus to Arabia. What is left is an amazing collection of tombs, banquet halls, homes, tombs, palaces, temples, tombs, statues and whatever else you can imagine carved into sandstone cliffs.
Highlights included the 1.2 kilometre narrow Siq that guides you down to the site; Al-Deir, the beautiful monastery, way up high; and the road-less-travelled long siq walk back through Wadi Muthlim.
The colours of the rock, ranging from
bright yellow to red and white to purple, often display themselves in stunning stripes and swirling patterns. Petra is the kind of place where you want to look everywhere at once and your neck gets sore from looking up at the immense, intricate carvings.
Madaba
Turns out that there wasn't that much to see in Madaba. The famous Mosaic Map on the floor of St George's Church once showed and labelled (in Greek) all the major biblical sites from Lebanon to Egypt. It was constructed in 560 AD out of more than two million pieces. Numerous other mosaics are on display at sites around town.
The weather turned cold and wet while we were in Madaba which lead us to hunker down for a couple of days in a comfortable hotel room where we had BBC and wireless service. It actually snowed for a few hours.
Amman
As a young country, only created in the early 20th century, Jordan's capital is actually very modern. Other than a few sites preserved from Anitquity, Amman is dominated by the square concrete buildings typical of this region.
We'll remember Amman for the simple and cheap Hashem Restaurant
where we ate mountains of delicious felafel, hommous, fuul (beans), chips and sweet tea. King Abdullah, the man whose giant face appears on posters and billboards everywhere in Jordan, has eaten there, along with many other famous personalities.
Jordan has gained a reputation for itself as being a progressive, tolerant, peaceful country. Jordan welcomes Israeli travellers and has absorbed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees over the years. We were greated warmly with a "welcome" nearly everywhere we went.
Trying to hold out from travelling north too quickly, we rented a car in Amman and spent three days driving around the Jordanian countryside taking in a few more sites.
The North & the Dead Sea
In Northern Jordan we visited the Ajlun castle, with stunning views of the rolling hills. Ajlun was the first of many crusader castles we would come across in the region.
We travelled further north to Umm Qais, a site with Roman and Ottoman ruins perched on the corner of Jordan, Syria and Israel. We enjoyed views of the Golan heights and the Sea of Galilee as the sun set to the west. Umm Qais has a Roman theatre constructed out
of dark grey basalt stone.
After a night in Umm Qais, we drove south, stopping at another Roman site, Pella, for a mid-morning walk. The drive south decends quickly into the fertile Jordan River Valley with Jordan on one side of the river and the West Bank on the other.
We hit the Dead Sea, at 400 metres below sea level the lowest point on earth, and found a spot along the highway to park and enjoy the water and hot springs for free. (There are nicer beaches with toilet and shower facilities costing around $15-20 per person.) We changed clothes in the the car and made our way down the rough trail to the water.
There wasn't much of a beach, but we found a spot right where a trickle of hot springs enters the water. It was nice and sunny but not hot, so the warmth from the spring was welcomed.
Numerous local men were floating in the sea. Privacy being a completely foreign concept in this part of the world, a number of them wandered over to check out what the foreigners were up to. However, upon discovering that there was not going
to be a bikini show, they mostly went about their business.
The ladies, on the other hand, were much braver. As you will see in the photos a whole pack of sisters with their mother came over in an attempt to chat with us. Later, we saw a few women sitting in the shallows fully clothed in their black chadors.
A day at the beach in the Middle East is definitely a family event. While we were up in the car getting ready to go to the beach, a small pickup truck with a cover on the back pulled up. No less than 12 family members disembarked from this little ride, gathered their extensive lunch and tea fixings and headed down to the water.
I try to imagine what it must be like for a new immigrant from this part of the world to arrive in Canada. Car seats for the children? What's wrong with a lap? What do you mean you can't put 7 people in a small car? Everyone fits! We can't light a fire here? But it's tea time! We have so many rules.
Floating in the Dead Sea is great experience. We
desert prayer, wadi rum
one of many beauties of islam, don't need a priest or a mosquewaded slowly into the crystal clear water and then at some point, the force of buoyency literally knocked us off our feet and then we bobbed, well, sat with feet up, suspended in the water. It was so completely relaxing to just float on our backs, no effort required.
The reason for this fabulous floation is an abnormally high concentration of dissolved minerals in the water due to high evaporation. Specifically, much higher than usual concentrations of bromine, magnesium and iodine make the water feel and behave
thicker than usual.
In the included pictures of us sitting suspiciously high out of the water I can assure you that we were not touching bottom or pushing ourselves up.
The next day we did the spectacular drive along the King's Highway to Karak, turned back west towards the Dead Sea again. We had a short walk in the stark, rocky Wadi Mujib Nature Reserve and then returned to the beach for another float. Couldn't get enough of that Dead Sea! It was a fantastic experiance, more than you would think it to be. A real highlight.
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Jody
non-member comment
breathtaking
Beautiful photos Laura! It looks like you're having an amazing trip.