After a five hour bus ride, a short ride on a taxi, and paying our way out of Israel, we arrived in Jordan. We walked the hundred feet of no-man's land between borders and looked in through the gates on the other side. The welcome sign was missing a “D” so in fact it was welcoming us into “JOR AN.” The most eventful part of our journey was at the xray station on the Jordanian side where Ra and I had to explain the strange objects strapped to our backpacks- Ra got to demonstrate how to use the massage hook he brought to work on his shoulder and hip, while I got to take off the fire staff we inherited from Erez, and did a short routine. The soldier offered to light it on fire for me, but I told him we were lacking in kerosene.
We came out of the passport control at 2:20pm to an almost abandoned parking lot. Soon a white car with the words “southern border” arrives, driven by a man with a thick accent who wants to know if we need a taxi. When we let him know that we already have a car arranged, he wants to know exactly who the driver is. We discuss weather this is an aggressive taxi driver or some kind of border police, but after two taxis show up and he seems to direct them, we figure he's just trying to keep the taxi racket organized. At 2:35 a man in a maroon car arrives, and walks in our general direction. He converses with the taxi guys, then approaches us shyly.
“Runn?” He asks.
“I'm Runn,” Ra replies, “Adebe sent you?”
The man nods, then they shake hands. “I'm Machmud.” We all shake hands with him, and give him our names in return. It would take me nearly 2 ½ days to realize that his name is not in fact Mohamud, but the two syllable synonym.
He takes us past the bristling taxi drivers to his car, and drives us to Aqaba so we can change money, or pull Jordanian Dinars from an ATM. While Tom, Penguin, and Ra attend to that, I stay in the car. After it dies once or twice, Machmud pops the hood of the car and pokes around. The hood is still up when Ra and Tom arrive. Machmud explains that the car is too hot. When everyone gets into the car, Ra encourages him to find somewhere that sells coolant so we don't end up stuck on the side of the road somewhere between Aquaba and Petra. Ra also turns the heat up on full blast to let the heat escape the engine, and blow in our faces instead. This successfully brings the engine temperature to average, but leads to an extremely uncomfortable drive in the desert heat. We stop at a gas station where we all poke around and discover that the fan is out of place, not working, and in fact grinds against the car when pushed. Machmud seems undeterred from our journey now that he has been shown the heating vent trick that has brought the engine temperature down, and for him there is no longer a problem.
The drive across Jordan is stunning. There are baren mountains, deeply carved gorges, and colored expanses of desert. We stop at a vista where looking out makes you feel like you are in an old school hollywood soundstage- the landscape is so painterly, so otherworldly that it looks more like a backdrop than like real life. We took pictures despite knowing that they could never really capture to sheer awe we felt.
Our first hotel in Petra, the Valley Stars Inn, was managed by a man named Ibrahim. A slight man, handsome, perhaps in his mid twenties- he spoke beautiful English, no doubt in part because he was studying to get concurrent degrees in IT and English Lit while also managing the hotel, and trying to open up another resort with his brother. We had an interesting discussion of Jordanian politics- starting out with a village in Jordan who admired Saddam Hossein so much that they wanted to name a street after him. When the national government wouldn't let them, they decided that for one month, and new baby born to the village would be named Saddam Hossein. Ibrahim told us that he too though that Saddam was a good man, and that he was set up by the Western world so that they could get to the oil. To say that open admiration of Saddam Hossein is a bit of a shock would be an understatement. The conversation turned to the bombing of Israel, the extermination of the kurds, the unreliability of the media, and our general dislike of the George Bush's, and finally to Ibrahim's conclusion:
“I don't watch the news anymore, unless it is the local news. I don't hate anybody. In the end, people are the same; whether they are Israeli, or Arab they are the same. They need to eat the same, they live the same. Man or woman, we are all the same. You sitting here with me, talking- that is the most important thing.”
Ibrahim arrange for us to go on the night tour of Petra- what would be our first glimps of the sight. After showering, we took a beat up orange van down the hill to the entrance. We were accompanied by a New Zealander named Geraldine. A septuagenarian who was on a solo trip through England, Egypt and Jordan. She aknowleged to me that this would be her last international trip, and that the people she was staying with in England she would be saying goodby to for the last time. Despite her admission, she was in amazing shape, and we suspected we were holding her back on the hike more than the other way around. After a 15 minute hike, lit with candles in paper bags, we arrived at the Treasury, and epic columned structure carved into the towering sandstone walls. There were rows of carpets on the ground that we were told to sit on. We sat and waited for the hundreds of other people- both independent travelers and tours of people in matching hats- joined us on the desert floor. Eventually we were all told to be silent for the beginning of the show. A beduin man sat in the midst of hundreds of candles in paper bags, and began to play a stringed instrament on his knee with a bow. Behind us were two arab men in their early twenties who talked and laughed through the entire performance despite countless dirty looks, shushes, and requests to be quiet. They were only outdone by the people behind them who were eating something out of the crinkliest bag imaginable.
After the show ended, we hiked up the hill, caught our ride, and were dropped off at a mediocre tourist restaurant, where the waiters hovered nearby and watched us eat our disappointing food. At the end of our first day in Jordan, we collapsed into our beds, and passed out.
Petra
While having breakfast at our hotel in Wadi Musa (the closest village to Petra) our tourguide shows up. His name is Hisham, and he has been sent to us by Adebe, who was in turn recommended to us by Ron, a good friend of Ra's family. We were told that we HAD to have a guide arranged before we got there. As it turns out, at that time of year there were any number of people who would be happy to arrange a guide, a driver, a hookah, or any number of things for us. Hisham tells us what we are going to do while at the hotel, then again in the car when we arrive at the gates at Petra (where he also informs us that we have to go in separately and not mention to any of the officials that he is our guide on our way in.) Once inside, he takes us to where the horses are, tells us that they are included in the price of our tickets, and would we like to ride them for the first 700 metres. We say yes, and each of us takes our turn mounting the Arabian steeds. Penguin takes the first, a reddish one, I take the next- a white arabian with a small cut on his shoulder and a sullen disposition. Ra's is a dappled gray who doesn't care much for being held back and would rather charge down the hill. Tom's brown also had a desire for speed. I watched as all of the other's horses passed mine. Almost at the bottom of the hill, the handler who was leading my horse starts telling me the imporance of tipping, of giving bakheesh. Got it, the ride is “free” but the tip is not. I think that I had one Dinar, and the smallest bill that Tom had was a 5JD. The handlers were not happy to be tipped 6JD. We scampered off before they were able to say anything else.
Petra, also know as the Rose Rocks is a city, a series of tombs and temples, and a geological phenomenon made up of cliffs and canyons of sandstone. They place itself is 45 km2, and one of our guides told us that he has only seen 50% of it in his lifetime. The most photographed feature is the treasury, a great collumned structure with Castor and Polux carved into the stone, along with Isis and other gods. Beyond that there are also the tombs of the less weathy, tombs for the kings, and tombs for a Roman prince? Who decided that he would rather be entombed in Petra rather than carried back to Rome. There are niches containing idols to various gods- Nabotean, Egyptian, Greek alike. Then there is the cardo, the main city where the Nebotean people actually lived, and built their homes from the stones carved out to make the magnificent tombs. The scale of the place puts the ruins of Greece to shame, and predates the Castles of Europe by a thousand years. Truly truly awe inspiring.
In Petra, the soundtrack is one of people in shops saying Happy hour! Good price!
The older boys leading donkeys saying, “Taxi! Ride to the Monastary? Air conditioned!”
And the youngest kids holding packets of postcards and cheap stone necklaces in your face saying, “One Dinar! One JD!” At the end of the day, we even had one little boy pathetically following us with his postcard in the air as he fake-cried as a means to try to get us to buy them from him. Every hundred yards was another shop of postcards and chachkis, with a sign saying Happy Hour! Even way up the winding stair paths would be a beduin woman with kafiyas, water, and necklaces.
Despite ordering a guide for a full day in Petra, Hisham left us at noon. We wandered into a covered area that the Byzantines had turned into a small church to eat lunch. While sitting on the stairs we met another group of people who seemed to know the place extremely well, and greeted the chachki salesman like a brother. Turns out our visitors were Jane Taylor http://www.janetaylorphotos.com/books.html- THE author of books on Petra and Queen Noor's personal photographer when she comes to Petra- and Tom Paradise, a stone restoration artist who spent years working in Petra. Tom also had his wife Gail and daughter Sandy? Samatha? Tom began telling us about restoring the mosaics on the floor, and how the green stones were egyption emeralds, a stone found on Cleopatra's island in Eygpt who name is where we get the word for “gem,” and how this is the only ancient mosaic in the world that utilizes them. Here was a man who so clearly loved his work and was so excited to talk about it. Jane wanted to know if we had bought her book yet. We talked to them about what Adebe had booked for us on the next day- a hike from Little Petra, to the Monistary, and back to the treasury. They tell us that this would be a 12km hike including lots of stairs and narrow ledges. Hmmm.
We finish our day by leaving Penguin at a cafe while Ra, Tom, and I hike up and up and up to the sacraficial altars on the top of a cliff. The stair climbing was challenging, and we lost the trail once, confused by the beduin woman who had decided to fall asleep in the middle of the pathway. Once we got to the top, it was all worth it. It was a stunning aerial view of all that we had seen, and so much more that we hadn't trekked to yet.
Once we were done for the day (and by done I mean exhausted) we taxied back up to our original hotel to sort out our next nights accommodations. The Valley Stars Inn was all booked up, so Ibrahim booked us rooms at his cousins hotel- giving us the same rates as his hotel despite the fact that the second hotel was in fact fancier and newer. He gave us a lift to check out the other hotel, then a ride to an ATM to pull out cash, then a ride back up to the hotel. We were still figuring out whether we wanted to stay one or two more nights in Wadi Musa before heading to the border, so Ibrahim said to give him the answer by 9pm.
Our new hotel gave us a ride down to the restaurant that Jane Taylor had recommended, Qantara. As it turns out, our driver's name was also Hisham, which we joked must be the next most popular name after Mohamed/Machmud/ Achmed which are all the same name. The restaurant was clean, well decorated, and instead of having a menu, we were told that there was a fixed price menu, and alcohol. It also had one host named Mohamed, and another named Hisham(!!) We ordered 2 vegetarian entrees, Mediterranean chicken rolls, a beef dish and a lamb dish, and were also served hommus, tahini, turkish salad, beets, pickles, spicy sauce on request, and an extra bowls of rice. The small plates were fantastic, while the veggie dishes were alright. Our wine was so good, we asked for a bottle to take back with us.
We decided over dinner to spend one more night in town, then see the Monastary the next morning, take a jeep tour of Wadi Rum, and stay our last night in Jordan at the border town Aqaba. We went up to the Valley Stars Inn to settle our bill with Ibrahim. At this point, it was a pleasure to spend time with him. It is not all business with people here- they want to hang out, talk, relax before you bring out the cash or “get to the point.” These are journey people, not destination people. Ibrahim helps us find a hotel in Aqaba, and recommends that instead of making an online reservation, we should haggle in person since it is off season there, and they'd be likely to give us a good offer. After all the time and effort that Ibrahim spent with us, we handed him some money as a tip, but he wouldn't take it. He gives us a ride up to our hotel for the evening, where his brother, Atta, is kicking it in the lobby.
We order a shisha (hookah) and Ibrahim's older brother comes to join us. Atta tells us that he and Ibrahim are two of 20 brothers and sisters who grew up in Wadi Musa. How his father? grandfather? used to be the mayor of Wadi Musa. He talked about how honest and hard working his brother Ibrahim was, how they way they were brought up, honest is the only way to be. Also, how 15 years ago, before the peace agreement with Israel there were 8,000 people living there, and now there are 40,000. Atta talked to us about visiting Syria (where so many of the New Zealanders, Greeks, and other people we met there have also traveled.) He gave me his number and email address in case I'd ever like to visit Syria and wanted help arranging it.
Hisham (the guide) also joined us in the hotel lobby. He was there to settle the bill for our tab with Adebe. We had negotiated with Hisham (the driver) to take us around and back to Aqaba the next day, and to forgo the second tourguide and round trip with Adebe. Ra and Adebe haggle over the phone where Adebe tells him that they had already paid for 2 days with the (overheating/broken) car, and that if we went with a different driver, we would need to give him $50 even if we used somebody else. Fine, Ra agrees to go forgo our trip with Driver Hisham, and to risk the over heating car, along with paying the extra premium for a side trip to little petra, and a couple hours at Wadi Rum. The arrangements are made, Guide Hisham takes the money and says good night. Ra turned to Atta and asked if he thought that Adebe had in fact paid in advance for the car, and Atta wrinkled his nose and shook his head no.
We finished the evening, and our Shisha with an odd taste in our mouths. We were so grateful for the hospitality we received in Jordan, minus a small exception. I came away with an extremely positive opinion of Jordanians- they are warm, open, and even laid back out in Wadi Musa. There were things we didn't get to do in Petra, but I'm pretty sure we will come back.
sounds amazing! i am envious. :)
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