Jordan

Our trip into Jordan had been pretty frustrating, having had to wait for the largely disinterested fairy folk to meander us across the glassy smooth gulf of Aqaba for about three and a half hours. But immediately on arrival the Jordan effect kicked in. While chasing down our sequestered passports we were just told to take a seat while our entry stamps were procured and someone would bring our passports back to us. Our mob of tourists were then hurried past the waiting line of unfortunate Arab looking folk at customs (it seems there's no international port, air or otherwise where it pays to look too Arabian), and out into the night air.

The Jordan effect looked shaky for a second as we were surrounded by incredibly excited taxi drivers, but reasserted itself as we realised we seemed to be standing in a magic anti-taxi-driver field that kept them all at arms length. The field seemed to emanate from a couple of serious young policemen standing near by, enforcing the 'no taxi drivers on the footpath' rule much to our amusement.

A short taxi ride into downtown Aqaba later we were left to ourselves to try and find a cheap hotel for a nights stay before we headed into the interior. And there we had our first disappointment, it turns out that the price of civilisation is, well, price. The Jordanian Dinar is currently just about level with the English Pound (not to be confused with the Egyptian Pound at around 3.7 to the NZD, or the Syrian Pound at around 30 to the NZD), and prices while not British are certainly not consistently low.

We wandered the streets of Aqaba the next day, searching for guide books and hiding in McDonalds to avoid the heat of the day, before taking a bus north to the small town of Wadi Musa, gateway to the magnificent ruins of Petra. The sole image of Petra most foreigners are familiar with is a brief glimpse of the very first building from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but in reality the site spans an entire valley and we spent two happy, exhausting and very very hot days traipsing around climbing the surrounding hills and inspecting the huge number of carved facades, ruined temples, and even yet another Roman theatre. Half the fun of the site though is the entry through the long narrow gorge at the entrance. About one and a half kilometres long and only 3 to 6 metres wide and still mostly paved courtesy of the Roman empire, it makes stumbling upon the Treasury building at the start a fantastically atmospheric experience.

After our days at Petra we headed north to the crusader fortress of Al Karak, in one of those sublime travel moments we exited our hostel took about two steps toward the bus station before the bus we had just missed trundled round the corner and the bloke driving it leaned out the window and asked if we were heading north. That bus dropped us at a motorway junction and we had to flag down a passing local to take us the rest of the way. Its important to note that hitchhiking in a lot of the middle east is not just extremely safe but often the preferred option. You always have to pay your way (costs the same as a bus) but if you strike a friendly local, like in our case you will get dropped at the top of the hill you were worrying about climbing, way way above the bus station. The Jordanian effect continued with our orange juice vendor taking charge of our backpacks while we explored the castle (free of charge due to it being someones birthday).
The castle itself was pretty impressive, many stories, large vaulted halls, built on a huge stone glaice and with impressive views of the dead sea valley (if not quite the dead sea). It was a left over from one of the more successful crusades, when the Europeans set up their own little Kingdom of Jerusalem in the holy lands and kept the whole thing from falling apart (immediately) by building or expanding castles all up and down the region. So sure enough the castle featured a small ruined chapel, but also a mosque from the period after it had been captured by Saladin, and its subsequent use by the Ottoman empire.

So even after all that we still managed to get to Amman before dark, found a cheapish hotel and settled in for what turned out to be a reasonably lengthy stay. About the first thing we did was go for dinner and some fresh juice. But while Jordanians are almost flawlessly polite the same can not be said of their food hygiene, and after my two helpings of melony goodness cried freedom later that night I was laid out for a little bit of TV and sleepy times while Jacq tried to work out how were going to manage our needed Indian and Syrian visas.

The Indian visa form was extensive and had great fields like Father slash Husbands name, but reassured us that the visa would be produced within three working days. Of course the Indian bureaucracy being what it is when we turned up, cash, bank statements and photographs in hand it turned out to take 7 days (which turned out to mean 8 days when we went to pick it up). But in the end it was procured and it even worked as I am writing this very blog from the International transfers lounge of Mumbai airport.

So what did we do to entertain ourselves for a week in Amman, well not actually that much. We visited the local roman ruins, bet you never expected there to be Temple of Hercules in uptown Amman aye? Next door was a fairly small archaeolgy museum with a whole load of Greco-Roman stuff, some of the dead sea scrolls, and a couple of glass cases that the Jordanians would have you believe are the oldest surviving statues anywhere, clocking in at 8000 years old, and only vaguely humanoid. Its amazing what you can dig up (or fall over) in these kind of countries.


Our big excitement for our stay in Amman was our day trip out to the Dead Sea. Not only that but we got taken to two of the more significant of the thinking man's holy sites. Up Mount Nebo there is not a huge amount to see, but it is asserted that this is the spot that Moses climbed to view the promised land immediately before his death. The view was not perfect the day we went up but on a good day you can see well across the dead sea and into the country the locals refer to with absolutely no hint of irony as Palestine. We then got trucked down to the Jordan River to the point (that the Pope has declared) John the Baptist baptised Jesus. Oddly sandwiched between two countries that are a lot fuller of Muslims and Jews than any Christians, there is an awful lot of construction going on. Pretty much every christian group, catholic, protestant, or orthodox has brought land is building a cathedral cum visitors centre in the middle of nowhere.


The Dead Sea itself did not disappoint although it started off pretty dear, as you have to pay an entrance fee to the tune of about 30 bucks. But it turned out to be well worth it as the experience of stalwartly attempting to march into the sea was repeatedly foiled by our feats failure to make contact with the bottom. This turned out to be quite fortuitous as a near by australian learnt the hard way after determinedly paddling their head under water, getting any of the 10 times concentrated salt water anywhere near your eyes really really stings. Its so caustic that once you have had your fill of bobbing like a cork while giggling unmanfully, you immediately proceed to a fresh water shower lest the drying salt burn your skin.

Once we had discovered just how long the Indian visa would take we decided to try some parallel processing and borrowed our passports from the Indian embassy and headed out to the Syrian embassy. Unfortunately while the Syrians eventually turned out to be welcoming hosts, visa availability is not exactly standardised and the Syrians advised us to send our passports to Australia for a Visa, which wasn't really high on our list of things to do.

Pressing on we took a day trip up to Jerash, which is a reasonably spectacular set of Roman ruins in the north of Jordan. One of the things it is noted for is its largely intact and partially restored Hippodrome, which was quite evocative of Roman festivities and 'sporting' events even without waiting around for the legionnaires and chariots show. Otherwise it was the usual mess of picturesque columns, plazas (unusually oval), roads, temples and theatres. But with hardly anyone about it was quite a pleasant day out even in the scorching Jordanian sun.

On our last day of waiting we did head out to Royal Automobile Museum which houses the late King Hussein's extensive collection of cars and motorbikes collected over the 47 years of his reign. Everything from an extensive collection of enormous American classic sedans, to brand new top shelf European super cars. Even Jacquie was interested as there was a lot of Jordanian history on display, from multiple cars that King Hussein was in during assassination attempts, to his BMW rally car, to the Land Rover he used to show the Queen and Prince Phillip around Petra.

We did eventually get to leave both Amman and Jordan and immediately bolted for the Syrian border, after a tense moment where the border guard looked a little confused about whether New Zealanders lacked sufficient representation to be eligible for an at the border visa (New Zealanders are served by the Australian embassy) we were charged a 60USD welcome to Syria tax and onward we made it all the way to the Syrian capital of Damascus by mid afternoon.