Hoofin' It Around (but never in!) the Promised Land (19 Oct 2008)

I'm just going to start by telling you, straight up, there is no way for me to talk about today without getting religious. If that's okay (and for most of you, I imagine it is), read on...

Today I took the tour of Bethany-Beyond-the-Jordan, the Dead Sea, Mt. Nebo, and Madaba. I'm pretty much wiped out right now, because I didn't sleep so hot last night, but it was totally worth it. We started off by going to Bethany-Beyond-the-Jordan, which is - and they have gone through a rigorous process of determining its authenticity - where Jesus Christ was baptized. There's not much to describe - we walked through reed-lined paths to the River Jordan, then a little further to the actual baptism site, where the guide explained how they had determined it's placement, we saw the ruins of the 3 churches that had been built at the site, and finally went to a Greek Orthodox chapel just across the Jordan from Israel (really, it was right there...I could have splashed in and swam across in, like, 10 seconds).

But what I was thinking about during this experience was what kind of people Jesus and John must have been. Or, more specifically, John (we know what kind of person Jesus must have been - ie, perfect...not trying to be flip, just trying to keep it concise). So here's John, and his second cousin, Jesus...who he, being a holy man, knows to be the son of God and Savior of mankind...wants him to baptize him. Let me put it to you another way...let's say you're an amateur painter, and Michaelangelo comes to you and wants you to do his portrait. You'd know you were totally out of your league. The thing that impressed me was that John realized this, and told Jesus so, but when Jesus told him that it had to be that way, John baptized him. I'm not sure this is translating into words exactly as I was feeling it at the time. Suffice it to say that it was, as Diana's mommy often said, "Neat!"

Also neat was the Dead Sea. When Dougie-Poo described it to me as, "bobbing like a cork," I thought he was being poetic, using similies and all that stuff. Nope. You get in the water, and literally bob like a cork. I went out to where the water was deep enough, and tried floating straight up and down, and it was harder than you might think, and the lowest my body would go was to my chest. When you shift the weight of your body, even just slightly, the buoyancy of the water makes you turn. Even without getting into the water, you could tell how salty it was, because you could feel that the water had a different viscosity than ocean water, and when you looked at the water filtering through the light, you could see the little vectors within the fluid. But I think the coolest part was swishing my hand down into the water to create bubbles, then watching their shadows on my submerged hands, because they looked like stars.

A shower and a pepsi later (they had no coke, and I was desperately hoping it would fend off my headache), and we were off to Mt. Nebo. This is the place that Moses was sent to look at the promised land, before he died. That's right, all you non-bible-scholars, Moses never set foot in ancient Israel. He gathered the Israelites together, marched them off across the Red Sea to Sinai (where I will visit in another week), and then around the desert for 40 years (due to a lack of faith on the part of some of their spies), but never got there himself. Kinda sucks, eh? That's what I was thinking about today. But Moses, he was a prophet, and I imagine he was a really humble guy, and the impression I got today was not that he was bitter about the fact that he never got to rest in the land of milk and honey, but that he was grateful to have been able to serve the Lord, and grateful that he lived to at least see the Promised Land (side note for my mom...he was 120 years old when he made the hike up to the top of Mt. Nebo - and it would have been quite the hike, I was glad to be riding in a car - and if he was anything like you, that was probably what finished him off ). From there we went to Madaba, which was kind of anticlimatic, I enjoyed the mosaics, but compared to the rest of the tour, it wasn't much to write home about, so I won't. Hopefully tomorrow we're going to Jerash, but it depends on if there's a full group interested, so we'll see.

Disappointed but Valiantly Avoiding Bitterness (20 Oct 2008)

So this was the day we'd chosen to go to Jerash. Unfortunately, the fates didn't align for us. In this case, it means that the Palace Hotel didn't have enough people to put together a tour today. In an attempt to move out of some rather dark dwellings I've been mentally inhabiting for...well, a while now...I'm attempting to look on the bright side of things. (I'm also halfway through my second Tom Robbins book for the vacation, and it may or may not be having an effect on my verbal acrobatics). So I tried to be optimistic about the aborted trip to Jerash. For starters, it's just a bunch of ruins, and I've seen lots of ruins in my day (okay, so they're a particularly well-preserved Roman city, details, details!). Furthermore, there are ruins aplenty right here in Amman that I can access on foot, starting right down the street from my hotel, for less money than some stinking tour, leaving me with liquid funds to buy some cool coins I found in the souqs around my hotel. Alright, done and done.

What I was hoping for, though, really hoping for, was that there would be a full group to go to Petra tomorrow, because that would mean we'd ride in style, and be able to stop along the way at Karak, Wadi Mujib, and the Dana Nature Reserve. Unfortunately, that looks like it's not happening, neither. At this point, it looks like it's the minibus for us. Which, again, will be a significantly smaller price to pay, so yeay for that, and it's not like I really need to see Wadi Mujib, since we'll be staying in Wadi Rum in a couple of days, and as far as nature's wonders go, that's supposed to take the cake in these parts. Karak is one of the crusader castles, and I guess I've seen desert castles before, and maybe I'll be able to hit Dana on my way to Wadi Rum.

But....okay, whining is a hard habit to break...I just really wanted to take the easy way. Is that so bad? Blerg. Well, bad or not, minibus or tour, I'll be in Petra, the rose-red city tomorrow - I haven't decided whether I want to take the cooking class one of the hotels offer tomorrow night or the following - but either way, eat your heart out, and I'll quit my fricking whining, because, really, when you're going to Petra, how bad can it be, right????

Oh, yeah, I forgot to say, um, how lazy are we? This was my thought of the day while I was climbing the stairs in the Roman amphitheater, hearing the really cool acoustics, and considering how many of my nearest and dearest are acrophobic (Belinda, Brucie, my mom, and, unless I'm mistaken, my own Dark Lord and Master even once betrayed a fear of heights...)...birdwalk averted...but seriously, if 1500 years ago people could, without benefit of electricity create a theater that would carry voices to the watching crowds that lasts that long, how retarded and lazy are we? Is there no such thing as craftsmanship anymore? I doubt, even if someone wanted to, we still have the knowledge to create such monuments...we don't have the patience or attention to the right kind of details. And I think that's kind of sad, because if we had to abandon our cities, for one reason or another, how many of our buildings would be left after 1500 years?

Rockin' Out in Petra (21 Oct 2008)

I'm beginning to wonder if those people who go on vacation to relax aren't on to something. Seriously. Yesterday I spent the hours of 10am-5pm walking around, and today, well, I only walked for 3 hours, but a lot of that was uphill (a lot of yesteday was uphill too, but it seemed more strenuous today, considering the uneven ground and the fact that I wandered around uphill all day yesterday).

Anyways, so I'm in Petra today - yeay!!! What can I tell you? "It's fricking awesome," doesn't begin to cover my awestruck state. There were the towering, windswept walls of the Siq, the mixed odor of donkey, camel, and horse "leavings," the colors strewn through the layers of sandstone, and the bright, unbelievable blue of the desert sky. There was bumping into Carol and Phee, two of the ladies we randomly met at a restaurant and ate dinner with on Saturday...we knew they were going to be here, but c'mon, what are the chances of randomly meeting up with the random foreigners you randomly had dinner with in a different city? There was dinner at the Red Cave - a bedouin restaurant that has restored my faith in restaurants here (don't get me started on how much falafel I've eaten in the last three days), although I'm planning on eating there again tomorrow, just to be safe. And now, as I have been sitting here writing this, there is the wasp that was wandering through my hair...that kind of freaked me out, but all in a day's journeying.

Tomorrow I'm continuing to trek through Petra (I stopped around the royal tombs today and came back...but I saw the Treasury, and, as a consequence got the theme music for Indiana Jones stuck in my head) - second verse, same as the first! - and hopefully taking a cooking course, so I probably won't add anything here until I get to Wadi Rum on Wednesday (this is Monday, right???)

The Story of Wadi Rum (29 Oct 2008)

Well, the main event for the day (although wandering down the Nile along the corniche was nice, it's not really much to write home about) is still yet to come, so I thought I would concur with a request for more details about my dissatisfaction with my experience in Wadi Rum. I kind of skimmed over it, because I didn't have much of an internet connection (through management's office, and I felt like I was kind of imposing, so I only used it to write a note to the family letting them know where I was and that I was okay). So, we left Petra at 6 a.m. on the 17th, via minibus to Wadi Rum. I mentioned to the driver where I was staying - at Bait Ali, which is actually outside the protected area along the access road - and when we got to the turn off, he let me off the bus, and told me, 'Go down the road, to the right,' and pointed across the train tracks running perpendicular to the access road. I waited for a train to pass, and crossed the tracks rolling my suitcase along behind me. Here's where I ran into my first problem: after the tracks, I had two choices, go straight, which led behind a large rock formation, or go right. Well, duh, I chose the right...that's what he told me to do, and there was a small village not too far off.

So away I go, and at first the unpaved road is okay, but then it gets a little sandy, and my suitcase is now definitely dragging. Soon I reach a dry wash, and from there I'm able to see behind the rock formation, and what I see looks a LOT like what I remember of the pictures on Bait Ali's website. I leave my suitcase behind to take a closer look, and when I do I realize - oopsies! - that I definitely went the wrong way. I'm seeing the humor in it, though, and I figure, what the hey? might as well continue on around the rock formation and come in from the other side. So I get my suitcase and start trekking down the wash, which is actually a little harder packed than the road I was on (most of the time). As I keep going, I see more, and more, and more of the wall that surrounds Bait Ali, and eventually I see where it ends. Right up against the rock face. I believe I actually could have climbed over it, but I thought that entering any sort of Arabic compound - even a camp catering to tourists - by climbing over a wall unannounced, might not be my best idea. However, I can't drag my suitcase back all that way, so I leave it partially concealed behind a boulder, and walk back around, coming in from the direction I should have in the first place. I figure out where to check in, and announce my presence, and explain my little snafu. Mr. Mark (as I later learn he is called) says no problem and asks me to have a seat. So I sit. And sit. And sit. It was about 8:30 when I got there. 9:30 when I decided I should have breakfast. 10 when I decide to explore, and climb the stairs leading up the Bait Ali side of the rock formation, just in time to see a guy set off from the village that I originally thought was my camp, to investigate the mysterious suitcase, ('Is it a joke? Some sort of terrorist threat?' No, sir, just your random moment of stupidity.), which was soon retrieved by the staff. It was around 10:30 when I sat down to read, and then fell asleep, and close to 12 when I woke up from my nap. STILL my room wasn't ready. Yes, I understood that check out wasn't until 11, but I was kind of perturbed because these guys are supposed to be running a business, involving all sorts of cool things - 4WD tours, camel treks, horse treks, wind sailing, just to name a few - and yet nobody asked me what, if anything, I wanted to do that day or the next. I probably should have been more proactive, but I was a little unsure of my footing, considering I didn't even have a room yet. So I just waited. When I finally got my room, I was so tired from my detour and waiting all morning, that I spent most of the afternoon in my chalet...which I shelled out more for than either my room in Amman or in Petra, because I wanted more security than in a tent, yet the lock didn't even work properly. I should have complained about it, but I had already kind of complained about my room not being ready any faster, and kind of felt like anything would have fallen on deaf ears. So I slept with my suitcase propped in front of the door, and kept my passport on me. Anyways, in the chalet (a little two-bed concrete hut), I started reading an Agatha Christie book I traded up for in Istanbul, and when the sun was a little less fierce, I decided I'd go swimming in their pool (another reason I was ready to shell out so much money). I got changed and went to the pool, and when I got in, I swear it was colder than the naeng-tangs at the saunas in Korea. Of course, I guess it doesn't make any sense to heat a pool in the middle of a Jordanian desert, but on the flip side, it makes it awfully hard to swim in when it's NOT summer. I managed to get in as far as my waist, but then I gave up. I sat by the pool, drying and reading for a while, eventually changed, and ate dinner, which was pretty good.

At some point during day 1 I'd talked to someone about taking a camel trek. He didn't really speak English, and I definitely don't speak Arabic, but he kind of understood that I wanted a four hour camel trek, which I amended to 3 hours when he said it was going to cost me 50 dinar...that dropped the price to 35 dinar, which was way more than Lonely Planet quoted, but my Jordan guide was a few years old and many of the prices were wrong, so I just went with it. When we started to leave the compound the next day, he drove off from Bait Ali in the wrong direction for the visitor center. I'm still not entirely sure about what was going on, I saw at least one camel at the camp, and maybe I was supposed to use their camels and trek outside the protected area, but the whole point of going there was to SEE WADI RUM, and we weren't actually in Wadi Rum, so I managed to communicate that I wanted to go to the protected area, that I wanted to see Jebel Rum, and he changed course.

When we got to the visitor center, I paid for my permit and he was talking to some people. While I was waiting for him to figure out whatever it was, I looked at the map, and it listed prices for camel treks, and guess what, rock fans? They were the same as in my Lonely Planet. So I pointed out the discrepancy, and we 'talked' about what I wanted to see, and then set off for Rum village, where he left me in the care of an 11-year old boy, who it seemed was going to lead the camel, on foot, for the next four hours. Except that he stopped by his house in the village for something, and while I was waiting his father came along, and when he heard where we were going, he had some sort of problem with it, I guess that the kid was going to be out too late, or that it was going to get dark, so we went BACK to the enclosure where the camels were kept, I dismounted and got on another camel, and he headed home in a huff. My new guide was a few years older, and the only stop he wanted to make was for cigarettes...and if I'd known that's what he wanted, I don't think I would have given him the dinar he asked for (the other kid got soda and bread from the store, how was I supposed to know?) Anyways, we went off away from civilization, and saw some cool rocks, and I had him head back to the village early because I didn't want him to be out after dark, paid him the originally agreed upon price, and he told me to go ask someone at the Rest House for a ride back to Bait Ali. So I did, and the guy and I agreed on a price of 5 dinar (probably because I said that's all I had), and he said he'd be back with his Pajero in 10 minutes.

Well, he came back, and actually, he had to go out into the desert to help some of his tourists get set up for the night. It was creeping up on 6 now, and I didn't really care - actually, I kind of got to see more of Wadi Rum this way, at sunset no less - but I wanted to be back in time to shower before dinner (I wasn't, but oh well). I got back to Bait Ali alright, and ate dinner, and went to take my shower before an early bedtime, because I was supposed to catch the 7 a.m. bus to Aqaba the next day. Went into the public shower - which I hadn't used yet because, really, I was riding a camel that day, who needs to shower before riding a camel? - and turned on the water, which was just a skoash cooler than lukewarm, and I hadn't even turned on the cold water. I tried all the stalls, with the same result, and determined there was nothing else for it but to take a cold shower. Not particularly pleasant. I repacked my stuff and went to bed after setting my alarm for 6, figuring that would give me more than enough time to get ready, check out, and make my way up to the main access road. I was wrong on that one, too. For my own convenience, I'm more or less cutting and pasting - without consent of the recipient - the scoop on my departure from Bait Ali from an email I wrote to Evil Incarnate. I took for granted that I'd be able to check out in time this morning to catch the 7 a.m. bus down from Wadi Rum, and when the camp staff finally got up and around and checked me out - yes, I should have paid my bill the previous night, but, like I said, I took it for granted SOMEONE would be around - and I huffed and puffed my way up to the main access road, I'd missed it. So I abandoned my suitcase (for the third time in this little misadventure) in the ditch next to the railroad tracks running next to the access road and went back to the camp, got a little snippy with Mr. Mark, because as far as I knew, that was the only bus and a taxi was going to cost me about $35 - $42, had him call it anyways, because I had to be on the ferry, and was waiting for it to arrive when a bus to Aqaba drove up. I've never been so happy in the whole trip (and never felt like such a wench, either - for getting snippy, and for the fact that the taxi that was supposed to pick me up was coming from Aqaba - but I guess life goes on). So I got to Aqaba alright and at a minimum of expenditure, and there was even a dude heading to the ferry who I shared a cab with. Got there, went to buy my ticket, and found out I didn't have enough cash. Alright, so I thought I'd go get some money out of the ATM, since they didn't take credit cards...but it turns out that there IS no ATM at the passenger terminal. I had to go all the way back to Aqaba proper to withdraw money. Today reminded me of WHY I disliked the middle east with such vehemence, and after telling the taxi driver that I didn't want to cross into Egypt via Israel because most other Arab countries wouldn't allow me entry if they could see I'd been through Israel, I found myself wondering if that wouldn't be such a bad thing...might prevent further lapses of judgment. Anyways, once at the dock, once I had my ticket, I bumped into my friend from Petra Kitchen

(did I write about my amazing cooking class experience yet? Oh well, another time...), Isabel (she's the one in the keffiyeh), and it turned out she was in the same tour group as the random foreigners I met in Amman, Phee, Carol, and Carol, and their tour leader, Peter, let me follow their group around like a lost puppy, which did a pretty good job of calming me down and streamlining my entry into Egypt. The End.