Leaving the Wadi Rum

  Aqaba, Jordan
Thursday, July 3, 2008

Today we left the campsite by camel to return to Aqaba.  I got quite comfortable on camel-back; if one let's the bottom half of the body go with the flow and tries to keep the upper body straight, it works quite nicely.  It's best to cross the legs around the front pommel, with one leg extended farther than the other such that you sit a little off center (this prevents the back pommel from denting your back.)  I've been wearing a hat given to me by a fellow traveler which makes me look like I'm in the French Foreign Legion -- a large flap at the back to cover the entirety of the neck. (I'll post some photos when they are available.)

Upon returning to Aqaba, we went down to the waterfront to sit in plastic chairs in the water and smoke some shisha.  We were invited to sit down by a guy/our waiter who we later found out lives in Holland, studied in California and was the cousin of the owner of this somewhat enclosed waterfront area (he visits for a month every year.)  Only later did we relize that we had basically stumbled our way into the family section of the waterfront (all the older boys and men swim outside the enclosed area where there are no 'services': chairs, food, drink etc.)  Our waiter explained to us that it was OK for us to be there because we're tourists and clearly not there trying to flirt to the unmarried Jordanian women.  As he pointed out, even when the boys swim over to the family section, people come as families, so they've really got no opportunity.)

We were a minor attraction to all the kids at this section of the waterfront (we've never really been stared at that hard.)  No adults really go swimming, and all the kids wear rubber rings (suggesting that even some of the older ones cannot swim).  An interesting threesome arrived, a couple, who we could tell were newly married, and an older sister of one of them.  The couple were being inappropriate in the water by Jordanian standards (i.e. they were holding each other in somewhat romantically suggestive fashion), and you could tell that the woman was a little embarrased infront of the foreign men.  I talked with the sister, who was taking pictures of them, and managed to understand, in Arabic, that the two of them had been married for just a week.

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One of the strangest things about Aqaba is Eliat.  Israel is as close to Aqaba as Jersey is to Manhattan (except that the former two cities pretty much share a wall.)

Eliat from the roof of the hotel in Aqaba

We're sleeping on the roof of the hotel tonight (it's cooler) where I met and talked with a crazy Belgian man for about an hour and a half.  He's at the end of an 8th month trip during which, he explained to me, he had become a Pagan-Muslim (he had started out as a Druid), was following in the footsteps of the Fisher King (see King Arthur) in an attempt to create peace in the Middle East, was recognized as Moses by some Jews on Mt. Nebo, was now also playing a Percivalian role (re: his mom, who he'd talked to recently) and had to make his way back to Cairo in order to get a dog out of a vet hospital before he could return to Belgium to get a new passport because the Israeli's had denied him his 7th entry (They denied him after he told them what he was up to, which only fuled the Moses complex).  You meet all types on rooftops.