Jordan is the country we knew the least about and as we landed at the airport, we knew (hoped) this place would be magical. It was. It has been a little bumpy, due to our tour company, but the country itself has cast a spell on us.
Amman, the capital, is a city sprawled on hills towards the horizon. Of Jordan's 4 million population, 2 million live in Amman alone, and it grows everyday. Our hotel was lackluster and lame, but our driver was kind enough to pick us up in the evening and drive us around Amman. Things we saw of note:
1. Amman is very modern; it consists of 8 circles (round-abouts) and according to our driver, if you know where those 8 circles are, you have mastered Amman traffic.
2. Restaurants/Fast Food: Popeye's, Hardees, McD, Pizza Hut, Benihana's, Trader Vic's (and Safeway)
3. Loads of American cars, hummers, and various luxury cars
4. Amazing, awe-inspiring smog.
5. (E: Jordan is the first kingdom I've ever been in. I still don't have a clear grasp of what exactly it means and how much the king actually directly rules or how much he leaves to others, but his picture is everywhere in various outfits).
We drove from Amman towards Petra. (E: On the way we stopped at a couple interesting castles and Mt. Nebo, the sight from where Moses looked on Jerusalem before he died. It would have been fascinating if we could see anything but smog.) Petra is not just that building from Indiana Jones. It is a whole city, large and on an incline(decline). The one from Indy Jones is called the Treasury; not because it was used as one by the ancient Nabetheans, but because Bedouins thought it held gold and shot at the building hoping that the whole thing will collapse and spew out gold...interesting. In any case, the whole place took Ernie and I 8 whole hours to walk through; loads of walking and climbing. (E: Petra was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. It is pretty incredible these vast structures carved into the rock. For all their work on the outsides, almost all the insides were pretty much big empty boxes. The Treasury was the most intricate, but a long climb up 900 rock steps took us to the Monastery which was even bigger. Oh, and it wasn't a Monastery either. People just like coming up with random names for these places).
From there we moved on to Wadi Rum; site of the events in the actual Lawrence of Arabia. The desert was so vast with high crops of rocks, hues of red, ochre, and auburn. Our fun little off-road tour guide thought it was great fun to bring the 4x4 as close to the top of a really high sand dune, stopping percipitously close to the edge. Ern and I nervously laughed, got out of the car, took pictures, and got back in. He smilingly asks us, "Okay, ready?" "Yalla!" (lets go, in Arabic) we bravely reply. What does he do?? He hurls the truck OVER the sand dune, the truck smoothly sails down the sand dune. Ernie and I loose a few years off our lives as we stifle our shocked reactions. Nice fun. Ernie, ever the active healthy guy, also climbs a very large sand dune to see the view from the top. Me? I make it half-way, find a nice rock, climb it, take a sit, simultaneously enjoy the view, and keep a look out for Ern.The run down the sand dune was fun though. (E: I very much was looking forward to Wadi Rum. It's a true sandy desert with giant rock formations like you see in the movies. T. E. Lawrence spent three years here during the Arab War, and Lawrence of Arabia, based on his story, was also filmed on location here. It is everything you imagine when you think of deserts, and very beautiful. Besides the sunset jeep tour, we had a three hour morning hiking tour. We ran up sand dunes (very difficult), stayed in a true Bedouin camp, and got sand blowing into our faces. Lots of fun.)
Okay, now onto camping in the desert; which we did for 2 nights. Ammentities were definitely more modern than Tanzania, BUT, man we slept only 2 hours the first night, due to the strong winds that pounded on our tent ALL night. It was not fun. The second night was a bit better as we got more sleep and there was less wind.
Cats in the desert: Its not secret that I am not that crazy about cats, but that does not stop cats from loving me; case and point-Wadi Rum cats. After being told a scary story about cats eating humans at night, a cat, many that roam the camp site, lazily sauntered over to our group as we sat around a camp fire. A camp worker was ernestly calling the cat over to sit on his lap. The cat hautingly looks at the man, then turns to me and straight out, jumps on my lap!! I was so suprised I gasped. Someone tried to get the cat off my lap, but they were worried it would claw me. So I picked it up and gently laid it down on the ground (truth, I punted the thing, so just kidding). The next night, when the cat came by, I was ready. When she jumped on my lap, I let her and she just stayed me all night. In the morning, she eagerly waited outside my tent, and when Ern unzipped the tent, she darted in and promptly found my lap once more. For the first time ever, I was tempted to own a cat, but just this one. She was so sweet looking too, not a brat about being such a pretty cat either.
In Wadi Rum, we were also invited by our hiking guide into a traditional Bedouin tent for Bedouin tea. That was very cool. By the end of our stay at Wadi Rum, we smelled of camp fire smoke (amongst other "natural" scents), sand was in EVERYTHING, but we enjoyed it.
Our next stop was the Dana Reserve. Another beautiful hike through sandy mountains and hills.
Today we are at the Dead Sea. Let me just expound about the Dead Sea experience....
-- Its not all its cracked up to be. It is cold water that stings your legs, if you even have a bit of dry skin. OUCH. Kids and other people would wade in, and depending on the condition of their skin, they would run out, legs red, bolt for the showers to wash off. Kids were crying, it hurt them so much!! Plus that whole mud thing, yeah, no thank you. A family close to us had the kids put mud on and as they were happily taking pictures of the kids, the mom says "Uh, I can smell your from here. That mud smells" She was like 10 feet away from the kid!! YUCK! But since Ernie bit the bullet and actually floated in the cold, painful Dead Sea water, I should then try the mud. Fair is fair. I got close to the bucket that everyone was taking gobs of the mud from and actually dry heaved. I couldn't do it. I chickened out. I would much rather admit that then put that gunck on me. EWWWWWWWWWWL!! PLUS PLUS there were all these tiny flies landing on you constantly. Our driver told us that in the summer, the flies are so much more numerous. What the!!!!! More than this? Weren't fly swarms one of the 7 plagues? It was gross. That encapsulates our abbreviated experience with the ever famous Dead Sea. We vailently tried, that we did. (E: Correction. I valiantly tried. I floated in the freezing cold, burning (anywhere you have a cut or opening. just think about the possibilities), water while Aidess told me to wait while she took a picture. Then she decides it doesn't look like fun and backs out. So I say fair is fair -- I did this, you do the mud, since you always want to go to spas and stuff. Here we get it free and natural. No such luck. "It's smelly!" "It's yucky!" But if you package it in a bottle and move it to the store just up the stairs then it's really nice and fancy. Something's wrong there.) We kept telling ourselved this as we scubbed ourselves raw in the shower. (rech) I promise you, I am not even being that dramatic.
Okay, that is it for now. We leave the Dead Sea tomorrow and spend the next 3 days in Amman and we are off to India (we are nowhere close to Mumbai, so no worries)
(E: By the way, this hotel has a great Internet connection, so I was able to upload photos for Turkey, Israel, and Jordan -- plenty of new pictures to enjoy!)
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