It's the offices on the way that count...
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Aquaba,
Jordan
Friday, March 10, 2006
Dougal and I elbowed to keep our position in the jumble of people at the ticket window. After handing over our passports, at another widow we had to convert Jordan Dinars into US dollars to pay for our fare. Back to the first window with a piece of stamped paper to prove that we paid our fare we shuffled. Then with passports in hand, we were off to a third window to check out of the country. But not yet.
I had to run off to another building to get a piece of paper which proved we paid an exit tax. I bought this in a back room, down a corridor, behind an empty ticket window, from a man with a dozen briefcases full of exit ticket cupons and at least one brief case full of Dinars.
Back at the third window our passports were stamped "Adios Jordan" (or something like that written in Arabic). We then had to take a bus to the ferry (we were not permitted to walk the 200 meters) and we were driven up to the pier. Then we walked and were forced to ditch our luggage in the vehicle compartment.Hundreds had done so before us, and that was visible from the mammoth pile of disorganised suitcases and bags by the driveway. But phew; twenty minutes to sailing and we made it.
I was more than ready to leave Wadi Musa. After seeing Petra for the day, Dougal and I were less than satisfied to see that, after our roommates left, our dorm room had not been cleaned. Our sheets probably were only washed on a monthly basis, but the little things were annoying, like the rubbish bin flowing over with tp, and having none on a roll. The cheap beds were literally a pain in the back - the managment had very thin foam pads placed on the iron rungs of the bed. We really should have gone somewhere else but that's inconvienent at 5.30 in the morning, like when we left for Petra.
Top that off by having the managment thrash at the door of the near empty building at a quarter to midnight, well after we are in bed, to try and stick more victims in the room. It was trecherous of us but we had locked the door and whispering, we agreed not to open it up. The next morning the manager was fuming because he said that he lost guests because of us, but considering the racket we heard from 11.45 - 12.30 am, I think he was lying.
In any case he should have stuck the guests in one of the many empty rooms rather than the crampped two bunk dorm at the dorm rate. We decided it was an act and he was angling for an unjustified tip. Either way the man was scammer, because he told us that there was no bus that day to Aquaba, and we needed to take a 35 Dinar taxi because there was no other way to Aquaba (but he could organise it for us, the angel). Twenty minutes after eight am, he was proven a liar. We found a bus at three Dinars apiece to take us there for the noon ferry.
Aquaba is Jordan's little slice of the gulf of Aquaba. Jordann shares this gulf with Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt. For a time after the British Partition of the region, the Jordanians didn't have enough space to build a proper port. In the sixties, the King traded six thousand square kilometers of desert to the King of Saudi for twelve more kilometers of coastline. At the harbour, it's easy to see both Egypt and Israel. The otherwise inexplicable gap of urban sprawl along the harbour can be chalked up to tightly controlled borders. It's prime ocean front real estate, waiting for a developer to stabilise the Middle East, knock down a few borders and clear a minefield or two. Someone's going to make a killing.
Not that impressed after enduring the ticket window blitz in order to catch the boat* , Dougal and I settled down on our boat while a mullah made his Friday sermon on the P.A., and Muslims at prayers had to reorient their carpets every so often because the boat's relative bearing in relation to Mecca changed as we sailed along between the Egyptian and Saudi coasts, until we pulled into Nuweba at two thirty, and Egypt showed up en masse to greet us.
* We fathomed that all the different widows were established as a control on corruption. Limiting which officals take money means that fewer of them can skim from that money. The exit tax coupon was probably sold to me by a private vendor, who buys the coupons by the thousand, and is thus responsible for selling them rather than individual bureaucrats, who could skim a few Dinars this way and that without great difficulty
