Bobbing in the Dead Pool

Trip Start Apr 01, 2008

124

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of Jordan Dead Sea Region, Jordan
Monday, August 4, 2008

Our first destination in Jordan was the Dead Sea for a spot of bobbing. What a funny thing! For those of you who haven't been, imagine being in clear but oily-feeling water wearing a rubber ring and inflatable armbands on both your wrists and ankles. Swimming is basically out of the question. Even standing is tricky as your feet want to shoot up over your head. Prior to arriving we'd been told to avoid getting water in our eyes or swallowing it, but had simply imagined it would be a bit salty and horrible. In reality it is like putting contact lenses in before neutralising them. A searing acidic pain that simply must be washed out. Even small abrasions hurt and it turned out I had far more than I knew about. As for swallowing it... The bobbing itself though is brilliant! A completely unique experience.

We arrived back in Jordan's capital, Amman fairly late in the day and were told we had missed the last bus to Petra

Looks fairly normal - the sea that is!

. As we wandered around the deserted bus station in search of another solution, a battered old-style bus turned up, already pretty rammed with people, destined for a town an hour away from Petra. We seized our chance and jumped aboard with our Serbian friends and an Australian couple with a toddler.

Our presence on the bus seemed to provide a fair amount of amusement among our fellow passengers and when one of them handed me his mobile phone an hour into the journey, I assumed, as has happened on previous occasions, that he wanted to share this amusing experience with a friend of his, so I obliged and introduced myself. With the wind blowing in through every open window on the tin can of a bus, it was hard to hear much, but I managed to comprehend that the person on the end of the phone owned a guest house of sorts and was offering for us to stay. Despite my natural inclinations to say thanks, but no thanks, I indulged him a little further and with my head between my knees so as to hear him, was told he had a camp in a nature reserve. He was even willing to pick us up from the bus, along with his friend who'd handed me the mobile phone. I said I would discuss it with the others, thanked him and passed the phone back.

It was all pretty random and in the end proved too much so for the Serbians and Australians, who decided to stick to their original plan of trying to get to Petra somehow or other that night. For us though, with so many of our best experiences thus far being equally spontaneous and unexpected, the randomness proved too tempting to turn down and not for the first time on our trip, we prepared ourselves for a detour of discovery.