Jordan in the morning!

I went to Jordan on 12 hours’ notice, for which I am proud as I’m not someone who has the luxury of living spontaneously very often. The best laid plans fell apart around 8pm yesterday. I had planned to join my brother on his flight from Dubai to Sri Lanka, and stay for a few days while he shuttled back and forth between Dubai and Sri Lanka a few times over four days for work. We bounced around the idea of me going along weeks beforehand when he got his schedule.  But in a moment of double-checking details, my brother discovered that just 10 days prior, Sri Lanka changed their visa rules to require Americans to attain a visa in advance instead of upon entry.  Lest I be relegated to five days of trying to avoid the heat of Dubai without it involving shopping malls – a nearly impossible task -- my brother and I looked at flights with open seats and no longer than three to four hours, and with the likelihood of some English speaking; with only five days, I wouldn't have a lot of time to allocate to long misunderstandings about where the toilet is or making it clear that I’m not interested in a prostitute. Though on my first off-the-beaten track adventure in 1995 in English-speaking Belize, I somehow inadvertently arranged for a prostitute to show up to my room, which proved momentarily handy when I needed help re-hanging the shower rod that had collapsed earlier in the day, but then got awkward when I then realized that we were both now standing in the shower.

My brother’s friend and fellow airline employee Omar was visiting when we discovered the Sri Lanka visa issue, and to my good fortune, he had been playing around with the idea of going to Jordan during an upcoming 4-5 day stretch of days off, and unloaded all of his intellectual Jordan trip-planning property on me.  Within about an hour I had a rental car reserved and my first night’s stay figured out.  I’d figure out the rest on a day by day basis.

My flight put me in Jordan’s capital, Amman, by mid-morning and I was in my rental car shortly thereafter. The rental car agent, an older and jolly man, remarked that on the day of my return, it would be his birthday and he would working because he always works, even on his birthday, which was Monday, the day that I would be sure to see him because I was returning the car that day. He wanted to be really sure I knew.

In anticipation of some squirrely driving norms I read about on the internet, I had reserved a mid-sized car under the urban legend that a slightly bigger car with slightly more metal will protect me in a slightly large collision. The car I received was no where near the size of the mid-sized car in the photo that I reserved on the internet, and I’m pretty sure that no matter what I reserved or what I paid for, I would have been given the same crappy car that was delivered to me.  It had the comfort, handling and size of a Radio Flyer wagon, and at a speed of around 100 km/hour (roughly 60 mph) it felt like parts of the car – inside and out – were falling off. Indeed, I think I returned the car with one less hubcap than what I started with but the apathetic guy working the check-in either failed to notice or didn’t care.

I drove south for about 150 miles, wondering often if I had just missed the turn to my initial destination, Petra. I was told at the airport that the road signs in Jordan were abundant.  Indeed, the road signs were abundant. Abundantly written in Arabic. Or, a destination would be written in English but followed by words in Arabic. When you see your intended destination written on a sign it often means some upcoming course of action is needed. My only resources were Bedouin people who somehow live in this barren, hot and desolate landscape, and on my one attempt in asking a Bedouin for clarification about the way to Petra, he pointed to one of his sheep. He could see the confusion in my eyes, and to clarify his initial response, he pointed to another sheep.

My further complication was the signs depicting upcoming roads and turns reminded me of Chutes and Ladders. They resembled shapes consistent with what a 2 year old comes up with when given a crayon.  I’ve never seen such options to drive in shapes that resembled question marks and EKG results. And there’s massive roundabouts  fed by an insensible number of roads. No reasonable  person designs a round-about that is fed by 11 roads, the maximum I counted in one instance which took me three laps to count and one additional lap to confirm, which was how I passed the time while acknowledging my complete uncertainty about where to go, and after completing an oral cursing of the Jordanian department of transportation.

I have a mixed history with roundabouts. In Mexico City about six or seven years ago, I went on an early morning run, and made a mental note of the roundabout near my hotel that included a statue of Jesus in the middle of it. It would be my landmark to insure a successful return to my hotel.  And then I promptly got lost for two to three hours and gained a greater appreciation for the devotion of Mexico’s 85% Catholic population to Him as the overseer of traffic, as He presided over many roundabouts in the vicinity of my hotel.  By the time I returned – in a taxi – my colleague had called the police, we missed our departing flight, and later that morning I dropped a 20 litre glass water container at the feet of Mexico's national park service administrative leadership team. 

Back to today, though. Eventually I made it to Petra, home of the ancient civilization that was carved out of rock more than 2,000 years ago by an industrious and extinct Arabic group called the Nabataean. It reminded me of cultural resources protected in places such as Mesa Verde in Colorado or Tikal in Guatemala.  At Petra there are massive mausoleums, facades, a theater, all carved meticulously from the surrounding stone with impressive size and flare.  There’s a few miles’ worth of walking to see it all.

It’s easy to feel impressed with Petra the civilization, but difficult to feel impressed by Petra the tourist destination. I have mixed feelings about my time there.  Approximately every hundred meters along the trail there is a vendor selling tea, soda, water, magnets, figurines and a variety of trinkets that are labeled to be “real Bedouin” including the snow globes. Sadly, nearly all of these vendors are Bedouins who don’t just sell the wares at these stands but also live and sleep in their canvas-covered shops overnight.  Bedouins are a historically nomadic and herding population that comprise about a third of Jordan’s population, but the herding tradition has waned over the years and left many Bedouins without a clear livelihood, and many have taken up tourism as an alternative.  I struggle between empathy for their situation, respect for their need to make a living like the rest of us, and quite honestly, the impact on my experience as I’m offered and sometimes demanded to buy a cup of Bedouin tea or buy a bracelet. When I declined, it was sometimes followed by a guilt-laden comment in broken English. The only way to avoid this situation, as I saw it, would be to purchase a cup of tea at every request and I didn’t have the appetite for 800 cups of tea.

I got an early start at Petra so I could see sunrise from its highest point, which overlooks the same Rift Valley in Kenya that I have visited so many times 2500 miles to the south.  At the final saddle of the trail there’s a number of options to ascend a higher point for a view of the valley, and I absolutely loved that two signs, side by side, made identical claims of “best view of the valley” with arrows pointed in exactly opposite directions.  I wondered if they were also designed by the Jordan department of transportation. I wanted to determine for myself which had the best view, but in both cases was denied because access to the best view required a purchases from the vendor along that respective summit trail.

I reached the furthest point at Petra by mid morning, and then returned upstream against a wanderlust and frighteningly large current of tourists. The crowds became larger as I approached the trailhead, and just beyond the trailhead was a cluster of buses jockeying for parking spots and struggling to turn around in confined spaces. I marveled that such insanity existed at a World Heritage Site. I stood and watched this circus act for a few minutes while lamenting that my camera battery had died, preventing me from taking a video. 

Most tourists walked with their heads facing upwards to look at Petra’s various structures which means the tourist scene in Petra is more like a cacophony of stumbling tourists on Petra’s uneven trails. Many had some kind of branding on their person required by their tour company to insure no one accidentally gets mixed up with the wrong group.  Individuals in one group were given bandanas in a hunter orange color and obviously told to wear them around their arms; a World Heritage Site gang, if you will. Another group wore large, bright yellow visors, and I wondered how adult-aged paying clients were willing to go along with this. And some people just don't have the right hair for visors.

I left Petra with some uncertainty about what to make of my experience and headed for the Red Sea, about 80 miles south, with Aqaba as my intended destination. Aqaba is Jordan’s only port city, and it sits a few miles north of the border with Saudi Arabia and directly adjacent to the border with Israel.  Overall Jordan shares a border with these two countries as well as Egypt, Syria and Iraq, and if you’re keeping tally, most of those countries are engaged in or on the precipice of or recent recovery from high levels of civil unrest. Saudi Arabia is the exception though it is a country that beheads people in public for non-violent crimes, cuts of hands of shoplifters, and whose most recent breakthrough in women’s rights is allowing girls to play sports within their girls-only schools. 

My hotel was just south of Aqaba, or so I thought.  The hotel I booked, as it turned out, was located in Egypt. Both countries have a “Tala Bay” and I booked a hotel with the word “Tala Bay” in the name and located on the Red Sea without reading all of the important details, such as whether or not the hotel was located in the same country where I was visiting.   On my way to the incorrect Tala Bay hotel, just outside of the town, I missed the turn and ended up at Saudi border, and wondered which part of my body would be dismembered for a U-turn.

The hotel was understanding about my mistake and gave me a room at the same rate as I had booked at their sister hotel in Egypt. In the period of confusion about my reservation in which four additional employees were enlisted, no one came up with the suggestion that I was booked at the hotel with the exact same name in two different countries and situated on opposite shores of the Red Sea.  Whether it was true or not, I felt like I was the first person in their history to make the mistake, and it seems like this would happen more often.  But maybe it doesn't and so instead I just felt stupid.

I swam and snorkeled in the Red Sea but in hindsight would have stayed closer to town where I would have had easier access to walk around to get a feel for the vibe of the place and its people. There was a pleasant boardwalk in town with families, fishermen, couples and other walks of life enjoying it, vendors selling apricots, pistachios and oranges from the backs of trucks, and groups of teenagers on break from school and engaging in the universal teenage behavior of "hanging out", the only verb I know of that doesn't actually imply doing anything.

The next day I ventured north to the Dead Sea which was about 150 miles north on a highway that paralleled the border with Israel, of which I was reminded approximately every mile by either a lookout tower with multiple soldiers or signs announcing that any stopping of vehicles or photography was strictly prohibited and that soldiers had the right to “act accordingly” to any suspicious behavior.  It was a clear reminder that this part of the world is extremely tenuous, so much so that getting a flat tire along this highway could be interpreted as grounds for suspicion.  It’s a stressful part of the planet.

I arrived at the Dead Sea, which sits 1400 feet below sea level, got out of the car and was assaulted by a heat that I would not normally associate with something that can be experienced on Earth.  There’s a lot written in the Bible about this part of the world of course. For example, Moses and his entourage are said to have walked around this desert for 40 years. I barely tolerated the walk from my car to the hotel lobby.  If the story is true, Moses is the biggest bad ass to have ever existed.

I did the requisite Dead Sea activities of smothering my body in its muddy soil which is said to have therapeutic age-defying properties. I did this twice and awaiting the amazing results as I type. I also did the standard lying on my back in the sea with a newspaper, which required no effort to maintain because of the added buoyancy provided by so much salt.  It was strange. I couldn't physically touch the bottom of the sea because of it, until I dove down really hard and then learned what water with super high levels of salt content feels like in your eyes.

The next day I experienced the highlight of my Jordanian adventure, a canyon hike in which trekkers walked upstream literally in the river. I have done similar treks  in the Narrows of Zion National Park in Utah, but this one felt more adventurous. We should have known something was peculiar when we were offered life jackets -- for a hike, remember -- at the trailhead and told to leave our cameras in the car because they would get ruined.  The canyon was narrow in places, and it was fed by dozens and dozens of waterfalls that entered from dozens and dozens of entry points far above us, often carrying a very high volume of water. We hiked in the warm air and the torrential waterfall downpour of warm rain.

In a few spots along the river, there were large boulders with cables or ropes to assist in climbing up and over them. Imagine climbing up a rock using only a cable and with no footholds while torrents of water spilled over the rock and directly into your face. It was simultaneously terrifying and hilarious. This scenario repeated itself multiple times.  I made the remark at one juncture that “there’s no way this is the route up this section” but indeed it was the route up that section and every part of my body was given a good flushing while I proceeded through, up and over it. I hiked with a few Germans I had met in the parking lot, and we took turns with who went first when confronted with these obstacles, perhaps to spread around the risk of dying by being the first one up a section, though no one explicitly stated it. At one point, while climbing up a series of rocks in what was essentially a class 3-4 rapid, one of them turned to me and said “Das ist not intelligent.”

Overall, the hike was ridiculous amounts of fun.  Absolutely ridiculous amounts of fun. The Germans were staying at a super swanky Dead Sea resort and in yet another moment of good karma, earlier that day two people in their larger party had to leave the trip early on a moment’s notice, and they offered me their room which was paid for and for which they could not receive a refund due to the last minute cancellation.  It wasn’t a place where I would spend that kind of money in a million years for a night in a hotel because I would choose to pay my mortgage instead,  but they insisted that I take the room and maybe buy the group a round of drinks. Done.  And so I again had my soiree with the luxurious high life for a limited but entirely enjoyable gluttonous period of time. I’ve been riding this Good Karma Train for awhile now, and I can only figure the that journey must be coming to an end sometime soon, so start asking favors and requests because I need to replenish the tank.