Jordan - Eid al Fitr - Oct. 10-15
Thus begins the tale of the epic trip to Jordan. We traveled from Amman to the Dead Sea and River Jordan and back. We moved south to Petra, then to the beautiful Southern desert of Wadi Rum. We drove back from far into South Jordan all the way up to Amman on our last day. If your interested in any particular part more, it is arranged in that order. Additionally, the first night (Wednesday) is just about leaving Cairo and arriving in Amman, so you may want to skip to Thursday. It was an outstanding trip. Hope you enjoy!
Wednesday
Arranging to get a cab to the airport is always a struggle, and it’s always very expensive. I decided to milk my seventy-pound cab ride by making the cabbie talk to me in Arabic the entire way. We ran the gaunlet on many topics. My personal favorites included when he told me he would buy me a big screen tv with a satellite dish. He was adament that I be able to watch his favorite characters like Chuck Norris. He loves Chuck Norris. He also expressed his love for professional wrestling in America. We moved on to discuss his family, and he showed me a picture of his young daughter of three. She was amazingly cute. I think people like you more when you show an interest in their babies.
After arriving at the gate, I noticed there was a starbucks in the international terminal. I’m not exactly the biggest Starbucks fan, but I jumped at the possibility for a cup of real drip coffee, something I haven’t had since I’ve been in Egypt. Espresso and Nescafe get a little old. Anyway, after having some funny conversations with other foreigners in line at Starbucks (I met some cool Pakistanis now working here and a Canadian woman said “I moved to Cairo and was here for two days, and I had to leave, because I couldn’t stand it here, so I did”) I sat down for this glorious cup of joe. It really was as good as I expected it to be. In fact better – the law of decreasing marginal utility did not apply. Every single sip was as good as the last, if not better. That’s about the best I can do to describe it. It was a joy.
At the gate, I saw a Middle Eastern looking guy wearing an Oregon t-shirt. I asked him if he’d ever been to Oregon. He said his brother had, then spent the next half hour starting intently at me. Awkward.
When we arrived in Jordan and got through customs, we took a cab from Queen Alia airport (named after the Queen) thirty-six kilometers into downtown Amman. The first big impression I got from Jordan was the large road sign indicating that a right onto the next ramp would take you to the Iraqi border. I was kind of like “Hey! My country started a war with them, and it’s still going on! Crazy!” Later in the week,
I got a photo of road signs pointing towards the Saudi border and Iraqi border. I was pretty pleased with myself. The rest of the cab ride was relatively uneventful. We actually stopped at red lights on the way, even though it was the middle of the night. The presence of infrastructure almost seemed tangible. It was a breath of fresh air after the constant madness of Cairo. The city also had a very distinct look compared to Cairo. It had lots of hills and tan stone building built into the hills. It was cool to bump up and down the rolling hills of Jordan’s capital. Cairo is very flat and kind of boring in this sense, making Amman that much cooler. We were shocked, however, when we arrived at our Hotel and discovered that we were “downtown.” For a town of nearly two million, it was very unimpressive – not unimpressive in the sense that I was disappointed by a lack of large buildings (though there were few), there was very little going on at night, and nothing was really open. Either way, the downtown pales in comparison to most of the other cities I’ve seen around the Middle East like Cairo or Alexandria for example.We checked in, impressed the front desk with the fact that we actually spoke some Arabic, then hit the hay after arranging for an early tour of many cool places to see around Amman.
Thursday
So Jordan is an hour later than Egypt, and we forgot to set our alarm back so we woke up about ten minutes before it was time for our bus to leave to see stuff outside of Amman. It was a nerve-wracking few minutes, but we got on the road ok and had a cool ride through and out of Amman.
As I described the night before, the landscape is completely different from Cairo, and seeing it during the day was cool. Everything had about the same sandwallish kind of color, but the hills really made a difference. We finally got out into the Jordanian countryside, and again, it was pretty different from the pure desert wasteland of Egypt outside of the city. There were actually olive orchards and rolling hills.We arrived in a small town of Madaba. I actually haven't seen that many small towns in the Middle East surprisingly. It kind of reminded me of small towns in Costa Rica: thin streets, lots of clothes and food being sold along main drags. We arrived at a Church that is famous for an ancient mosaic of the entire ancient near and middle east. It basically stretches from North Africa to the edge of India. There were a lot of chunks missing, and churches can be anti-climactic. This wasn't too different, but just the idea that something had been created thousands of years ago as a map that people legitimately used to conceive of their world was cool.
We piled back in the van and headed for Mt. Nebo - the mountain where Moses finally led the Israelites to view the Promised Land laid out before them, only to have God tell him that he wasn't the one to bring them into it. Then he dies. The mountain was pretty cool, and there were legitmately beautiful views of the valleys of Israel and Jordan below. There was a sign pointing to all sorts of directions like Jericho, Jerusalem, Ramallah, the Dead Sea etc. Then we wandered into the Church. It was a little church, but clearly very old, given the fact that there were ancient mosaics all around it and stone pillars holding it up from the Middle of the sanctuary. There was a small shrine with picture of Pope John Paul II standing in front of the shrine. Robby asked me to pose there, then proposed a caption for the photo: "Sinner and Saint." Clever Robby. We puttered around on top of the mountain for a bit longer, then went outside the gate and waited for the other few folks who were still milling around to come down from the Mountain. As we were sitting around, Uthman the Jordanian cop, wearing the new US developed pixellated "digicamo" in Jordanian military blue. I hear we it's not easy to get your hands on that unless you're buddy-buddy with the US. He was a really nice guy, telling us how much he liked America. It's becoming pretty par for the course here in the Middle East, I just have to start wondering who means it and who doesn't. All the millions of Cops in these semi-police states probably just get really bored and talk to any interesting tourists they meet. Our trip down the mountain to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the planet on land, we went down all sorts of crazy winds and twists while hearing stories from Dan about Thai people he'd heard about who had gotten killed on little roads like these. It was comforting.The Dead Sea was outstanding. I'd been in the Siwa salt oasis a few weeks before and thought I'd experienced salty water. I was so wrong. I dipped my finger in the water and tasted it, and the shock was overwhelming - so much more than i expected. It's hard to describe, but it kind of burned and made my face pucker up and finally subsided in an intensely salty aftertaste.
Another awesome element of floating around completely weightless in the Dead Sea was the fact that the cliffs across the Sea (probably only a few miles away) were Palestine - the West Bank. We bobbed up and down and basked in the apparent lack of gravity until small cuts and other sensitive areas of our body forced us out. As the day went on, more and more tourists began arriving and caking Dead Sea mud on themselves. The shore itself wasn't exactly like salt flats leading into the water, but there were definitely giant salt rock crystals everywhere that caused some significant pain upon walking in and out. After about ten minutes outside the water, everyone started to feel disgusting. It was almost like our bodies were coated in oil upon getting out, then we just started crusting up and itching. We showered off and jumped in a freshwater pool. After floating in the Sea, we were all seriously thrown off by how heavy we felt in regular water. We contemplated going back into the sea, but the hoards of speedo clad old European men and the thought of the feeling of the salt burning and caking on us again caused us to shy away from it. Dan had also told us that one of the most painful experiences of his life was getting the water in his eyes. It's seriously salty.The next leg on our journey was up past the Dead Sea to the River Jordan and the site where Jesus was supposedly baptized. It was turning out to be quite the biblical day.
We had to hike in on foot a ways because cars are only allowed a certain distance from the Israeli-Jordanian border. The land became slowly more wooded and green. We finally arrived at the trickle of what is the Jordan river. It looked kind of like a muddy tributary of the Amazon or something. Maybe like the Deschutes in places. The redeeming element of the non overwhelming quality of the Jordan made us that much closer to Palestine and made me think about how arbitrary and strange borders are in some parts of the world, especially here, on the highly secured border between Israel and Jordan. Even though the countries have long been at peace, I get the feeling the Israeli's don't take much of a chance. Crocodiles probably would have taken care of anyone trying to cross - it seemed like the muddy kind of Middle Eastern river that would nurture such animals. We continued walking along the paths near the banks of the River until we stopped in front of a kind of ill-preserved shrine with some interesting looking maps and rotted out and rebuilt churches. It turns out the Jordan has flooded and ebbed and flowed a lot over the last two thousand years, causing those trying to preserve Jesus' baptism site some major issues. There was one cool painted map that showed how the Church was supposed to be set up when early Christians started using the same site for their own baptisms. There was a main sanctuary above the banks of the river, then a series of steps moving down into the water itself, almost like a boat launching point or something. People would descend the stairs to be baptized in the same spot as Jesus. Pretty wild stuff. The guy showing us around went into a long archaeological discussion of how it's known that this was the real site. It had to do with the proximity of the Jordan to the site and the shape of the landscape around it. 
These biblical sites are difficult to experience. On one hand, I really want to be captivated by the power of the site and all it's historical and religious significance. Here, however, things are often far less grandiose then they could be, and you're sort of left being like "that's it?" Still, if you begin to reflect on these sorts of things, it becomes pretty mind-blowing.
We finally arrived at a Greek Orthodox church near the banks of the River. There were steps leading down to the actual river. About twenty feet across was a big stone fort with an Israeli flag flying. This land that has caused so many problems for so many thousands of years (while Jordan is basically a part of the same conflict area) was so close by. By this point I had also acknowledged that I wouldn't get a chance to go to Israel. This was about as close as I'd get. We walked down to the edge of the river, dipped our hands in the water gingerly (remember, crocodiles) and sat and attempted to let it all sink in. Another interesting element of this last stop along the river was the group of apparently Irish Anglicans having a prayer service next to the river. They were in the middle of a kind of service, and shot us dirty looks as we walked past them, even though we were intentionally polite and quiet, and had just as much right to be there as they did. Some of the Italians traveling with us were blatantly ignoring the fact that there was a ceremony going on while laughing and taking pictures next to the river. It was a little embarrassing, but what can you do. We took our leave of the river, a final look at the same kind of brush and riverbank just across the way that represented something so historically significant in this century, and headed back to our van to ride back to Amman.The ride back was fun - especially passing the giant billboard encouraging tourism in Jordan:
Jordan: Live it! Love it!
-established rule of law
-competent workforce
-thriving private sector
-gateway to the Middle East
More fun reminders of the Middle East and Jordan's neighbors all over the place would bombard us for the rest of the night. One element of Jordan that needs mention is the apparent strength of Jordanian national pride. Although the country was basically created out of nothing as a result of colonialism, the Jordanian flag hangs prominently everywhere. One of the biggest reasons for this, I'm told, is because the population of Palestinian refugees there is significantly larger than the population of actual Jordanian citizens. I don't know whether Jordanians feel imposed upon and want to proudly show their authenticity to the country, or whether they just want to shove something in the face of the refugees. Who knows.
We walked around downtown Amman for a bit, and noticed their large number of bootleg DVD stores. When I went up to one and expressed an interest in some of their movies, they started offering me others I hadn't expressed an interest in. It went something like this:
Shop owner: Oh, we have Munich. You like Munich?
Jesse: Um, it's ok, I like some of these other ones.
Owner: Oh, what about this, Flight 93!
Jesse: No thanks.
Owner: Ok, but we have Road to Guantanamo!
Jesse: I think I'm fine, but thanks for the offers.
Later that night, we went out to dinner. The food in what you could call "the Levant" is basically far superior to the food in Egypt. The falafel and the pita and and the hummus - you'd think I'd be tired of it from Egypt by now, but Jordanians really know what they're doing. While we were at the restaurant, Eid began. Eid is the feast that begins at the end of Ramadan - so it's kind of a big deal. The position of the moon in different places around the Arab world also determines whether or not Ramadan is still going or not (or so I'm told). Someone had just gotten on the metephorical loud speaker and let Jordan know that it was time to party, because they could wake up the next morning and eat, drinking and smoke even with the sun up. Although I had been eating and drinking during the day while traveling in Jordan (according to Islam, it's ok to not fast during Ramadan while traveling), I was pretty excited myself not to feel guilty every time I was served food by someone fasting. People in the restaurant starting clapping and singing, fireworks began going off all over the streets, and people crowded the streets, all wanting to get out of the house into a large group of people just to be there. Our walk back from the restaurant to our hotel was a mess of celebrating people and fireworks and loudness and happiness. It wasn't as crazy as I could have imagined, but the people were definitely enjoying themselves.
The night ended up getting a little weird from there. We met these girls from AUC staying down the hall from us in our hotel. The two of them and two guys and I went out into the street to try to grab a cab to some bar downtown they had heard about where there was dancing and live music. We spent about 45 minutes trying to get a cab. Everyone seemed to want to get home (even though all the cabbies seemed to be working). Maybe they were just in the kind of mood like "I don't want to deal with foreigners tonight." Who knows. Either way, we wandered the noisy streets (I didn't realize it was possible for there to be more horn honking then normal) until finally we found someone to take us. We rolled to this really interesting, incredibly clean and western neighborhood with this awesome lighted suspension bridge. It eminated white light from far far away and going over it was really cool. The first bar we went into was called "El Toro Negro" the Black Bull. We sat down and ordered insanely overpriced drinks before basically concluding that it was a bar where sketchy men went to pick up Jordanian prostitutes. This maybe explained the strange looks we were getting. There were extremely scantily clad Arab women (something you really don't see here) just dancing up on guys and walking up to men at the bar and just dancing up on them, even if they weren't showing much interest. One positive was the Jordanian guy singing really loud arabic music live to a DJ making pretty cool beats. It wasn't enough to get us to stick around though, and after wandering around the area for a bit, we basically took a cab back and crashed, anticipating waking up early and catching a bus down to Petra.
Quick side note: to accommodate members of our group who wanted to sleep co-ed, we packed one room with 2 extra people, leaving the tiny box of a bathroomless room on the roof to the couple. I ended up sleeping in the girls' room because they had been put in a triple with an unused bed. Before we went to sleep, one girl said, this is funny - a jew, a christian and a muslim, all sleeping in the same room. One girl is from the states and is jewish. one girl is a Shia from Iran. Only a theology major would appreciate this enough to write it down.
Friday
Friday morning we woke up to Jordanians eating breakfast and smoking cigarettes in the lounge with the rest of the tourists. It really shouldn't seem that strange, but I felt something similar when I got back to Cairo and was allowed to eat with the sun up. It's just something you get used to that takes a couple days to shake off. The same kind of strangeness overtook me as I watched these guys enjoying a real breakfast. More post-Ramadan awakening followed. We got in a cab to the bus station and the cabbie was drinking coffee and happily offered his only cup to me. i respectfully declined, but he was drinking coffee and smoking away blissfully. At the bus station, after we'd been hustled onto these busses (by the way, the bus station is not a station, its just a bunch of busses parked in a lot) a group of teenagers came on with pots of coffee and tea and little plastic cups, selling them to everyone on board. i probably literally bought like 2 of each while we waited to get going, then started getting scared i would really have to make a few pitstops as we traversed almost the entire country.
We slept a bit on the bus down, but as we neared Petra, the driver started blasting this completely obnoxious talk radio. There was some show host calling random people on the phone and being like "hey! you're on the radio!" and they would be shocked, and the more we looked like we were trying to sleep the louder the driver would turn it. finally being dropped off like, 5km outside of Wadi Musa (the tourist town outside of Petra's ruins) was glorious. Not the view (because there wasn't much) or anything spectacular, just being off the bus.
After a much awaited meal at some local little place (again, Jordanian food is awesome - rice, falafel, chicken soup thing?, hummus, pita) we wandered into a random little hotel that looked nice and wasn't took expensive. we got everyone together and booked a bunch of rooms, dropped our bags, and went to the lobby to grab a beer. It turned out the guy manning the front desk actually has a family in cairo and works in petra because the money is so much better (the dinar is really strong) and sends money back home. i asked him what he was going to do to celebrate Eid and he just responded, matter of factly "wala haga." nothing - he's at work. It's sad in a way, but some people's stength in accepting their circumstances is inspiring.
The rest of the night was fairly uneventful. we went out to eat late at around 11pm or so and had a really good time with a set of waiters. there is a term here, "ya besha" that originated from the ottoman empire when people would refer to upper-class people as pasha. its still used this way mostly, but friends here often joke around with each other by calling one another "ya besha." my friends and i do the same, and sometimes it slips or out we do it for fun with waiters etc. that night, we kept going back and forth with the waiters with the phrase "inta besha" (you're the besha) for a long enough time for it to get ridiculous. they really liked us. Fun times.Saturday
Getting the crew together early to get out to Petra was no simple task - even though everyone agreed that Petra would probably be the coolest thing we'd see in Jordan. After 8 people ate breakfast basically individually over an hour and a half period, we finally set out. People were pretty excited, which was cool. The walk down the hill towards craggy mountains was cool, as we had an idea of what lay behind and within them, but had no idea what it would really be like. We were bombarded with Jordanian guys trying to sell us on horse back rides. A lot of my friends were really into the idea because it's basically straight out of Indiana Jones riding through Petra on one of his epic adventures. So we got on horses and immediately found out they were only to ride from the gate to the entrance to the canyon. Fortunately, they weren't too expensive, but I always feel ridiculous being that tourist on a horse while most people are walking and looking at you. We arrived at the entrance to the canyon, dismounted and began the walk into this the base of this massive canyon towering in front of us.
The walk through the canyon was epically cool. The walls were pretty thin at places (well, like 10 people abreast) and the color and rock formations of the walls were spectacular. So much red and rose colored rock. Petra is also called the Rose City - holler at Portland - it'd be a great sister city, if it weren't an ancient ruin. Another cool element of the canyon was a trough hewn into the stone on the left side of the canyon. I assume it was an ancient water carrying trough bringing water from a river outside the mountains into the secluded and guarded natural formations. the further we walked, the greater our anticipation grew and more spectacular the formations became. We walked and walked for a while.
Finally we came around a little bend, and saw the massive facade of the Treasury building peeking through the growing opening in the Canyon. This is the picture they show on the front of all the guidebooks. This is why Petra became one of the new wonders of the world. The way this enormous shaped rock wall looks through the shadows and sun reflecting off the canyon rock is indescribably awesome. We walked out into the open space in front of the Treasury and it only got better. The Treasury was where the Nabattean King kept his insane amount of gold, and it must be at least one or two hundred feet tall. It's carved right into a rock face with ornate decorations and enormous statues. People look like bugs in front of it because it's so massive. This awesome guard was standing near the entrance to the carved out temple/storage area. He was dressed in this decorated tan suit with a giant decorated knife, an old pistol and a belt filled with single bullets. It was strange more than anything.After we walked around in front of the Treasury, taking in the grandeur on one side and the dirty, crowded, camel/horse/donkey array in the open sandy area. We walked to a shop nearby with a bunch of authentic Jordanian silver and other artifacts and kitchy tourist stuff. We walked in to the shop owner greeting us. After we'd been in there touching and looking at things for a couple minutes the owner said "You. Yes, no touching. Do not touch because you will not buy. I will close the shop if you don't leave. Why don't you go look at the monument." He wasn't talking to us, he was talking to the Indian tourists. He told us not to worry, that they never buy anything so it's ok. Ok, I guess. Joe decided to drop a pretty ridiculous amount of money on big necklaces and bracelets for his girlfriend. It was beautiful stuff to be honest.
We walked on through more canyons and open space, passed incredible unnamed monuments and temples carved into these enormous rock walls. A giant open space opened up, and we found ourselves in front of an enormous amphitheater. Instead of heading straight for it and the rest of the ruins, we decided to climb up a mountain on our left. We spread out across the rocks. I took some pictures of my friends who looked like specks on the edges of cliffs. My friend yelled an echoing "ya besha." We continued climbing along the skinny path cut into the side of the mountain sweating our way all the way up. Asian tourists were screeching to one another in attempted arabic - it got pretty annoying actually. The sand along the path, like all the sand in Petra, was a beautiful color of reddish-pink. As we got higher and higher up the mountain, the only thing that kept us going were the satisfied looks of people coming down. It was a long trek, but eventually we made it to one rock jutting out near the top, and took a long break to admire the landscape of mountains and monuments carved into rock for what looked like miles and miles laid out below us. Petra is too stunning for words.We decided we had to do this mountain hike right, so we fixed our gaze on the tallest rock formation, and climbed up. There was no path, so we had to pull some minor rock-climbing maneuvers, but it was worth it. At the top, the view increased to 360 degrees, with all of Petra below us and the town of Wadi Musa distant in the hills. We sat up there admiring everything. Some things can't be described. The combined satisfaction of having climbed up the mountain and the incredible view in every direction made it completely worth it. Mt. Sinai might rival this, but there aren't massive decorated rock facades carved into the landscape everywhere you look below Mt. Sinai. Someone actually built all of this thousands of years ago when trading and eventually succumbing to the power of the Romans.
It must have been a bitch to conquer. We stacked some rocks, scratched our names into one of them, and having made our mark on the ancient world, decided to head out. It looked as though the peak we'd summited didn't get much attention, making the ascent that much sweeter. After a final gaze across everything, we started back down, exhausted to explore the rest of Petra.Our next stop, after climbing back down the mountain (there were fewer screaming tourists and sweat droplets on the way down) we walked up to the amphitheater. We met some interesting kids there. A few girls were handing out shards of rocks and sketchy little necklaces. One came up to me and sat down next to me and just started talking. She wasn't Jordanian. She was adamant about that. She was Bedouin. She told me how wonderful she thought America was and handed me a black beaded necklace. "A gift for you." I was a little taken aback, and explained that I couldn't possibly take her necklace for free. She followed up with more free rocks and chatter. I suppose this was a strategy, because I had to break down and give them some money. It was a really fun moment though, because they followed us around, asked to have pictures with us and wouldn't stop talking.
All this, of course, in an enormous amphitheater carved out of a pink mountain thousands of years ago.We kept walking and had some more fun reactions. There were a lot of little boys riding around on little donkeys. Little people on little animals are amusing. They would proposition tourists to ride their donkeys by saying "air condition, ride with air condition." It was pretty brutally hot. Little people, little animals, little funny sayings. We walked up to another temple monument carved into a mountain across from the amphitheater. On the way up, we walked by a gift shop. There was a little stature of a camel with a cigarette stuck in its mouth. it was pretty cute and quirky, so I went to take a picture. The shop owner said "you have to ask him first." I replied "but I don't speak camel, how can he understand me." He replied "I speak camel, I will ask. He says no." I told him I'd test my luck in camel tongue, then told the guy I thought the camel had said yes. He laughed and told me "As you like ya besha." So I got my picture and a funny Bedouin interaction. The echoes from inside the temple we climbed up to were outstanding. The rock inside looked like some kind or marble - red and white and black with stripes and arabesque curves zooming too and fro. The light pouring in from the small entrance cast off shadows. It was great.
There was clearly more to see to Petra - it's an enormous collection of monuments and an entire ancient city. We were exhausted though, and rallied back in front of the treasury. We took last pictures and gazes and marveled in the splendor of our location for a while longer. Finally, we picked up and departed the way we'd come, through the canyon, casting glances back to see the spectacular view of the Treasury a few last times. Again, the hike through the canyon was incredible, and we emerged back into open space outside to be swarmed by people offering us horseback rides. We walked, and I won't lie, it seemed significantly longer. Seriously. As we walked out through the gates, we were sucked into a shop to buy soccer jerseys and Jordanian style head wraps (kufeyas). I haggled the guy for a lower price. He finally told me, and swore to his God three times, that if he sold it to me for any less, he would lose money. He told me that a family of Bedouins who had lost their father and brother knitted these by hand in a flat just above his shop. It's hard to tell how authentic these stories are, but some of these guys are convincing enough to get my money.
Nothing the rest of that day could come close to measuring up. It was wonderful, however, to sit down in town and eat some late lunch. Sitting feels really good after a long day of walking and climbing. That night, we trekked down to a bar called "cave bar" near the entrance to the ruins. Everyone walked in, and I greeted the doorman. We had an interesting conversation. He asked where I was from. He then asked what Americans think of Islam. These are always times to tread lightly and be diplomatic. I told him, most people like it and have no problem and some people don't like what they don't understand. He then asked me personally what I thought. All I could tell him was "Ramadan kuwayis, eid kuwayis, islam kuwayis. Anna badrus al-din. Islam kuwayis." or "Ramadan is cool, Eid is cool, Islam is cool. I study religion, I like Islam." These kind of conversations occur from time to time. It's always a matter of gaging reactions and figuring out how to be authentic but not to say anything that can be interpreted the wrong way at all. I still do it all the time, and it's good for picking up more language to have these kinds of talks. Needless to say, religion is a sensitive issue around here.
Sunday
Our Cairene friend who worked at the hotel had arranged for us to get transportation down to Wadi Rum (a famous stretch of Jordanian desert populated by Bedouins). Robby had gotten extremely ill from drinking some rancid coconut milk and wasn't able to get out of bed. It was really unfortunate, but we had to keep our plans to get a ride down to Wadi Rum, camp out with the Bedouin, then get a ride back up the famous King's Highway to Amman for our flight the next day. Our first stop on the journey was to "Little Petra." It was a beautiful area, and was essentially another canyon like the one going into Petra, but with more areas for climbing and more wild goats. Some of the rock formations were too cool to pass up, and a couple of us risked life and limb a bit to make it out onto some cool ledges. On our way back, a goat almost had a bowel movement on me. Just throwing that out there.
I need to devote some time to the ridiculousness of Nael our driver. I say up near the front and tried to chat with him as much as possible. He asked if we'd gotten camel milk in Petra. Unfortunately not. He was clearly disappointed by this, and decided to go into all the merits of drinking camel milk. He eased me in. Nael: "Camel milk is very strong. You drink the camel milk, you won't need to eat for 25 hours. Also, the camel milk is good for the sex. Very nice.” (Jesse is awkwardly laughing). That's very interesting Nael. I appreciate this glimpse into your culture.
Driving through the desert into Wadi Rum was amazing. Despite interesting road trip conversation, the sand crawling up giant monoliths bursting out of nothing in the middle of sandy seas was beautiful. The colors of the sand - yellow to gold to pink to red - was amazing. I didn't know there was sand that color. We finally pulled into our definitely interesting Bedouin camp. It truly wasn't what I expected. There were trucks, ATVs, plastic tents, a dance floor and DJ gear and a working bathroom and shower building. It was quite the roughing it we'd hoped for, but after four days of traveling and little sleep, we were pretty much accepting whatever came our way.
We met the owner of the camp, Audh, who told us about the 300 tourists who had been there the night before with 300 problems each. Too many problems he said. He then asked us to come up with ten questions about Jordanian Bedouin culture for an "intellectual conversation" later. We sat and drank tea for a while, then ate lunch. Lunch was good and very interesting. The bedouin cook giant stews in enormous pots dug into the sand. They put hot coals underneath, cover them, the pour all sorts of vegetables and meat into the pot. They cover this, then bury it in the sand. It cooks for a few hours and is hot and ready to serve. This would be a good time to mention the escalade pick-up that had a goat in the back. I think we ate that goat later that night. Goat in an escalade, enough said.Quick break from the narrative: The camp was covered in pictures of two people: the King of Jordan and Audh the owner of the camp, in different garbs doing hardcore stuff in the desert and looking picturesque. My friend and I dubbed the portraits of King Hussein "Buddy King" because he was always smiling in his kufeya, or riding around on a motorcycle, or posing with his beautiful Palestinian wife, always with a "buddy" smile on his face. Even posted up on road signs and everything one could find the buddy King looking at you. It was kind of cute, kind of Big Brother-ish. This is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (I've never been to a Kingdom). We got the term Buddy King from the "Buddy Christ" in the movie dogma. It's seriously very similar. We wondered whether it was so ubiquitous because businesses could get licenses much more easily with a Buddy King picture around or whether the people really do love Buddy King. Maybe we'll never know.
Things took a serious turn for the awkward after that. We were sitting along a series of benches just resting with our feet up. During the hour we were napping, a group of other visitors seemed to get increasingly more hostile and upset about something. They were staring at us, then started yelling at Audh, talking about money for some reason, and finally walked away. Audh walked up to us and said, "I think it is too hot for you here. Maybe you will be more comfortable along the cliff, where there is more breeze." The space along the cliff, where we were banished, turned out to be breezy, and also apparently where a lot of the camp's trash is thrown. While this incident did not seem very serious, don't underestimate the power of feeling very foreign and very judged in a place in the absolute middle of no where with no where to go to escape people thinking hostile thoughts about you. Everyone was feeling confused and stressed out, and we kind of sat around in silence for a while.
After a while we basically felt better and ventured out of exile to find Audh arranging for our trip into the desert and dunes in a pickup driven by a kid who looked twelve. Audh told us his name was Abd al Salaam (servant of peace) so everything would be fine. Of course.
We drove through the little town a few miles from our camp and into the desert. We were all sitting on little benches in the bed of the pickup as Abd al Salaam did his driving through the sand and desert thing. The wind was whipping past us, and the landscape was beautiful. Sand and little bushes here and there. There were big rocky formations pushing through the earth towards the sky. We got out and climbed a good portion of the way up one. For some reason, climbing mountains that seem mostly untouched by people is just incredible. When you can identify a cool spot from far below and just make yourself get there no matter what. We did that a lot - and the perspectives out over the desert were stunning.We took off into an even cooler area of dunes and brush and whipped up and down the sandy hills on the pickup feeling very liberated from our camp out in the open desert among all the sand and beautiful dunes. We finally pulled up next to this outstandingly beautiful craggy hill with bright red sand tumbling down from its peak. The sand was completely untouched and pristine. We sat at in a little tent drinking tea with some guys who sold special white sage tea grown in Wadi Rum. We shoved off after a bit, but the tea was some of the best I've had in the Middle East, which is saying something.
It was nearing sunset so we tore back across the dunes to a high place and sat watching the giant red sun setting over the desert and mountains in the distance. Hands down, this is the best sunset I've seen since I've been in Egpyt and the Middle East - making it potentially the best of my life. It's not worth trying to describe. The place, the sand, the sun itself made it perfect. We drew in the sand and just sat and watched. I walked out into the sand and sat alone for a little bit. One by one, other people walked up and sat down next to me.
All in silence, just watching, until it was on the horizen, then was gone.Returning to the camp, many more people had arrived and were milling around drinking tea. We did the same and Nael our driver sat down next to us. I wondered where this conversation would lead, but I steered it towards his family and where he was from. He has a Muslim Bedouin mother, who had seven children. His father also married a German woman (making a total of two simultaneously) but she never had children with him. Most of his family lives semi-nomadically between Southern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia, and he has hundreds and hundreds of blood relatives that he goes and visits with and celebrates weddings and holidays with. After this we had dinner, watched Jordanians dance to the DJ and have a general good time. We ate dinner, which was decent, and decided to escape the blaringly loud music and awkward looks from time to time. We had been traveling a long time by now, and were less concerned with impressions. Before going back to our tents, a few of us decided to wander into the desert to catch some star views away from the bright lights of the camp. Walking out into the desert can play serious tricks on you. Sometimes headlines would shift around from cars on far away roads, making the path ahead of us look craggy and bumpy when it was in fact smooth. We happened upon a road going one way, saw cars coming towards us in the distance, heard some interesting noises not too far away, then decided to head back. We played cards in our tent for a good few hours, made arrangements for getting back to Amman the next day, then turned in for bed. I just slept under my kufeya, because the single sheet was sketch.
Monday
We woke up around nine to walk into the deserted camp. Breakfast was delicious. Cheesy spread, pita, tomatoes, this amazing spice mixed olive oil and plenty of tea. We talked with Audh for a while about Bedouin weddings: The women ride in a closed little cloth chamber on the camel for three days prior to the wedding. Hundreds of people from all over come to these weddings, and every day there is a feast lunch with 30 goats, several camels, and all other kinds of foods. He explained that now the Bedouin are having trouble maintaining their culture. I wondered whether that could be because every adult Bedouin I met has two cell phones. Or maybe I'm just not meeting the right Bedouins. We said goodbye and thank you for the hospitality and climbed into a car with a new driver rather than Nael. Nael wasn't around, busy driving other people all over Jordan.
We passed back through all the amazing desert scenery we'd seen on the way there. We drove up the King's Highway, which is a much more scenic and windy route from South to North Jordan ending in Amman. It was indeed windy and scenic. We stopped to get views of a number of Castles that had been built during the crusades like Shobek and Karak. We also got some extraordinary views of amazing valleys with rivers running through the base of them. Wadi Mudi in particular, even just out the window of the van was breathtaking. Unfortunately, as we went further along, time kept slipping away and our driver became more and more frantic about getting us to the airport on time. Frantic is not a good place to be when driving along a highway like this. Legitimately, in my head, I was slightly afraid for my life.
We reached the main highway as we neared Amman, picked up what seemed like a completely random girl from the side of the highway ("salaam alekum") and sped to Queen Alia airport, past the signs directing us towards Yemen, Saudi and Iraq. As we walked towards the gate after thanking our driver, the sun was setting, framed by the pillars of the departures terminal. It was a striking image to depart this amazing trip before entering the land of security guards and luggage checking on our way back to Cairo.
