Nick of Arabia

Well, I’m no T.E. Lawrence, but I do feel that I got a lot out of Jordan in the few days I was there. I also feel like Jordan got a lot out of me, too. Namely, a whole lot of cash. Coming from Egypt, this place was like the inner-city Sydney of the Middle East. Damn tied currency.

The ferry getting there was painful. In a final swan-song, Egypt threw all the lack of organisation it had left at me. A tentative 3 hour trip to Aqaba in Jordan took 12.5 hours. But I did get a lovely ferry trip for 5 hours. But Jordan. This is a beautiful country, especially out of the cities. The three highlights were, of course, Petra, Wadi Rum and the Dead Sea.

First serious stop was Petra, the ancient city that wasn’t build but carved into the mountains surrounding a valley. Apparently this is one of the places my father is a bit jealous I was getting to go to, and with good reason. It’s awe inspiring: another one of those places where you think ‘I have no idea why they bothered to do this, but damn I’m glad they did’. To enter the city, you have to walk 1 km down a narrow natural gorge that the Romans had paved when the city was founded. Doing this early in the morning is amazing, when there are no other people around to spoil the quiet. It’s a bit of a mind trip. Then, emerging from the gorge you are brought face-to-face with The Treasury, the most famous of the buildings at Petra (photo). The historians think it was built as a tomb and then converted into a treasury a bit later. It gives you an idea of the type and scale of all the buildings in the valley. Some time during the first massive climb to a sacrificial alter on the top of a mountain my camera ran out of batteries, so I was unable to record the view from the top, nor of The Monastery, the second most famous place. Both required a painful, painful walk to the top. Which only made the 1 km walk back out of the valley all the more fun (sarcasm).

Wadi Rum was the other highlight of Jordan. Imagine central Australia without the shrubbery, but with huge cliffs stabbing into the sky. The best part of this excursion wasn’t seeing Lawrence of Arabia’s house, the rock bridges or the springs, but witnessing the expanse of the desert laid out before you from the top of a craggy cliff face. It’s the type of view you can imagine an epic battle unfolding in front of. Very biblical. Breathtakingly huge. After the few hours of jeep safari exploring the desert, we settled into a ‘Bedouin’ camp for the night, complete with goat-hair tents and a fire-cooked meal. We watched the sun set behind the orange mountains and lay staring at the stars to the sound of singing and an Arabic guitar (you can actually see the stars when you’re in the desert. All of them).

Now, for those of you who have been living in a box, the Dead Sea is so called because it’s saturated with salt, and so nothing can live in it. This is because sea water feeds into it, but doesn’t go anywhere. Thus when the water evaporates, it leaves behind the salt. The result is intriguing. Usually when I hold my breath in water, my forehead usually bobs at water level. In the Dead Sea, I was amused to find that the water stopped at chest height. Additionally, my legs no longer wanted to stay under me, so I spent around half an hour trying to stay upright. But it was good fun, even if I tasted salt for a while afterwards.

The day after the Dead Sea excursion I made a break for Syria. Jordan is great, but comparatively quite expensive, and along with the sights mentioned above I had explored most of the other things Jordan had to offer. So now I am in Syria a few days early, leaving me more time to explore this bigger, cheaper country. But Jordan was fantastic, especially the people. No hassles from street vendors or anything. What a change.