Jordan was one of those countries I didn’t have too many expectations about to begin with, and thus was an unexpected delight, like unearthing a prize in the bottom of a cereal box that doesn’t have prizes. In fact, low to non-existant expectations could quite possibly be one of the key elements to finding true happiness.
Amman is an oxymoronic city with belly-dancing outfits dangling next to shops beside sidewalks peopled by women in burquas. The cityscape looks as though a child has cut out a village from sandpaper and posted it monochromatically across the hills. Everything, as far as the eye can see, is sand-coloured. At one point I saw some bright white buildings, but my driver Nidal informed me that all the buildings were in fact this colour originally, but metamorphosized into the same sand colour, having been windwhipped by the constantly churning gusts of wind.
I was quite shocked to discover the exchange rate at the airport was 1.5:1 with the Jordanian Dinar whipping the Canadian dollar’s butt. However, this boded well for me after my experiences in Nairobbery, as everyone in Jordan has their own money. So no one is lasciviously coveting mine! I was picked up at the airport by this comical man called Nidal. He was quite a character. At first, I asked him what my name was, and he shrugged and said, “Caroline?” I laughed and asked him for some identification to prove he actually worked at the Hotel Caravan. He didn’t have any, and when I called the Hotel to ask them what their driver’s name was and what he looked like, he found this entirely humourous. “Okay, okay, I get it,” he said, “You are strong woman. Very good, very good.” When he asked how old I was, he quickly adjusted his age to ‘40’ though I’m quite sure he is in his sixties. I ended up touring around with him the entire weekend as he was quite honest, and talkative and funny. He was married for twenty years to an American expat who is the dean of a Southern University, but is now divorced. He shrugged this off. “Hard to live with woman. This is why many people in Jordan marry the cousin. Then you know the family very well, and what you get.”
The Jordanian weekend is Friday, Saturday, so when I arrived it was a ghost town. It was blissfully easy to cross the street, and I spent time just weaving between wind gusts, cats, cobbledly-broken staircases, furniture stores and coffee shops with men in their Lawrence of Arabia headscarves smoking mottled glass argile (hookah, water pipe, sheesha, hubble bubble). Nidal took me to see Jerash, this vast columned ancient Roman city with singing columns and rocking columns that wobble with movement but don’t collapse (specially designed to ‘take a bullet’). I saw a Roman chariot race (simulated, granted) with the Roman warriors trembling from the cold, and went to Madaba, a cozy little town with Ottoman-style houses, Byzantine-era mosques and very intricately detailed hanging mosaics. The artisans use natural stone chips, and glue them into a pre-drawn template using tweezers and paste.
The men here are quite something. I was shopping in one of the curio shops in Madaba for a salsa purse, and one of the artisans struck up a conversation with me. He was quite amiable, and salsa dances himself (or so he said), so invited me to go salsa dancing with him that night at the Regency Hotel. I said I would see, as I was meeting my fellow travelmates from my Intrepid Tour that night, and wasn’t sure what the plan was. I also indicated that I would go if it was somewhere I could arrive to and fro conveniently by taxi. But I agreed to send him an SMS either way. However, as it happened, my cell phone from Kenya wasn’t roaming properly on my Zain credit, and I couldn’t find a SIM card. I got distracted meeting everyone from my travel group, and tour leader, and then we all went out for supper and to a funky little coffee shop where Graham, my fellow Canadian, and I shared a cherry argile, as an early birthday celebration. So, I ended up getting back to this guy, Maximus Zaid, quite late, as I had to borrow my tour leader, Husam’s cellphone. I had asked Nidal, my driver, what he knew about this guy and though he agreed the artisan was honest and respectful, he also shrugged and said, ‘But he is man. He know you only five minutes. What do you think he want to invite you out dancing for?’ Since that wasn’t the most reassuring recommendation, I also asked Husam what he thought, and he said, “Well…it’s a Sunday, which is the first day of the working week for Jordanians. And it’s a sandstorm and possible snowstorm, so no one in this kind of weather goes out. So I think it won’t be so many people going out. Maybe, if you like, I can go with you, so it’s better.”
I thought this was a brilliant plan, so I called Zaid Maximus. He, however, was not so diggy with the plan. He became quite flustery and blustery and burst out with, “What are you talking about? I invite you to go dancing. I want to talk to you! Maybe in Italian, maybe in French, maybe in Spanish [I’m not sure where this came from]. Who is this other man!?!” I explained to him that this ‘other man’ was my tour guide and that there was no reason the three of us couldn’t go out and have a coffee, and that he needed to understand my perspective. I said, “Look Zaid Maximus, I’m traveling alone in a country where I don’t speak the language, I don’t know the culture, and all the signs are in Arabic. So I would just feel safer if my Tour Leader went with us, since I don’t actually know you.” Which spurned a whole vitriolic diatribe on how I was insulting him, Nidal Alehrebat [my driver?!] if not in fact, all of Jordan!
I said, “Be that as it may, Zaid, this is how it’s going to happen. We go together, the three of us…or we don’t go at all. Now, which will it be?” He sulkily chose ‘not at all’ and then sputtered, in a 2010-blow-off-way, “We will not go out! Not this way! This is not normal! But you can SMS me all your details and we can become very good Facebook Friends!”
So, I ended up having a drink with Husam at the Regency, beautifully decorated in a nautical style, warding off the chill of an impending snowstorm. It was just as well, as we hit it off and had a great time. The next morning, I received several texts from Zaid Maximus, with enigmatic messages such as: Jonavar, I feel very shay to myself. I hope the Desert Highway is closed once more so we can have another chance! [It wasn’t. We didn’t.]
Another strange experience I had was in Petra, with one of my travelmates, Lindsay. Petra is this ancient Nebataean city hewn out of rose-coloured rock, along the Incense Route. It was discovered in 1812, and is a World Heritage Site and one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. You walk through this narrow, winding Siq with imposing cliff faces shadowing either side, and colourful caravans racing past, until you get to the Treasury, an impressively carved cliff face that looms, rose-coloured, up to the sky. Our group had climbed up the 800 steps to the Monastery and were admiring the view when Lindsay and I decided to take a donkey ride from the base of the Monastery to the Place of High Sacrifice (featured in one of the Indiana Jones movies…Raiders of the Lost Ark, I think). Quick flashback: I had made the acquaintance of this Bedouin guide, aptly named ‘Casanova Mohamed’ while walking up to the Monastery. He was comical, and full-of-character, ambling alongside me as I walked up the stone staircase, since I had lost Daniel and Lindsay for a bit. We stopped to have a tea, and I watched while he and an artisan named Rosy lined each others’ eyes in kohl, and had a smoke. I have to say, the men here wear kohl, and it looks stunning, with their long sooty eyelashes and dark eyes. I may have moved to the pro-mens’ makeup camp. Anyway, as he shadowboxed me up the mountain, calling out to tourists in Japanese, Korean and French, I had to clarify that he was simply accompanying me up the mountain, but not ‘portering’ and thus expecting a tip at the top. He was quite offended by this, but I said that if my friends agreed to the donkey ride, we would give him our business.
Daniel opted out of the donkey riding business (smart guy) but Lindsay and I agreed to pay 7 JD each to ride to the Place of High Sacrifice. The donkey ride was great at first; we met Casanova’s family, had tea with them, saw the caves where many Bedouins still live… but as we reached the Place of High Sacrifice, the sun was rapidly starting to set. I tried to diplomatically point out that we should be heading back, when Casanova flew into a ‘Don’t you think I know what I’m doing? I am the Guide! You want to be the Guide? Fine, show the donkey where to go then!’type of mood. He had also become recalcitrant, and surly because (and this I found out only after 30 minutes of prying) I had chided him by saying, “You’re bad” (as a joke) when he had the donkey cross a high place on the mountain, instead of having me hop off. He interpreted this as me saying he was a 'bad Bedouin' reinforcing the stereotype that they are no-gooders who drug tourists' tea before carting them off to mountain-cave hideaways. He became sulky and moody thereafter, and it sucked all my chi trying to get him back in a good mood so he didn't tantrum off and leave us stuck in the mountains. Lindsay’s guide, at least, was normal, but as we started heading back to the Visitors’ Centre by the “short cut” to arrive before dark, he admitted to Lindsay, “I don’t really know where we’re going. I don’t know this way. But we’ll just follow the donkey. The donkey knows.” [The donkeys knew shit.] In fact, the only thing the donkeys knew was that they are afraid of heights. Lindsay’s almost bucked her off, and mine kept jumping at the sight of his own shadow. Casanova explained that the donkey was simply jumpy at seeing his own shadow and I asked if that would not in fact be happening a lot more often now that is was nighttime.
The donkey wasn't listening to him at all, despite his snarling 'Heroin! Heroin!" and whipping the donkey repeatedly. I'm not sure if the donkey's name was 'Heroine' or 'Heroin' but I'm inclined to go with the latter given the donkey's irreverent mood swings and crazy break-aways.
Anyway, when all was said and done, we had the chance to see what many tourists never do (and aren't allowed to): Petra by night, on donkeyback. To their credit, our guides did not try to charge us more than the original rate at the end of our trails, where we saw a sign warning visitors that the only sanctioned guides are the ones commissioned directly from the Visitors' Centre and they will not be held responsible for the actions of any 'outside guides'. When we finally did reach the Visitors' Centre (four hours later), I was late for my Turkish massage and rushed off to find Sue, Vicky and Fiona. I gambled on the wrong Hamman (50/50) and ended up in a bath run exclusively by men, though they tried to reassure me by saying, "The masseuse is a medical doctor". I booted it out of there to the one down the street, where I found the ladies and spent a blissful hour in the steamroom, on the steamslab, being soaped and massaged by a woman singing in Arabic and combing my hair.
Speaking of hammams and massages, the hotel we stayed at was quaint, but freezing, and when I asked the desk clerk if we could get some heat, he gave me a puzzled look, and said, "You have roommate, yes?" I concurred with that, and he handed me a bottle of olive oil and said, "Just, you give each other massage to stay warm." I thought he was joking, but no, that was his serious strategy. He was getting tired of everyone complaining about the lack of heat. I told him I had only just met my roommate that day and didn't see that happening, and the next day he procured a black wool sweater for me!
These characters aside though, all Jordanians I met were politic, kind, helpful, and normal. And my travelmates were fantastic too: Lindsay, a funky lawyer from L.A. (who I'm staying with when I go to California) and my donkey-partner-in-crime, Ian, an accountant from Jersey with the Travel Bug. He's the first one to volunteer for everything, be it jumping in the Red Sea, or climbing the Steps of Penitence in Mount Sinai. Graham, is my fellow Canadian, an army guy with a crackerjack sense of humour. He earned the nickname of 'Grahamses the First' once we got into Egypt and starting getting to know all the Ramses. Daniel, a cool dude from Switzerland with an incredible smile; we became each others' photographers during the trip. Sue and Joe, a fun-loving couple from Australia who brought along these fuzzy koalas to give to people they met during the course of their travels. My roomie, Sandia, an Aussie accountant who's been travelling and working for the last year and has the travel bug as well. Vicky and Fionia, two funky, artsy Aussies who always had cool surprises for us like Santa Claus keychains at Christmas or a Koala Bear pen for a birthday, and Sheri and Ethan, a couple who are Aerospace Engineers and do research for months at a time in the South Pole (showers are 2 minutes long, and only once a week!)
In addition to the magnificant Petra,and Madaba, we saw the Promised Land (though, to be honest it looked pretty stark and desolate. I think if I'd been hiking around for 40 years, I'd expect something a little more like the Costa Rican rainforest, but as Husam pointed out, "Of course, they didn't reach the Promised Land in wintertime) and spent hours Four Wheel Driving and playing in Wadi Rum, following the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia! We hiked up the lunar rock formations, did photo shoots in and among the rocks, dune-trekked to the tops of the drifts and then raced each other down, taking huge goblin steps to free our feet from the sand clenches. We traversed steep rock bridges and ambled back down like crabs, and in the evening, we slept in a Desert Camp with the Bedouins. Being that it was quite cold, I got to break out my silver safety suit (a la Canadian Tire). The Bedouins thought I was from outer space and my travelmates got a kick out of me crackling by them everytime I moved. The Bedouins made this amazing supper in an earthern below-ground oven: chicken, potatoes and warm bread with hot tea. They led us in campfire songs and chants, and we had two bonfires going, one inside the caravan tent, one outside, where they read Arabic newspapers, held lively discussions, sang and sipped tea with us. We slept on carpets in sleeping bags under the stars, and you couldn't even begin to put a dent in your counting if you spent the whole night doing it. The sky was so completely speckled and freckled with millions of stars.
Jordan was, and continues to be an enchanting place for me, a truly remarkable transition place between Sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt. As I write this, I'm in India, so very behind on the Travel Blog/Logs. But more coming soon...on Egypt....
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