Jordan

Without a doubt, the most outstanding and memorable parts of the 8 days we spent in Jordan were the friendliness and generosity of the people and the delicious Jordanian food.  That is not to detract from the spectacular sights and scenery around Jordan – which certainly lived up to their reputation.  It was just that we were not expecting to find ourselves in a country where locals would fall over themselves to welcome us to their country (often crossing major roads and chasing us for many blocks to simply say “Welcome in Jordan!” [sic]), invite us into their homes to share in their home cooking and go so far out of their way to make sure we reached our destinations without issue.  We’re certain that the beautifully trusting environment of Jordan was particularly heightened for us given that we arrived while still carrying a level of security consciousness suited to Southern Africa, and it did take us a couple of days to adjust to the safety of the street and the optional nature of car and hotel door locks!

Meeting Sami, the owner of a Jordanian roadside cafe - complete with Sami's headscarf gift to Alick

In planning our Jordan itinerary, it felt like the 8 days we allowed ourselves was more than sufficient to take in some of the highlights of a country that is little more than 300kms in length.  We could not have been more wrong – our time in Jordan allowed us to take in a tiny sample of what Jordan has to offer and we are already hoping to be back at some point in our lives to experience (some of) the rest. 

On arrival in Jordan, we picked up our hire car and headed south to Madaba – getting a quick crash course in the local roads rules, or lack thereof, in the process (thankfully without any actual ‘crashes’!!).  The most important things to remember about Jordanian roads is that lane markers, indicators and a large proportion of traffic lights are purely for decorative purposes; looking at the road is always a secondary priority to texting and reading, and why bother finding a car park when you can just stop and leave your car in the middle of the road (often with the drivers-side door left wide open)?!

Madaba is a sweet little town, famous for its mosaics and churches – which we had a good potter around.  The five hotels in town are each managed by a cousin of a local family and Odeh, the manager at the Black Iris Hotel where we stayed, was a wealth of information about the area – including pointing out all the best local eateries (particularly the local falafel places – yum!) and making sure there was a fresh pot of cinnamon tea brewed for us on our arrival back to the hotel.  On our first night in Madaba we wandered into a local sweet store, and we obviously looked so confused that one of the other customers promptly told us that we needed to wait five minutes to get what he ‘knew’ we wanted to order.  He wasn’t wrong!  Before long, the shop owner brought out a steaming tray of a dish called ‘kanafe’ – a layer of goats cheese, topped with a sweet cake and covered in sugar syrup.  It was just incredible and has resulted in us trying to seek out kanafe whenever opportunity presented itself throughout the rest of our travels in Jordan.   

We used Madaba as a base to float in the Dead Sea (such a strange feeling – you simply can’t swim!) and see some of the local sites – which included many biblical sites.  Although we’re not guided by any particular religious affiliation, it was fascinating to see these historical sites.  Our experience visiting Jesus’ baptismal site was however rather bizarre, as we arrived in the car-park to a full tourist bus with a conductor yelling at us to get on quickly so they could depart.  We jumped on the bus and didn’t realise until after departure that the guided tour was optional and we could have self-driven!  The guide told us we need to listen to the individual audio guides we were given when buying our tickets, with the audio divided into different ‘chapters’ for each site.  The problem was, the audio tracks were significantly longer than the distance taken to drive between each site and we fell terribly behind with the guide shouting out that we were listening to the wrong track!  The comedy of the tour continued as the bus was primarily filled with older tourists and it took a bit longer than usual to get off the bus at each stop, so by the time we got to each site, the guide was telling us we were too late and had to leave!  Notwithstanding all of this, it was a fascinating experience to arrive at the River Jordan, with Israel no less than 10 meters away from us on the other side, to see those who had made the pilgrimage to bathe and/or be baptised in the ‘Holy Water’ (those who arrived with our group to do so were under strict instruction from our guide that they could take four steps in, duck their head under three times and then get out straight away).  Bathing in the water was obviously a deeply spiritual and emotional experience for some visitors, causing some to seem to speak in tongues or collapse – all of this under the watchful eye of the armed army servicemen stationed at the site to oversee the Jordan/Israel border.  It was quite a profound experience overall.

Floating in the Dead Sea - such a strange sensation to not be able to swim! 

From Madaba, we made our way south to Wadi Musa (the village next to Petra)–with the driving conditions and occasional gaps in street signage making the journey somewhat longer than anticipated.  We arrived after the gates to Petra had closed for the day, though, in noting our disappointment, the manager at our hotel suggested that we instead spent the remnants of the afternoon wandering around ‘Little Petra’ instead – a smaller collection of monuments located about 15 minutes from town – which proved to be a fantastic introduction to Petra proper.  At the far end of Little Petra was a steep set of stairs, leading to a gorgeous viewpoint where a local Bedouin man named Awad was packing up his stall for the day.  After chatting to Awad for a while, he invited us back to his house in the village for dinner with him and his wife, Sina – a Danish woman who converted to Islam prior to marrying Awad.  Awad explained that, like most of the Bedouin in the area, he had always lived in the caves around Petra, though three weeks prior to our arrival, he and Sina had made the move into one of the properties offered by the Jordanian government to the local Bedouin as an incentive to move out of the tourist areas.  From what we could gather, Awad and Sina’s move to the village was also driven by Sina’s desire to live with electricity and plumbing following many months of adjusting to life in the cave!  It was fantastic to spend the evening with Sina and Awad, sharing their delicious food and hearing about their lives.  Their generosity with two complete strangers was so touching.   

After just an initial peek at Petra proper we quickly realised we wanted to spend more time than we had planned in Wadi Musa and made some changes to our itinerary to allow us an extra day and night.  Over the course of the next two days we were able to experience many of Petra’s nooks and crannies – and were fortunate to have many moments of getting the major sites of Petra all to ourselves!  In all the pictures we’d seen of Petra, we’d fallen into the trap of thinking that the iconic ‘Treasury’ building (or is it a carving?!?) was the major attraction, and the sheer size of Petra in its entirety blew us away.  It’s estimated there are over 800 ‘sights’ to see in Petra (with more still being discovered) and it would take over a week to see them all.  One of the other things we hadn’t realised were the distances to be covered in Petra – which saw us walking at least 20 – 25 kms each day (more than we did in any one day on Kilimanjaro!), often up very steep, winding tracks – and that was to see just a fraction of the sights. 

The distances within Petra and basic level of fitness required of tourists seemed to be a fairly common underestimation, resulting in a massive donkey ride industry within Petra’s walls.  The impossibly steep and treacherous routes these donkeys were required to walk up many times each day (often bearing the load of some very large tourists) was absolutely heartbreaking and it was common to see donkeys with gaping wounds rubbed raw by the girth and the chains often used as a halter.  Alick in particular had to turn away when we were passed by donkeys and horses being ridden in a particularly horrible way, or being kicked by their handlers from the ground, or when we passed people screaming with delight when a donkey stumbled on a steep step shouting ‘this is just like an amusement ride!”  Pretty disgusting we thought.  At the entry gates to Petra, there were signs about a welfare organisation called ‘The Brooke’ who advocate for the welfare of the working donkeys and horses in Petra, providing information on how to make reports about witnesses of maltreatment.  We are looking into this though given the volume of donkeys within Petra it’s very difficult to know exactly what to feed back.  In the interim though, we only hope that the demand for these donkey rides in Petra is soon reduced – either through increased awareness about the level of fitness required to get around or more humane forms of assisted viewing.

On a more positive note however, it was quite humbling to walk through the wadis and siqs of Petra, reflecting on the skill, not to mention the idealism and narcissism, of the Nabatean royals.  Most of the monuments at Petra, while given monikers like ‘The Treasury’ and ‘The Monastery’ to tourists, are in fact tombs for the kings and queens of the ancient Nabatean people.  Many of these tombs were being built before the Romans had even conceived of the Colosseum – indeed later in its life Petra was taken over by the Romans, and many of the monuments were modified to reflect their aesthetic preferences.  The diversity and sheer scale of the site was astounding, and some of the most impressive components of the site were the water storage and channelling, which enabled the city’s citizens to have drinking water, as well as bathing pools and fountains!  The best-preserved monuments were those carved into the rockface of the mountains; we marvelled time and again at the workmanship involved, not to mention the manual labour that must have been required.  Compared to some of the ‘monuments’ that we build today, the relics of antiquity really shine!

The famous first sight of Petra's Treasury. (Indiana Jones memories anyone?!?)

Tess getting friendly with one of the many cats that live at Petra.

Beautiful sandstone cave....

The magnificent 'Monastery'.

The Monastery

A tomb near the High Place of Sacrifice.

During our first day at Petra, while we stopped for lunch in the theatre of the Great Temple, we also received the exciting news from home that we have a new nephew!  Alick’s brother and sister-in-law Kif and Anna had been expecting a baby in late November, and Theo was born on November 26^th.  We were absolutely thrilled to hear that both Anna and Theo were happy and healthy, and Kif and Anna’s 2 ½ year old daughter Poppy was excited about meeting her new brother!  We can’t wait to meet the wee man, and must admit that the news did make us feel a little far away! Given that we were on the other side of the world, we thought it only appropriate to memorialise the moment with a photo…..

Welcome to the world Theo Weber!!!

Following our stay in Wadi Musa, we made our way south to the Wadi Rum desert.  There, we met our guide Rhadi, and spent the next few days hiking and ‘scrambling’ to springs, across natural rock arch formations (which certainly tested Alick’s fear of heights!) and up Um Adaami – Jordan’s highest peak with spectacular views over the Saudi Arabian border.  The Wadi Rum desert was just beautiful – at times reminding us of a slightly more precipitous version of the central Australian desert.  On the first evening we were joined by four other tourists at a desert camp – great company and a perfect way to get lot of tips for our onward journey. 

Middle Arch, Wadi Rum

Burdah Arch, Wadi Rum

On the second evening, following the departure of the other tourists, Rhadi kindly invited us to have dinner and stay the night in his mother’s tent, near the Wadi Rum village – it was such a privilege to be asked, that we jumped at the opportunity.  Being a Thursday evening (and therefore the start of the weekend) Rhadi’s broader family had all come in from the village to share in a meal, and were also joined by cousins from neighbouring tents, so it was a real family experience with more people around than we could count! Rhadi’s mother’s tent was divided into two sections by a cloth wall – with one side for the women and children and the other for the men.  The men were very welcoming to Tess, as a Westerner, being in the male area, although Tess was also fortunate enough to be able to sit with in the women’s tent while the women prepared the evening meal on the fire – a traditional Saudi/Jordanian chicken and rice dish called ‘Kabsa’. For Tess, this was one of the most unique Jordan experiences.  The women in Rhadi’s family spoke minimal English, and the five or so Arabic words Tess knows only stretched so far, however language didn’t really matter while watching the preparation of the dish.  It was incredible to watch the constant instructions given to the younger girls in the tent, so they would remember how to cook the dish in future, and the involvement of everyone in the process (most notably, in holding iPhones over the pot so the dish could be seen given the lack of electricity in the desert!).  Once the meal was prepared, Tess was sent outside to eat with the men - we were both so grateful the communal dish was placed in the dark, on the dirt outside the tent, as it meant the massive chunks we dropped while getting used to mushing rice into a ball and tearing off chunks of chicken with our right hand weren’t quite as noticeable!!!! Dinner was followed by much sweet tea and conversation with Rhadi’s brothers, before everyone left and we slept in the men’s side of the tent next to the fire.  Beautiful!  In the morning, we experienced our first camel ride to get back to the Wadi Rum village and made our way up north to Jerash. In stark contrast to the use of donkeys in Petra, we were really touched by the sensitive and caring relationships between owners and their camels in Wadi Rum - possibly aided by the fact that one camel costs more than a small car in Jordan!.

Heading back to Wadi Rum Village

The drive to Jerash was much easier than our previous trip along the length of the country, and notwithstanding some ‘missing’ directional signage through an extended road-works zone around Amman, we arrived in Jerash with no incident.  Having checked into our hotel we headed out to explore the Roman ruins for which the city is famous.  In 15 minutes we found ourselves walking down colonnaded streets, with ruts in the pavestones from the many Roman chariots which were driven along the streets over 1500 years ago.  The ingenuity of the Romans was incredible – complete with ‘singing’ colonnades to warn of earthquakes, underground cold food storage chambers, and ornate fountains.  The site is being progressively restored, and there was a wonderful juxtaposition between the modernity of the cranes, and the antiquity of the building blocks that they were moving. 

After returning to our hotel we headed out to explore the town centre of Jerash, with a view to getting a small bite to eat and heading back for an early night…. Little did we know that this would be out of the question!!  We bought a delicious shwarma from a street-stall (and had a bizarre conversation about gloves with a guy on the street – long story, you’ll have to ask us), we walked past a small juice-bar with three or four guys sitting around smoking sheesha.  They sung out to us, and Alick popped his head in to say hi and check if it was OK for Tess to come in (we had read that in some parts of the middle east it is not appropriate for women to go into places where men are smoking).  They assured us that we were most welcome, and we told them that we’d be back in five minutes (we had a craving for some kanafe from a sweet store).  On our return, they greeted us with much excitement, and ensured that we had tea, water and a narguileh pipe all to ourselves (what sheesha is called in Jordan).  The next three hours were an absolutely quintessential Jordan experience…  The group of three young men grew over the evening to five (six at times!), and we had great conversations (albeit in often-stilted English and with much gestured communication) about all sorts of topics.  One of the young men was going to Syria the next day to get married, so we realised that we had inadvertently crashed a bucks-party of sorts – but it seemed that we were something of a novelty, so we didn’t feel too guilty!  On hearing that we had only had a shwarma for dinner, one of the young men dashed out to his car and brought in a dish piled high with chicken and rice.  He re-heated the chicken and proudly presented us with the plate of mensaf, which is a traditional meat and rice dish eaten in Jordan on Fridays.  Despite being quite full from the shwarma and the sweets, we managed to make a good dent in the mensaf, which was delicious – especially when washed down with an apple-molasses flavoured narguileh pipe! In the end we didn’t leave the little bar until around 11pm, when one of the boys drove us back to our hotel.  It was an amazing experience to spend a few hours with a group of young people in Jordan, and to hear their views on the political situation in the region, to learn about their working lives and dreams, and to share much laughter and stories. 

Crashing a sort of buck's party in Jerash

Our time in the bar with the group of young men was a perfect way to draw our time in Jordan to a close…  It epitomised the experience we had had across the country of a pround, open and welcoming people, with strong values and deeply seated loyalties, but a gentle approach to the complexities of life in one of the most turbulent regions in the world.  We left Jordan much feeling enriched by the history, the fresh air and exercise, but most of all the amazing people that we have been lucky enough to meet and share our time with.