Saturday, November 21, 2009

Jordan














Eeesh...my, how time flies. Ten weeks ago I thought I was almost wrapped up on my thesis and ready to contribute regularly to a blog.

Today I am still crawling towards the finish line with two-month old unposted Jordan photos to boot. BUT since I promised myself that I would post the pics from the last vacation before we started the next, AND since we're headed to Egypt next Friday, it's time to get another blog off my chest. At least I post more than Jessie...

Before I moved here, I had never considered Jordan as a top vacation destination. Mostly I associated it with the Palestinian Territories, which is somewhere between South Waziristan and Darfur on my list of summer holiday retreats. Last year the other grad students went to Jordan and Israel for the first Eid holiday at the end of Ramadan, but I hadn't received permission to leave the country yet. (By the way, the 83% of the Qatar population that is not Qatari is dependent on the permission of our employers to leave the country. At any time, for any reason - even at the end of your contract. Luckily, Qatar Foundation gives us multiple exit visas with no questions asked; not every expat is so lucky.) But once that group returned, I heard nothing but glowing reports from them and from any other person who had ever visited.

Jess and I booked our tickets and hotels in typical last-minute fashion, and we flew into Jordan for 8 days. The trip started off inauspiciously when we got ripped off by a "private car" at the airport who charged us double the per-person rate we had agreed to; that was mostly my fault for not sticking to my guns. I still have this ridiculous desire to be an "ambassador for America" even though it seems that most people just see us as ATM machines. After this guy, though, Jordan was blissfully empty of the kind of begging and baksheesh demands that seem to characterize most of the non-Western tourist destinations. We were told that Jordanians were incredibly friendly, and they truly were. According to Fawwaz, the taxi driver we used for most of the trip, most of the people in Jordan consider themselves Palestinian (as he was himself), yet we didn't encounter any of the anti-American hostility that I was sure we'd face as soon as anyone found out where we were from. Even the Petra Bedouins, who make a pretty good living bilking tourists out of money for "genuine" knickknacks and souvenirs, seemed to be pretty genuinely friendly.

It only takes about six hours to drive from Umm Qais in the north to Aqaba in the south, so I thought we would have plenty of time to see everything. Jordan, however, has as much history and culture as someplace like Greece packed into a fraction of the area. The Roman ruins in Jerash were more expansive than what we saw in Greece with the exception of the Acropolis, plus they let you climb all over them! Wait, maybe that's not good. It seems like every rock in that country is saturated with history, from Old Testament sites and tribal enemies like the Nabateans of Petra to Christian holy sites like Mt. Nebo and the Jordan River, and from Roman ruins to hunting palaces of the Caliphs. Then you have Amman, the capital city that is one of the most expensive, modern, and Westernized cities in the region. Although the population is over 90% Sunni Muslim, Jordan seems to be a model of religious tolerance; it's one of the only two countries that has signed an official peace agreement with Israel, and it's one of the only countries in the region where you can have an Israel stamp on your passport and not be hassled by customs.

We packed so much stuff in that I won't even try to do a synopsis of everything, but we did just about everything touristy there is to do other than Aqaba. We met Fawwaz through our hotel on our first full day, and we ended up hiring him for the entire trip. He was a fantastic tour guide, and he seemed to know everybody in the country; he had a buddy at every site we went to. He took us to an awesome canyon adventure in Wadi Mujib near the Dead Sea; those guys weren't kidding when you sign the release form. In US legalese, "deep water" and "swimming ability" usually correspond to an ankle deep pool; we trekked up a river canyon fighting rushing water and climbing rocky waterfalls. There was little to no official supervision, and we wouldn't have made it up some of those waterfalls and rocks without help from fellow trekkers. It was an awesome experience, and it led to plenty of painful moments later in the salty Dead Sea from our scrapes and abrasions. He made for a great guide down the Desert Highway to Petra, and then he set us up on a trip to the desert in Wadi Rum. Instead of the sandy dunes stretching as far as the eye can see, Wadi Rum is made up of rocky mountains and red sand that explodes in color and shadow when the sun sets. Forgetting my spare battery really came back to bite me here as my battery ran out the first day in Petra; Jess has some pictures on her camera, but your guess is as good as mine as to if we'll ever see those!

Jordan was definitely an amazing experience, and I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a Middle Eastern tourist spot. You are literally walking in the places discussed in the holy texts of the three major world religions. There was the wow factor of looking across 30 feet of the Jordan river at Palestine combined with the spiritual experience of seeing the baptism site of Jesus. There was the relatively short drive from the fertile northlands filled with bright green figs and deep purple grapes to the vast , rugged desert of the Wadi Rum. There was the wonder of stumbling across the brilliant facade of the Treasury building in the lost city of Petra after walking through the seemingly endless Siq canyon. Even the resort-minded can hole up at a resort on the Dead Sea and pay to get mud slathered from head to toe. It's definitely not cheap, though, especially if you eschew public transportation and a friendly yet expensive taxi driver. It was definitely money well spent, and we highly recommend it. Just head to the Dead Sea before you get all scraped up.

Rest of my pics