First off, let me get the camel out of the way. We were on top of the Mount of Olives, the scene of Jesus’ ascent to heaven. It was cold up there in the wind but the view over the old city of Jerusalem is magnificent. Sarah’s eyes were caught by the camel who, we had learned the previous day, is named Peter. Peter is notoriously cranky but available for rides. Sarah has a fascination with camels, their long eyelashes and floppy lips. In Aqaba she was kissed by a camel on the street. It was hairy but pleasant. As she was photographing Peter on top of Mount of Olives he peered over the shoulder of a clergyman reading the bible on a bench and started reading it himself. This came close to being the photographic highlight of Jerusalem if the raptures she went into over it are anything to go by. We kind of forgot to go into the Church of the Ascension after that, but what’s one more church in a city with a chronic oversupply?
It was a welcome break from the relentless wave of incredibly significant religious sites that we had been looking at. Jerusalem is remarkable for being the epicentre of three different religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The tensions are just beneath the surface, such as the riot shields that line the wooden walkway into the Temple Mount. Not only is space within the old city contested but individual churches are divided into sections depending which branch of the church owns it. It is religion at both its most sublime and its most ridiculous.
Jerusalem is one place I don’t mind doing a tour. It’s so layered with meaning that just wandering around on your own will not do the place justice. We had a great guide, a Jewish guy of Canadian/American descent who grew up in Israel but had an American edge to his accent. He was a little dynamo of information doing post-graduate studies in religion. He showed us the newly excavated section of walls on the outside of the old city showing seven or eight layers where different conquerors have rebuilt the city. Just next to where we were walking was The Valley of Death, which Sarah and I both mistakenly assumed was a fictitious place. Next stop, and this is bizarre for a tangible-history deprived Australian non-believer, was the room where Jesus and his homies gathered for the last supper. Now this is the point I really started to like our guide because rather than blindly leading us around all of these sites and asking for our blind faith he actively questioned the location and authenticity of much of what he showed us. It is possible that the site of the last supper is located here but it’s not the original room. The room located here now was built by the Crusaders to commemorate what they thought the site was but there’s no way to know for certain. In one of the many layers to be found in this city the Crusader-era church had been converted into a mosque when the Islamic empire swept through.
Although we were outside the current walls of the old city we learned that the boundaries of the city fluxed over time. Settlement at Jerusalem first started at a site in a valley which is now covered by a modern settlement. It was only discovered that this could be the original site of the city when a construction crew unearthed remains which British archaeologists claimed were the oldest artefacts found in Jerusalem, hence the site of the original city. The city began here near a spring that was vital for supporting the life. As water technology improved the city moved to the top of the nearby hill in a more secure position. Modern Jerusalem has spread out remarkably from the old city which is tiny in comparison. Since Israel was founded as a state Jerusalem has more than quadrupled in size with all the attendant problems with traffic.
Israel’s modern foundations are evident in the bullet holes marking the Zion gate in the Jewish quarter of the city where in 1948 Israeli troops stormed the old city. Entering through the gate we came across a modern Jewish bar mitzvah run by a new group who party through the old city to the wailing wall with traditional Jewish horns and lots of shouting. It like we had stumbled across Rio’s carnivale. We elbowed our way through to the line for Temple Mount which is only open to the public at certain times of the day when it is not being used for Islamic prayer. It turns out we were in Jerusalem at a good time of year. Despite appearances this was a quiet time of year just before the Christmas rush so we were jostling much less than usual. The wooden walkway up to temple mount is a story in itself. The old ramp fell down in 2005 and work commenced to replace it with a more solid structure. This being Jerusalem, when the workmen started digging the foundations they found remains of what turned out to be a Roman bath house. The religious politics got into full swing at that point. Neither the Jewish community or the Muslim community wanted a sinful Roman bath house to exist next to their holy of holies, the wailing wall and the al-Aqsa mosque. Instead of confronting the issue both sides decided to erect a temporary wooden walkway which survives to this day rather than expose archaeological evidence of Roman history. This is despite the fact that the Romans built temple mount in the first place. It’s an amazing engineering feat. They extended a hillside by building massive foundations and a platform about 37 acres in size to house one of their temples. This structure has been claimed by Muslims and now hosts the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, a shrine holding the rock that started following Muhammed to heaven during his ascension before he stamped his foot on it to send it back to earth. His footprint is still in the rock but we non-Muslims are not allowed in to see it. In fact, if they suspect that you are not Muslim and trying to get in they will give you a little pop quiz to test your Islamic knowledge. Famously Cat Stevens was not allowed in here initially because they didn’t believe that he was Muslim and obviously hadn’t heard of his conversion.
Temple Mount is crawling with armed guards (including Jewsish guards protecting Islamic sites from Jewish fundamentalists) and if something was going to kick off in Jerusalem you get the feeling that it would start here. The mosque is spectacularly ornate but outshone by the Dome of the Rock, the aforementioned shrine that is covered with a golden roof donated quite recently by the previous King of Jordan. The Dome of the Rock is the more secure than the mosque as it sits on the original hill. The mosque is on the Roman structure and as a result is more susceptible to earthquakes. It has been rebuilt several times.
The Temple Mount is also where the religious pissing contest between Christianity and Islam is centred. As a later religion Islam stamped its mark on Jerusalem when they captured it. The Dome of the Rock matches nearly exactly the dome of Christianity’s holiest church, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Dome of the Rock is also called the place where Muhammed ascended to heaven despite a site for this event not being explicitly mentioned in the Koran. Coincidentally the site where Jesus is said to have ascended to heaven is on the next hill along. So the holiness of Jerusalem becomes its attraction and point of contention between all the religions here. To be a serious religion you need to stake you claim in the holiest city.
We descended into the Arab quarter, still home to 22,000 residents crammed into the tiny old city, for lunch at a place with the best hummus in town. It didn’t fail to disappoint with the best falafel we had on the trip as well. Just outside the door of the restaurant is the Via Dolorosa and one of the stations of the cross, the best guess for the location of Jesus’s walk with the cross to the location of his crucifixion. The way is now lined with hundreds of shops, ironic given Jesus’s stance against the merchants. I’m not sure Jesus would like the modern Jerusalem much more than the ancient city he railed against. At the top of the road is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Here religious weirdness reaches its peak. The church is Christian but inside is divide up amongst the Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian branches of the church. So on one side you have Greek Orthodox worshippers gathering under the incredibly ornate mosaic ceiling for their turn to touch the original rock of the hill on which Christ was crucified. The rock has been placed behind a protective clear plastic barrier to stop people chipping bits of it off. Worshippers have to kneel down under an altar to get their chance to touch the rock. On the other side is a Catholic section where they conduct their own form of worship. Near the entrance of the church is the Stone of Anointing where Jesus is said to have been cleaned after crucifixion. People of the Greek Orthodox persuasion like to rub with cloth as anything that touches it automatically becomes holy. In another large section of the church is the sepulchre of Christ, which is really just something built in commemoration of Jesus’s final resting place. People head inside to touch something else in there and to light their candle from the eternal flame which every year God lights once again in a perpetual miracle. Each year crowds gather in the church to see the miracle and light their candles, although in reality only one priest actually gets to see God light the flame which is instantly suspicious.
One talking point of the Church are the new toilets. The toilets had been planned to go in for the millennium celebrations in 2000 but were delayed by a decade because none of the parties involved, the Catholics, Greek Orthodox or Armenians, could agree who should give up space in the church to put the toilets in. There was also the sticking point of the ‘status quo’ an agreement whereby no-one can make any alterations to the church. This was done to put an end to the constant bickering and sabotage each branch of the church was engaged in to gain more of a foothold in the church which often descended to violence. Agreement was finally reached by allocating different stalls in the toilet to different branches of the church. Now they have separate religiously specific cleaning staff allocated to the Catholics, Greek Orthodox or Armenian branches of the church to clean the different stalls. The status quo agreement makes it hard to do any maintenance on the place. There is even a wooden ladder perched on a ledge outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which has not been moved since 1853 when the status quo agreement came into force.
This all highlights the sorry state organised religion is in. Religious philosophies centred around selflessness and kindness to your fellow human beings are entirely lost in the dazzling edifices and tourist industry that have surrounded the churches’ holy sites. All this has been happening for centuries but, no offence believers, I personally find the entire construction one of human-kinds more bizarre manifestations of spirituality. The holiest place on earth is marked by in-fighting and politics, not selflessness and kindness to your fellow humans.
We were nearing the end of our tour and feeling the effects of rushing around for three weeks. Sarah had signed us up for a Shabbat dinner at the hostel and mistakenly assumed that her parents would love to join us at the hostel in cooking and cleaning up. The prospect didn’t appeal to me so much either despite the good intentions behind it. After working in a commercial kitchen for a number of years the romance of food preparation for a large crowd is not really there. I was also stuffed full from a large lunch (which we paid top dollar for) and really just wanted to lie down and write some blog posts. So Sarah went into the fray alone and was praised as being one of those special guests that come along every so often (ie. Do most of the work for the other slackers). Sarah was on the point of being pissed off when after a couple of hours of preparation it looked like no-one had saved her a seat. In the end she had a good conversation with a Spanish guy thinking about converting to Judaism, an athiest Jew and his Catholic Mexican girlfriend. It’s a broad diaspora.
Although only 40 kilometres away from Jerusalem, Bethlehem is in another world. Behind the Israeli built wall it is in Palestinian Territories. Crossing over it feels like you’re back in Jordan. Rubbish is strewn in empty lots and the difference in wealth between here and Israel is palpable. Israel has divided the West Bank, of which this is part, into several separate territories that Palestinians have to go through numerous check points to visit. It feels like a divide and conquer tactic that along with the massive wall being built will surely just further drive a wedge between these communities. It’s such an odd thing to do as well because Jerusalem is so mixed already that this artificial divide feels even more out of place.
We took a half day tour to Bethlehem partly to see the Palestinian Territories, although this is the least troubled area, and partly just on the draw of Bethlehem, especially with it being so close to Christmas. We saw the cave where lived the shepherds who follow the star to the stable Jesus was born. It’s hard to vouch for accuracy but it was a perfectly comfortable looking cave with skylight and sleeping area.
The Church of the Nativity is where Jesus is supposed to have been born but this is really a guess. Regardless, people line up here as well to touch the original rock from the cave Jesus was born in. There is a fake manger which gets a fair bit of touching attention as well. The Church has been the beneficiary of a wooden roof donated by the British King Edward IV and byzantine era mosaics on the floor which are revealed through trap doors in the floor that was laid over the top. A couple of Popes have held Christmas mass in the courtyard outside and in honour of their visit a new floor was laid in one of the newer chapels (although the old floor, traces of which remain, looks better).
On, then, to the Church of the Milk Grotto which is a site for all the lactating mothers out there. It’s a nice, light-filled underground church with milky white chalky walls. Tasting the wall is supposed to boost your fertility. Sarah stuck a finger in as directed as sucked down the chalky residue so we’ll see how that goes (hopefully being a believer isn’t some kind of pre-requisite.
Heading back into Israel our tour bus was mounted by armed Israeli soldiers. Our Arab driver claims that they slighted him but ignoring him and telling him to mind his own business when he told them that we were Americans. The exchange was a microcosm of the problems the area faces with power unevenly distributed and prejudice rife.
Our style of travel is to book as we go with maybe just some flights and accommodation in bigger cities booked ahead. This has worked fine but means that you have to devote some energy while travelling to figuring out where to go next and then booking it. Our Israel itinerary caused some heated moments. Sarah had been very good in reading the entire guidebook and suggesting itineraries to her fellow travellers who had not done quite as much reading. The problem was we kept changing our mind and infuriating Sarah by changing it back again once we had arrived somewhere. “That’s what I suggested in the first place,” Sarah would cry out. Haifa was a point of contention. Should we stay here or in the smaller Caesarean or Acre. In the end Jackie and I went through the available hotel options and sad to say there weren’t a lot of good ones to choose from, even though it was low season. We took the hotel which had the best looking rooms for the best price despite a number of reviews mentioning the road works going on right outside the hotel.
We drove up there from Tel Aviv in the late afternoon, surprised by how much traffic there was going up this apparent growth corridor on the Israeli coast. We passed many industrial parks and traffic was really crawling in both directions. We eventually made it to Haifa after dark and just managed to find our way to the hotel through yet another maze of one way streets. The street out the front of the hotel looked like a war zone with piles of dirt and tiles everywhere. We rolled our bags over the dirt mounds, Rick and Sarah giving Jackie and I some stick for our carefully thought out choice, which looked even worse when we got into the apartments to find no-one there and no information. Thank god for free wifi which we used to check my email and get the landlords number. In the end the apartments were great with nice design and quiet enough at night.
Haifa is the home to the Baha’i religion which came about in the 1800s. I’m not sure why they thought the world was lacking enough religions to go around. For a religion that espouses universality they have very restrictive access to the gardens stretching down Mount Carmel for which they are justifiably famous. The gardens are as well manicured as a lawn bowls green but only Baha’i may go beyond the first two levels. Believers make pilgrimage here and have to climb an extraordinary number of steps on their knees, which seems derivative for such a modern religion.
Caesarea to the south has more Roman ruins. No doubt if we had started our holiday with these ruins they would have seemed amazing but compared to Jerash and Umm Qais they were not as spectacular. The Israeli ruin setup is a lot different as well with lots of cafes and restaurants within the ruins which I guess makes it a more lively place but doesn’t get the right atmosphere. Still, we took advantage of the restaurants I’m criticising to have a very nice lunch overlooking the turquoise Mediterranean. The best part of the ruins are the extensive Roman baths that require a bit of imagination to summon to life but picturing oneself in a Roman bath is always pleasing. The animated video history of the ancient town had a skewed portrayal of the Arab influence on the town. Roman and Crusader times were depicted as a model of civilization, then the Arabs came a long and burned it all down. They did do that but it glosses over the nasty aspects of the other empires in the region.
At the petrol station near Ceasearea Rick was filling up when the attendant spoke to him in Hebrew. Rick replied, “I don’t speak English,” which must have been confusing for his interrogator. Israelis make the assumption that you speak Hebrew first. With such a diverse cultural mix you can’t assume who is Israeli or not. Hebrew is the official language and it’s really drummed into people everywhere. There is not much resorting to English. With Jews coming from such a range of countries this policy makes sense.
To the north of Haifa is Acre or Akko. We never did find out why this place has two names (or maybe Sarah read it out a few times and I just don’t remember) – no doubt it has something to do with the waves of overlords wanting to stamp their mark on the place. The old walled city is miraculously intact and in use. The quiet streets have the occasional pedestrian and cat but are otherwise perfect for getting lost in. The feature attraction is the old fort which is impressively large as are most structures built by the crusaders. This was the arrivals terminal for sick crusader-era pilgrims coming to the holy land for a miracle cure. They recuperated in the fort’s hospital protected by mad monks and nursed by religious types. Medieval medicine is not renowned for efficacious or pleasant cures so hopefully for them they were well enough to toddle along to Jerusalem for whatever religious hocus pocus passed for a cure. It can’t have been any worse than what the doctors were offering.
Tel Aviv, at 400,000 people, is surprisingly small for a place that looms so large on the international stage. It feels like a much bigger city than that as well, or maybe it’s just seeing big skyscrapers and a metro system after barely anything over two stories for so long in Jordan that skewed the perspective. Or maybe it’s the parking situation. No sooner had we arrived at the very nice, modern apartments that we were staying in than we encountered an issue uppermost in the mind of many Tel Avivians – where to park? We unloaded the car in a loading zone and did some research on the internet which didn’t provide many good solutions. Sarah and I tried driving to a big nearby mall to see if we could park there but on the way were sidetracked by a plethora of paid carparks to try. It doesn’t help when parking instructions are in all Hebrew but we managed to find a parking guy to give some money to (many thanks to the kind Israeli gentleman for translating for us).
Tel Aviv feels as trendy as a Paris or Sydney. It is a modern city with lots of little design shops on a beautiful white Mediterranean beach. It does not feel like the epicentre of a cultural struggle between Israel and Palestine but then you read about things like the 1996 suicide bombing at the nearby Dizengoff shopping mall which killed 13 people and you realise it’s not that far from the frontline of this dispute.
Israelis have a gruff manner about them. Even in the service industry they are not quick to smile or say hello. They could be the Parisians of the Middle East but it would need more probing than we had time to give.
I bid the Low family a hearty farewell and we went our separate sightseeing ways for that one day. I needed to step off the carousel briefly and I was glad I did when I heard what they got up to. They hired bikes and tried to ride to a museum on the Jewish diaspora in the University which was way up north across the river. They got through the security search then tried to take the bikes up an escalator, failing to notice the nearby lift. Sarah lost control of her bike and grazed her finger. They never made it to the museum in the end and stopped for lunch in the park. On the way back to the beach Jackie’s bike got a flat tyre. I meanwhile had strolled along the beach, sat in the park typing my blog, wandered around the mall (also going through a security check to get in) and was sitting by the beach when Sarah and Jackie rolled by on their bikes (Rick had taken Sarah’s to get fixed).
And that was about it for Tel Aviv. We drove north that afternoon to the beachside town of Haifa.
We were only in Eilat for half a day but it warrants a mention for couple of reasons. It’s where we crossed the border into Israel and it has fantastic snorkelling.
Border crossings with Israel are never going to be a totally relaxed affair. On our flight in from London to Amman with EasyJet the captain came on the intercom and said that due to Israeli restrictions everyone would be confined to their seats while over Israeli airspace, so go to the toilet now. Israel is paranoid but probably have cause to be. Jordan is the main friendly neighbour and one of the few places you can cross into Israel by land. Even so there are lots of well-armed Israeli soldiers standing around looking ready to kill anyone should the need arise. The Jordanian side was pretty simple, just go from one window to another paying the departure tax, getting the passport stamped and saying farewell. Jackie managed to drop her foot in it when asked by one official where she was travelling from. “Lebanon!” she blurted in haste before clamping her hand over her mouth and looking embarrassed. The official just looked a bit confused then smiled weakly as we all killed ourselves laughing.
At the Israeli side we got stuck behind the one and only Asian tour group so in the end it wasn’t very exciting at all, which I guess is what you want with a border crossing. I got a grilling from the young immigration girl about where I was going, what I would be seeing and whether I knew anyone in Israel. It was distracting me that she had dried blood in her right nostril but as if I was going to ask about the origin of that. I didn’t supply interesting enough answers to get her attention so we went off to grab a taxi and head pick up our Israeli rental car, it being impossible to take a Jordanian rental car into Israel.
Our taxi driver was a fat buffoon who tried to play a joke on us by pretending that the address we asked for didn’t exist. This didn’t really go down so well but he got us to our destination in the centre of town which is, conveniently for some I suppose, right next to the airport runway. It was striking to come into Israel and see how much larger people are here. They just look more well fed and more American somehow than their Arab counterparts across the border. It is a much more modern country as well which is evident in the shops and roads.
We got our car and headed to the Israeli Red Sea coast just a few kilometres down the road which is an even shorter coastline than the Jordanian side, being cutoff by the Egyptian border. We were directed to an excellent free beach by the woman who worked at the beach you pay to get into. I’m not sure what her boss would think of that but it worked out well for us because we could get changed, hire some snorkelling gear, lie out on the deck chairs and eat a cafe lunch on the sand. The snorkelling just off the beach was fantastic. In fact, just standing in the shallow water you could see a variety of tropical fish hanging around looking for handouts. It is possible to swim from the free side to the coral formations off the paid section of the beach which are large but not colourful.
The free beach doubled as a diving school and it looked like the Israeli army was there doing training. When Sarah went in for a shower after her swim she found herself in a co-ed changing room surrounded by buff Israeli guys taking a shower. The experience seemed to perk her up a bit, not that she wasn’t perky already from her tropical swim.
That afternoon we drove to Tel Aviv about four hours away. This journey traversed more than half the length of the country. Israel is not a large place. Southern Israel is very sparsely populated and most of the land seems to be either desert national park or given over to the army so they can roll their tanks all over it for training purposes. It’s not many countries where you get a ‘warning: tanks crossing’ sign posted. The desert on the Israeli side looks similar to the Jordanian side, but from what we saw not quite as spectacular. There is a large crater that you drive through and up (contact Jackie for the exact dimensions which Sarah drilled into her – let’s just say it’s massive) which gives you views back over the valley but it didn’t really compare to what we had seen in Petra and Wadi Rum. The sun was fading fast and we had a large city to negotiate.
It had been a holiday of tight deadlines and this morning was no exception. We whipped through breakfast and had to drive an hour to get the Wadi Rum visitors centre to meet our guide. It was the worst possible timing for our rental car not to start. Although it was not in great condition we hadn’t had any serious trouble with it until now. The engine just didn’t turn over. We popped the hood and got the usual crowd of helpers to poke around. One guy jumped in the car and gave it a go himself. Wonder of wonders the car started and he happily revved it like crazy to get it warmed up until his friend gave him a funny look as if to say, “I think it’s warm now!”. We drove to a petrol station on the highway to check the battery water levels but couldn’t see anything obviously wrong. Then the car had trouble starting again. This isn’t the situation you want just before driving into a desert but we figured that the Wadi Rum visitors centre was not exactly remote, being one of the premier tourist attractions in Jordan, so we left it to fate and drove off at a fast clip to meet our guide.
He turned out to be a small Bedouin man, it turned out not much older than me even though he looked about sixty. He drove an old landcruiser with an open-air bench arrangement in the back for us to sit on which was a great way to see everything as we drove by. In no time we were past the Bedouin town, which is packed with satellite dishes, and on into the sand. There aren’t strictly speaking any roads in Wadi Rum, just lots of tracks made by other vehicles which branch off in all sorts of directions and our driver seemed to pick at random to go in whichever direction served him best at the time.
First we clambered up the big rocks leading to a natural spring, obviously an important site in the desert. It hadn’t rained for some time in Jordan that we could tell so the spring looked more like a crack of water in the rock but the view from the top of the small hill was worth the price of admission alone. Wadi Rum had been undersold by Rick pre-visit as just a bunch of rocks and sand (we had been through a lot of desert after all) but the country around here really is something special.
Next we clambered up a big sand dune with fine red sand then ran back down again to have a cup of tea brewed by our guide. He has six children and another on the way but was relaxed about it all.
The next two stops were for some ancient camel engravings in the cliff and the crumbling wall of TE Lawrence’s desert base, just a small place under a rock from what we could tell. Finally we ended the day at our guide’s camp out in the desert for the sunset over the valley. It’s possible to sleep out here it pretty well constructed tents, a bit more solid than your typical Australian variety, but we had concerns about how warm it would be at this time of year so headed back to Aqaba for dinner.
Aqaba feels like the Gold Coast of Jordan. There are resorts, malls and humongous luxury housing estates in various stages of completion everywhere. The GFC might have hit some of the financing for these places as they have not been worked on for some time. Aqaba is being groomed to become Jordan’s second city after Amman. Currently that honour goes to Irbid which does not have a lot (or anything that I can think of) to recommend it. Aqaba has some distinct natural advantages. It is on Jordan’s only coastline at the Red Sea and as a bonus some of the best dive sites in the world with tropical fish and coral. It is also very close to Petra and Wadi Rum (a beautiful desert area I’ll talk about in the next post), so as a tourist hub it has a lot of potential. At the moment it seems more focussed on its role as a port. It has massive infrastructure stretching south along the coast to the Saudi border.
We drove along the southern coast road looking to get to the beaches beyond the port and the long stretch of billboards advertising the upcoming (any day now) shopping and luxury home precinct. Aqaba is a special economic zone’ just like Dubai which means that they welcome everyone and there’s not a lot of tax. It remains to be seen whether they can match Dubai for over-the-top building.
Despite the overwhelming amount of sand in Jordan there aren’t many beaches, just this tiny stretch of the Red Sea which all the beachoholics have to cram into. We were there on a busy Friday with a lot of families cooking kebabs on portable BBQs at the public beach even though it was strictly speaking winter (it was much warmer this far south). It was a scene that bore striking similarity to an Australian beach, the exception being the quality of the actual beach. Course rocky sand and a rocky shoreline with no waves was not an inviting site. Add to that some clothing uncertainty for the ladies in our party and we didn’t end up having a dip there. Sarah was getting some looks for having bare legs and while pre-pubescent girls seemed to be able to get away with normal beach attire, all the older women were well wrapped up. We drove south briefly to a resort but they charged something like $50 per person just to get in so we headed back to our hotel after a fruitless search for a cheaper resort beach near town (it had been knocked down in the time since our guide book was written).
Back at the hotel I was reminded that it was my birthday with a surprise. As we headed up in the lift with the hotel manager Sarah asked him where he was from (Irbid) and what he had been doing before this job. He replied with a sad smile that he had been an interpreter for the US army in Iraq which was sobering. There wasn’t time to delve any deeper into this as when he asked “Mr David” to open the door it was birthday surprise time! The staff, after some prompting and a check of my passport to confirm it really was my birthday, had decorated the room with wonderfully over-the-top decorations and a big, fat creamy cake. It went down a treat and was followed by a short nap before more birthday goodness at the yacht club for dinner where we had some excellent local seafood. Thanks Sarah, Jackie and Rick for a memorable birthday day.
The following day we were booked in for a tour of Wadi Rum, a desert area about an hour to the north-east with amazing looking rock formations.
The first thing to capture our interest about Petra was not the ruins but our hotel receptionist. Against all odds she was Australian and seemed excited to see some people from her birth country. Originally from regional Victoria she had travelled to Jordan for a holiday and fallen in love with a local man. Dressed in a hijab she had a local name and was pregnant and due to give birth in February. The cultural shift fascinated Jackie and our receptionist came up as a topic during the excellent breakfast and dinner buffets that provided fuel for our days of walking. How would she feel about raising a daughter in an Islamic society, we wondered? Maybe both mother and daughter could be more progressive than many Muslims appear to be about women. It was actually unusual to be served by a woman at a hotel or anywhere other
than as a street seller. The service at the hotel was fantastic. They recommended a good guide and while not five-star it was hard to fault anything about the experience.Petra is a deserved wonder of the world. You approach through a 1.2 kilometre long canyon (although strictly speaking it’s rock pulled apart by seismic activity) called the siq which is 182 metres high in places. The canyon alone is worthy of wonder status. It’s wide enough to accommodate a couple of horses pulling carts (the only non-human powered way to get in after the Bedouin vetoed a plan to introduce buses) and so narrow in places that you only get a glimpse of the sky. The rock is gorgeous with coloured layers of rock polished smooth by water, wind and sand. Sunlight comes in at an angle creating shadows in the soft morning light. Added to this visual splendour are a few additions by the Nabataeans such as a life-sized carving of a camel train with the lower legs all that remain or the handmade water channel carved all the way along the bottom of one side of the siq.
And then when you get to the end of the siq you see beyond the end of the canyon a glimpse of the treasury, one of the most famous facades in the world (the one from Indiana Jones). Once you exit the siq you emerge at a large natural courtyard with the treasury towering above you. It’s an incredible sight even when you know it’s coming and are so familiar with its image. Familiarity makes some landmarks seem like a let down but Petra really does live up to the hype. The treasury, like most of the substantial buildings in Petra, is a tomb. Unlike the impression given in the Indiana Jones movie, it does not extend far back into the cliff. Most of the tombs are just one or two rooms and not designed to be lived in. The name of the treasure is a misnomer. It was only because of the large urn at the top which people later believed to contain treasure that it is so named. You can still see bullet holes where some misguided people tried to shoot the treasure out of the urn.
Petra lay undiscovered by the west until Burckhardt came along, a Swiss traveller who learned Arabic and disguised himself as a Bedouin to bluff his way in. The Nabataeans who carved the dozens of tombs all through the mountains were defeated by the Romans who built a temple and a few other structures, but in time knowledge of the place was lost to all but the Bedouin who continued to live here. His game was up when he could not hide his amazement at what he was seeing.
As we were still reeling from seeing the treasury we stumbled down towards the ruins of the theatre to have a cup of tea. The Bedouin were moved to a new nearby town after 1985 when Petra became a UNESCO
world heritage site but they still travel in every day by donkey to sell souvenirs and donkey rides up the steep mountain or a jaunt on a camel. While we were having a cup of tea sitting in a rock on the sun
amongst the touristy stalls a young Bedouin man called Muhammed came up to us and said hello in Arabic. Sarah looked at our guide asking for a translation but our guide said, “I am not translating for you.
I taught this guy English when I was a teacher.” When Muhammed learned that we were Australian he reeled off some Aussie phrases perfectly: “G’day mate”, “You beauty”. The Bedouin around here know a
startling number of languages learned from the constant flow of tourists. We heard one guy on a donkey telling a Japanese woman climbing stairs to “moshi moshi”. He had earlier called us monkeys for not buying a donkey ride from him, but in a half joking kind of way. Muhammed, when not attempting to sell things to tourists, will go into his tent and check facebook with his wifi enabled laptop. The Bedouin are constantly chatting on their mobile phones while trotting past the ruins on their donkey.
Muhammad’s facility for the Australasian accent was due to more than just the tourists flowing by. He is the nephew of a famous New Zealand woman called Marguerite van Geldermelsen who wrote a well-known book called Married to a Bedouin in which she chronicles her experience of falling in love with a Bedouin man in Petra in 1978, long before it became the tamed tourist attraction of today. Sarah and Jackie both bought the book on their kindle and it sounds like a great read.
The scale of the Petra site was the biggest surprise. It takes half a day to just to walk to one of the far points of the monastery and back. It is much more than just the one famous building. There are dozens of other tombs, all a similar outlandish size. On the first morning we trekked up to a tomb called the monastery which is up 800 steps through the mountains. Unlike the treasury, which is undergoing renovation, you can clamber up into the monastery to see the giant room it protects. Nearby there are two spectacular viewpoints across the mountains to Israel. It’s easy to see why the ruins were lost to most of the world for so long. They are completely surrounded by mountains with the siq being the one easy way in.
The walk up and down to the monastery is a wonder in itself. It was low season when we were there and we turned up early in the morning, but even so we were overtaken by a large group of English lads, one going up on a sturdy donkey. Hawkers sell stuff all the way up and pounce if you pause to look at something. They are relentless in their pursuit. Sarah stopped to look at one necklace and asked how much, then decided she didn’t really want it. The seller took this as a bargaining point and chased Sarah down the steps until she agreed to buy it for an admittedly cheap price. A lot of the goods look like mass manufactured Chinese stuff rather than locally crafted merchandise, but I guess when you deal with the kind of numbers that Petra does you need to buy in bulk. Jackie got hassled on the way up by a hawker and told her, “maybe later”. The Bedouin echo this a bit derisively they must hear it so often – “maybe later, maybe later”. Another seller (who Jackie had not promised anything to) remembered Jackie on the way down and claimed Jackie promised to buy something from her. When Jackie demurred the woman went into a rage, calling Jackie a bad woman who doesn’t keep her promises. It was a hard guilt sell tactic that might work on some people I suppose but not once you’ve built up a tougher hawker skin. Jackie did buy some camel mobiles from another lady lest you think we (sudder to think) did not buy any trinkets.
Sarah was on a mission to find the best sunset spot in Petra. We thought maybe the treasury would catch some afternoon light but it gets dark in its natural courtyard quite early. Instead we trekked back down to the Royal tombs, a collection of half a dozen amazing carvings in a row that capture the rosy afternoon light making the rock glow even more red and bringing out the opal-like qualities of the stone.
It had been a big day walking and we shelved plans to do the Petra by night tour in favour of an early night. The next day we started later but possibly did more walking. Our first summit of the day was the High Place which goes up an unspecified number of steps (it’s a lot) until you reach the mountain top where there is an ancient sacrificial altar. It is here that animals used to be sacrificed in front of the high priests, and they couldn’t have picked a nicer spot for it.
There is then an unsignposted path down the back of the mountain which took a bit of finding but eventually turned out to lead past the cafe (of course, where else would you put the cafe?). This walk was incredible. There were only a handful of people doing it so it felt more remote than the rest of Petra. It wound down through an amazing valley, past the remnants of a lion fountain and into a small valley
with yet more tombs to climb around in. There are cats everywhere in Jordan, even the waterless landscape of Petra. Near one of the tombs we met a cat who took a swipe at me *after* I had patted it for some
time. Sarah, always looking to do her fellow creatures a good turn, decided that the cat was thirsty and poured it some water into a natural rock bowl. The cat lapped up the water at a furious rate then
turned with a look that asked for more.Towards the end of the day we did another climb (just up and down 600 steps this time) to a spot overlooking the treasury. The views looking down at the treasury seemed to make it look even bigger than from below. The only people at the top were a couple of Bedouin with some lady tourists they had brought up on donkeys. They were entertaining the ladies by putting kohl on themselves. According to Muhammad the Bedouin are chick magnets and get ladies wanting to sleep over all the time. They do have a good sense of humour and the allure of an amazing landscape.
We backed up that night for the tour of Petra after dark. The entire route of the siq is lined with candles and four hundred candles are put outside there treasury where they perform a short concert. It was a bitterly cold night so we had all our layers on. There was a wind blowing through as well which kicked up little sand storms now and then. The coolest part (not wanting to sound shallow or anything) was when the wind made the paper candle protectors blow into the flame and catch alight before the ashes scattered to the wind. The music was atmospheric, a quiet Bedouin violin/cello solo with a vocalist that sounded quite mournful. The next act was a flute, also with a melancholy air. Finally a man spoke about the history of the Bedouin. I misheard him and thought he said that they used to get the horses to drink the coffee when the called on people they didn’t trust, to check whether it was poisoned. Turns out he said that they made the ‘hosts’ drink the coffee first which makes more sense.
We got back to the hotel tired and cold but in no way regretful. It was a mind blowing two days walking.
The view waiting for us to get up in the morning was stupendous. The lodge has rooms with balconies that all face the valley and it’s a hell of a way to wake up in the morning. The goats in the valley are just black specks in the distance with accompanying goat herds specks. After a tasty breakfast buffet we headed through the nearly deserted Dana village for a walk into the valley. The rocks down here are fascinating. Scattered throughout the debris are fossils of urchins and shells. The loose rocks look like they have been sand-blasted smooth by the centuries and the layered red rocks bring to mind the sedimentary layering of the sea floor. On the way down we came across a young boy minding his goats with a small puppy, his trainee goat dog. The goats had bells on and jangled away as they ate. He asked for a light as we went by and I did have a lighter in my bag from Cuba. As he lit up Sarah took some photos of his donkey and gave him some small change. As we walked off down the hill he shouted down to us and gave us a jig on his flute, a bit like reverse busking. On the way back Rick used his goat call to lure Charles, a dandyish goat with blond parted hair and floppy ears, up into the abandoned town. We then abandoned him ourselves. He looked confused.
We spent an hour or so walking into the valley and another hour or so walking back out because, as usual, we had quite a full day planned. The Low family style of holiday is to cram as much as possible in. On the bad side this gets tiring and you don’t get lunch but on the upswing you do see a lot of interesting things. We were heading down to Petra in the vain hope of spending half a day there before our two full days of ruin wandering, but on the way we stopped in at Shobak castle, another staggering ruin which is free to enter and clamber all over. As with a lot of places in Jordan there are cats everywhere somehow surviving amid all the rocks. It looked like someone was camping out in one of the rooms of the castle. It was built by the crusaders in the 12th century, yet another extravagant edifice which fell to Saladin when he kicked the crusaders butts all over the desert. Shobak survived an 18-month siege due in part no doubt to the secret tunnel that leads from inside the walls to far outside the castle gates. The tunnel is still open and we stumbled across it (there are no signs or maps anywhere). The tunnel is quite large and has steps leading down into the blackness. Sarah does not like confined spaces so waited at the top while I switched on my feeble mobile phone flashlight and descended a step at a time into the gloom. The tunnel took a right turn and soon sunlight was just a glimmer above me. I could only see a few metres in front of me but the steps here still in good nick. Once I got to the point where I could see large rocks that had fallen from the ceiling my sensible side took over and a headed back up, but I could imagine doing it with a flaming torch while the Muslim army lay siege to the castle.
Somehow we got to the hotel in Wadi Rum, the town right near Petra, later than expected, but it worked out well because it meant that we could have a turkish bath rather than go sightseeing. Rick and Jackie told horror stories of turkish baths in Turkey where Rick was given a special headlock massage and doused liberally with cold water. The turkish bath attached to this hotel was not quite as authentic. We got changed and were guided into the steam room where Jackie and Rick were waiting somewhere in the mists along with a Malaysian guest of the hotel. Compared to Icelandic saunas this one wasn’t too hot but belched out a fresh batch of steam every five minutes so loudly that to have a conversation you had to shout at the person sitting next to you. The Malaysian lady was soon taken out for whatever fate awaited her and we were left to steam some more. Then we were left even longer. Then we began to wonder if they had forgotten about us. The steam had run out and now we were just sitting in a damp room. Someone clunked around behind the wall and soon we were being shrouded in stinking hot steam again, our heads hovering somewhere near our knees to get some relief. It was peak hour at the baths so we just had to wait our turn. Rick and Jackie were taken off next so Sarah and I waited in the steam ante room for our turn which seemed to take an age. I was pointed at next so went off with the nice man to a small room with a marble bench on which I lay while he sanded my back with something approaching the consistency of sandpaper. I just gritted my teeth and took it like a man but it hurt like hell afterwards and is still in the process of healing a couple of weeks later. The massage was unusual as well. I know that some massages are not supposed to feel relaxing, rather deep and therapeutic, but the moves this guy was pulling were almost too much to bear. It felt like he was running a pizza cutter up my spine, then he would suddenly chop my shoulder blades or run his fingers deep into my calves making my toes curl. When on my back he twisted my feet out, crushing my ankles into the marble. I emerged scratched and beaten to share a cup of tea with my parents-in-law, all of us wrapped in towels. I’m not sure the massage made me feel better. In fact I felt more tense afterwards and had a rash on my back, but the swim in the misty heated indoor pool was a good comedown, and let’s face it, I’m not working at the moment so how stressed could I be?
Wadi Musa, the town just outside Petra, is very pleasant. It is small and perched on a hillside. It has the usual one-way streets (which I’m pretty sure we drove the wrong way along one morning) and over-the-top advertising, but for a place that processes so many tourists a year it has a relaxed feel.
The Dead Sea is 423 metres below sea level and the lowest point on earth that is not covered by water. It has a micro-climate that makes it warmer than the surrounding countryside. While we had been in the mountains of Jordan it felt freezing at times but down at the Dead Sea it was t-shirt weather.
There were a group of ocker Aussie lads at the resort who didn’t really make us feel homesick. Rick got talking to one of them who was in his 70s and travelling overseas for the first time. He lives in the Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne which is a lovely part of the world but probably doesn’t prepare you for travelling through Cairo and Jordan. He seemed to be taking it in his stride but mentioned that he was meeting his wife in South Africa to visit their nephew who works for the Australian Federal Police. It was to be his wife’s first time travelling overseas as well. He said, “Have you heard the expression ‘shitting yourself’?” he asked rhetorically.
The sad part of the resort were all the Philippino waitresses doing work contracts for two years or more. The two we spoke to also had young children living back in the Philippines which must be heart-breakingly difficult to cope with.
Obviously we hadn’t come here to lounge around a resort so after breakfast we headed down to the beach and jumped in the water. It is a truly surprising experience to swim in the Dead Sea. Even though you know it’s going to feel different nothing really prepares you for how strange it feels to be that buoyant. Even though they recommend that you don’t put your face under the water Rick strapped his trusty goggles on and tried to do some freestyle. He just killed himself laughing after a few strokes. He couldn’t keep his legs under the water. It’s quite difficult to balance in the extra salty water other than on your back. With a bit of effort you can swing your legs under and float upright but it’s easy to topple one way or the other. The water is around 35% salt compared to a normal sea salt level of 3.5%. Salt crystals are scattered on the shore. The reason it’s so salty here is that there is no outlet for the water and not too much rain. The water flows in from the mountains surrounding the sea bringing salt and minerals with them. The rest is just down to evaporation.
The other attraction of the Dead Sea is the mud. It is thought to have healing properties so Rick, Jackie and Sarah slapped it all over themselves. There was free mud available on the beach and they spared no exposed skin. The mud quickly starts to dry and begins to look like an elephant hide. They washed off in the sea, unfortunately getting some extremely salty water in their eyes in the process. I’m not sure the mud did their skin a hell of a lot of good. Sarah got a rash on her stomach and Ricks legs were pretty itchy afterwards.
We were surprised by how clean the water was. Usually when the Dead Sea is featured on TV there’s all sorts of crap floating around in it but the water where we were was crystal blue. The water feels strange on your skin, like it’s leaving a film of something on there. Not sticky but slightly slick.
On the way south driving along the Dead Sea we came to the Wadi Mujib nature reserve which unfortunately was closed, not that we had time to do much of a walk anyway. We did the equivalent of just sticking our head into the spectacular canyon where it meets the Dead Sea. There is often flash flooding and the water can get to close the level of the bridge (the last bridge was washed away). The reserve closes at this time of year precisely because of the risk of flash flood washing walkers away, but it would be fantastic to do a long hike in there.
Towards the south end of the Dead Sea we took a turn to the East heading back up into the mountains. The views back down were spectacular. We were heading up towards Al Karak castle which towers above the valley. Another day, another ruin to clamber all over. This castle was built by the crusaders when they were trying to gain an influence over the area. They certainly didn’t do anything in half measures. It doesn’t sound like they went on a charm offensive either. The ruler of the castle at one stage used to throw prisoners from the top of the castle as an execution. He devised a wooden device to be put over their head so that they couldn’t see and would be less likely to faint on the way down. It seems he wanted them to be alive when they met their death many metres below.
Jordan is by no means an oppressive regime. The king is moderate (you can look at his interview on Jon Stewart’s show for evidence) and his relaxed demeanour flows through the country. For all that there is still the feeling that women are not on an equal footing. We had less interaction with women during our trip and at least in the day-to-day life that we saw around us as tourists it is dominated by men. The younger generation might be an exception to this, and whether this carries on into the future will be interesting to see. At Karak castle a group of young girls were sitting around chatting and playing games. As I walked past one girl said to me, “My friend dared me to speak to you, so I am. Hello,” to a chorus of giggles.
As the photos show we arrived at Karak castle as the sun was going down, which it seemed to do faster and faster each day. Each day on the trip we seemed to be in a totally different settingthan the beginning of the day, so fast was the pace, and this was no exception. We still had a couple of hours to drive in the gathering dark to our sleeping spot for the night at Dana. It was a pity the night was pitch black as we drove up and down a couple of mountains in what felt like beautiful scenery. There was just a thin crescent moon to accompany us. The signs on this road were pitiful so although we knew we had to head south, any time we came to a town the way became less clear and Rick would jump out to ask someone directions. It felt like it was taking longer than it should which was a problem because we had agreed to have dinner at the lodge which was served at exactly 6:30, a group buffet. We eventually rocked up closer to 7pm and grabbed our dinner while the other guests relaxed next to the fire.
That evening the hotel manager said to me while we were sitting by the fire, “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”. He was Jordanian and looked like he had some Bedouin heritage. “Of course not”, I replied. I was wearing my five finger shoes and he was curious about them. He said, “When I first saw your shoes I thought ‘They are special’. I mean, I thought that you were disabled”. He’s probably not the first to think that. I explained the benefits and he thought they would be could for trekking through the streams around Dana. At first glance the rooms at the lodge didn’t look like much. They had shared bathrooms and bunk beds (each couple got a room each luckily) but in the end it was one of the best sleeps on our trip. The rooms were comfortable, quiet and warm which is really all you can ask.
Recent Comments