Floating at the Dead Sea
We spent two nights bushcamping just below the spot from where Moses is believed to have first seen the Promised Land - after which he died and was buried at the same spot. There is now a church at Mt Nebo, perched right on the edge of the Jordan Valley and overlooking the northern end of the Dead Sea.
From our camp we could look across the Jordan Valley, watching impressive sunsets and seeing the lights of numerous Biblical cities (now very electrified) come up as darkness settled. We had never before realised how small the distances are - from Mt Nebo we could look across at the lights of Jerusalem with Bethlehem now almost a suburb, while just to the north lies Jericho.
The view definitely qualifies as the most impressive we've seen in Jordan - although half the view lay in Israel. Our camp was about 1100 m above the Dead Sea, the surface of which is 400 m below sea level.
Sinking Feeling
We also made time for the mandatory swim in the Dead Sea although we avoided the established resorts, the cheapest of which wanted 4JD (about $6) just to reach the beach and have a shower afterwards, and climbed through a fence further along the coast to find a secluded spot where we could bob up and up in the buoyant waters.
The Dead Sea is 4 times as salty as regular seawater and, for the first time in my life, I was able to float. I didn't really have much choice - I couldn't have sunk even if I'd tried. Tigger also took a swim and she looked rather puzzled at sitting on the water rather than in it. She looked like an empty oil tanker riding high in the water.
The water tastes a bit like very strong salt and vinegar crisps and has an oily feel to it when you get out. You need to wash in fresh water pretty soon after getting out or your skin starts to tingle and cuts and grazes burn.
Nothing lives in the Dead Sea and the water is very clear, until you start digging around in the muddy bottom. The slick grey mud - famed for it healthy properties - is very slippery and is easily applied to your skin, but not as easy to wash off.
|
|
|
|
TOO MUCH
Amman, 1 May 2002
While theft is forbidden by the Quran and virtually all Muslims abide by this injunction, lying and cheating are not covered by the Holy Book and Jordanian businessmen, certainly, take full advantage of this fact.
We have heard that Egypt is even worse but we're not inclined to go there after having experience the way Jordanians do business. The degree to which grubbing for money rules most people's lives here is pitiful to see and extremely irritating to encounter and deal with.
We've been in Jordan for a little less than two weeks now and cannot wait to leave - this afternoon if the Syrians hold good on their promise to have our visas ready by 2.30 pm. We handed all the forms in this morning and paid and they advised us to collect our passports this afternoon.
Nothing like the stories we'd heard from other travellers, Loony Planet guide books and staff at various embassies here in Amman! We'd heard horror tales of 20-day waits with a blank, no-reasons-given refusal at the end of it. Possibly the letter we wrote regarding why we hadn't got our visas in South Africa and that we'd come through Saudi Arabia might have helped a bit.
Of course, we'll still have to pay through our noses at the border - it apparently costs upwards of $100 a week for a diesel vehicle.
No Cheap Dinars
But at least we can get out of Jordan, which has irritated us since we arrived. In the time that we have been in the country, we've visited Wadi Rum in the south of the country. Made famous (for westerners) by Peter O'Toole playing Lawrence of Arabia in the famous - and long - movie of the same name, Wadi Rum offers peace and tranquility and stunning desert scenery.
TE Lawrence - an Englishman fascinated by the Middle East and Arab culture who, during his university days, spent several months tramping around the region, on his own, visiting Crusader and other forts for his thesis.
Speaking fluent Arabic, Lawrence was posted to Cairo in World War I and from there began working with the Arabs, fighting against the Turks of the Ottoman Empire which had sided with the Germans.
Lawrence and the Arab forces conducted a very successful guerilla campaign in Arabia, operating from bases in Wadi Rum and sacking Aqaba, at the head of the Red Sea and repeatedly blowing up the railway line from Damascus south to Arabia.
By the end of the Arab Revolt and the capture of Damascus by the Allies, Lawrence had become a household name in the West thanks to an American journalist who had travelled with the Arabs for a while.
Disgusted by the British government's duplicity - it had promised independence for various Arab states and recognition for Crown Prince Faisal of Arabia as overlord of the Arabs but reneged on the deal after the victory - Lawrence never returned to the Middle East after the war, instead seeking anonymity by enlisting in the Royal Air Force under an assumed name (he was found out and discharged) and then in the British Army (again, under an assumed name) where he served until his death in a motorbiking accident around the age of 40.
True to Nature
Visitors to Wadi Rum will be shown (by guide or guide book - choose the book: it doesn't demand an extortionate tip afterwards!) the rock formation known by Bedouin residents of area as "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" and the source for the title of Lawrence's book.
Lawrence's Spring - they don't believe in overplaying their aces in Jordan! - where he bathed while living in the area, is near the town of Rum below the sheer face of 1750 m high Jebel Rum and Jebel Um Ishrin, which isn't much lower. Unfortunately, the spring is little more than a green puddle nowadays.
From Wadi Rum to Petra, Jordan's premier tourist site, should be about a 90 minute drive - if it weren't for the fact that the sign posting, usually reliable in Jordan, was absent from a couple of strategic turn-offs, resulting in several tours of remote parts of Jordan's rural areas.
Wadi Musa, the modern town outside Petra, seems to live solely on the proceeds of ripping of tourists and is suffering at the moment.
Rockville
Petra, the capital of the Nabatean civilisation which ruled much of the Middle East for several hundred years around the time of Christ, is carved from the rocks of the mountains in which it was built and is accessed by a narrow 1.2 km-long siq (gorge).
The Nabatean's riches came from control of the important trade routes across the Middle East and the levies charged on - or pillaging of - caravans using these routes.
They clearly had a flair for the dramatic because the first sight you get of the city's architecture is The Treasury or Al Khazneh at the end of the siq. The dramatic facade is 43 m high, 30 m wide and was carved in the first century BC, drawing influences from classic Hellenistic Greek architecture. Inside, the 3 rooms are just bare walled cavities, carved from solid rock.
Petra stretches for several kilometres with imposing facades carved along the cliff faces of the major "thoroughfares" - thought to have been the tombs of the wealthy - and several mountain top places of worship and ceremony.
The main street of the city was across the valley between two mountains and was colonnaded and paved, with the residents living in stone built dwelling behind and above the street and its businesses.
Then and Now
The glory of Petra and the Nabateans, which began waning in 106 AD when the Romans annexed it, fearing the influence that the Nabateans had gained, and by the 16th Century Petra was a "lost city" to the western world. It was "rediscovered" in 1812 by a Swiss traveller but excavations only began in 1924 and are still continuing.
The lost glory and refinement of Petra is highlighted by the current crop of touts, trinket salesmen and "taxi" concessionaires working within Petra. Trinket-selling mothers watch while two or three children play in the dirt and an older child thrashes a donkey out of spite.
Tourists pay bloated prices to be transported around the site by camel, donkey or horse-drawn cart, the drivers of which forget who the customers are and rides (almost) roughshod over anybody in their way!
War Pricing
Admission to Petra normally costs 21 Jordanian Dinars ($30) but, as a result of conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians and Uncle Sam's threats to beat the crap out of Iraq again (as well as anyone else who disagrees with US policies!), tourism is so down the price is currently only 11JD ($16) for 1 day, 13.5JD for 2 days and 16JD for 3 days.
That, though, is the only price that has dropped because of the lack of tourism - every other businessman seems to think that fewer tourists means they should charge more. They then wonder why the tourists who are around are not spending as much money!!!!!
And now that the Syrians appear satisfied that we haven't visited Occupied Palestine, as they refer to Israel and the Palestinian areas, we'll be on our way north to see Damascus and Aleppo. Internet access is apparently banned in Syria so we won't be updating the site during the week we are there. Our next post will be from Turkey in 2 weeks or so.
|
