I have never been welcomed so many times in my life. Although it reached comical proportions during our short stay in Jordan (even when it was yelled from a passing car full of teenage boys at night), it never felt sarcastic or ill-meant. There were times when someone would answer to my reply of where I was from with "I love America!" to which I would answer with an equally enthusiastic "I love Jordan!"
And here is the hidden gem of our trip so far.
At least a quarter of Jordan is comprised of Palestinians displaced by the Zionist movement of the mid 20th century, so you can imagine our concern about crossing the border into Jordan. We did research and settled on going down by bus to Eilat from Tel Aviv, taking a taxi to the border, walking over, taking a taxi to Aqaba, and then taking a bus the following morning to Wadi Musa, the town outside of Petra. In any country that sounds like a hassle, but in not knowing the language, not even being able to read signs and erratic bus schedules due to Sukkot gave us phantom sweats from our time in Morocco. But everything went amazingly smoothly.
And here is the hidden gem of our trip so far.
At least a quarter of Jordan is comprised of Palestinians displaced by the Zionist movement of the mid 20th century, so you can imagine our concern about crossing the border into Jordan. We did research and settled on going down by bus to Eilat from Tel Aviv, taking a taxi to the border, walking over, taking a taxi to Aqaba, and then taking a bus the following morning to Wadi Musa, the town outside of Petra. In any country that sounds like a hassle, but in not knowing the language, not even being able to read signs and erratic bus schedules due to Sukkot gave us phantom sweats from our time in Morocco. But everything went amazingly smoothly.
But Petra. Let me talk about Petra. What a dream. I honestly thought it was only a Hollywood creation for Indiana Jones until I went to University. Only too late did I find out my school was actually doing a dig on site of a temple. I would have quickly made the leap to archaeology from Classics had i known sooner (what a bold move that would have been). So between my love of movies and old things, this was easily the highlight of the trip for me - and it did not disappoint.
We warmed up by going to Little Petra on our first day in town. It was a suburb of the ancient city and is a 10 minute drive up the valley from the main site. We got there in the mid-afternoon and had the place virtually to ourselves. It was so fun to run around, looking in every cave, and precariously climbing half destroyed staircases carved into the rock.
The following day we spent nine hours running around Petra, climbing even higher staircases and tiered cave dwellings, working on fending off camel / donkey / postcard / necklace hawkers every ten steps (throughout the trip people were eager to be at our service or to sell us something but politely moved on after a courteous 'no'. How refreshing!).
I think we each took about 100 pictures of the day, which tell the story much better than I can put it into words. The following day we spent only a couple hours at the site and even managed to get lost, inspiring thoughts of crawling through the desert, seeing mirages of water. Luckily we're master navigators and found our way out in about 45 minutes. Pros.
The following day we spent nine hours running around Petra, climbing even higher staircases and tiered cave dwellings, working on fending off camel / donkey / postcard / necklace hawkers every ten steps (throughout the trip people were eager to be at our service or to sell us something but politely moved on after a courteous 'no'. How refreshing!).
I think we each took about 100 pictures of the day, which tell the story much better than I can put it into words. The following day we spent only a couple hours at the site and even managed to get lost, inspiring thoughts of crawling through the desert, seeing mirages of water. Luckily we're master navigators and found our way out in about 45 minutes. Pros.
We rounded out the trip in Amman where we stayed with a friend of a couchsurfing host we had in Dresden, which was nice because 1) we don't speak a lick of Arabic and more importantly 2) Amman is HUGE and we hadn't really prepared ourselves.
We saw a couple sites and hung out on Rainbow st. (of course that does not mean what you think it should). Erin bought a real book (a weighty luxury) on history from an islamic perspective, and we met up with another friend of a friend who works for a American-style boarding school that was started by the Jordanian King (who went to Deerfield, who knew?).
We saw a couple sites and hung out on Rainbow st. (of course that does not mean what you think it should). Erin bought a real book (a weighty luxury) on history from an islamic perspective, and we met up with another friend of a friend who works for a American-style boarding school that was started by the Jordanian King (who went to Deerfield, who knew?).
The trip was not without it's awkward experiences, of course. Arab men don't have much contact with women, and between that and their preconceptions of American women it leads to some awkward chit-chat. The manager of our hotel in Aqaba took us out to dinner and although he was pleasant he was just a tiny bit creepy.
One of our taxi drivers pulled over on our way to little Petra for what we though was a nice photo op of the Petra basin for us, but then he asked to take a picture of us, and then had us take a picture of him with each of us. He also didn't speak any english so when he picked us up he had brought his english teacher friend. But neither of these experiences made us feel threatened as we had been in Morocco - it felt more like an adolescent fascination with us.
There was more to see in Jordan than we expected (Wadi Rum, Jerash, Madeba) so I was a little sad to go, but you can't be too sad to go to Bali. As of this writing we survived exiting the country and traveling for 27 hours to reach Indonesia. What a different world! We'll catch up again after our little vacation here. Til then, you're welcome!
-SB
One of our taxi drivers pulled over on our way to little Petra for what we though was a nice photo op of the Petra basin for us, but then he asked to take a picture of us, and then had us take a picture of him with each of us. He also didn't speak any english so when he picked us up he had brought his english teacher friend. But neither of these experiences made us feel threatened as we had been in Morocco - it felt more like an adolescent fascination with us.
There was more to see in Jordan than we expected (Wadi Rum, Jerash, Madeba) so I was a little sad to go, but you can't be too sad to go to Bali. As of this writing we survived exiting the country and traveling for 27 hours to reach Indonesia. What a different world! We'll catch up again after our little vacation here. Til then, you're welcome!
-SB
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