Jordan (18.-28.02.09)

Jordan welcomes us with a very cold morning (-1 C°). We go directly to the German Theodor Schneller School in Amman which seems to have the only campground in Amman. Victor, the housekeeper, tells us that the campground is still closed until April, but offers us a room in the school’s guesthouse. The room is very basic and cold, but at least it offers us hot shower and a bed and – very important – free internet! Since it’s still early, we decide to go downtown by taxi and get a first impression of the city. After waiting 15 minutes for a taxi we simply enter the next local minibus which is a nice experience. After changing once, we even reach exactly our destination, the Roman Theatre, and we are proud that we made it! We have an extensive look at the Theatre, the Citadel and the bazaar. Coming home, Victor surprises us with an electrical heater in our room and the bad news that rain and even snow is expected for the next days. The next day, Friday, we have another tour through Amman, this time with our own car. It’s really a very nice city and we enjoy especially the bazaar which offers absolutely everything…

The next morning we wake up from the sound of rain and find already a small lake in our room. We pack the car and leave for the Dead Sea. While going there, the rain intensifies and mixes with hail. Unfortunately, we can’t see the beautiful countryside, but at least it’s much warmer down at the Dead Sea. We decide to continue going south, hoping the weather would improve. It’s very impressive to see normally dry wadis turning into torrents. The dark sky gives it a dramatic touch. Further south, the rain stops, but is replaced by another sandstorm, so we end up at the Red Sea in Aqaba. After sunset, we find a nice campground close to the beach. The only other guests are two couples from Braunschweig, Thomas’ hometown. Thomas has almost tears in his eyes (we had a long discussion about this remark…)

The next morning, when we have a look at the local newspaper, we know that we took the right decision (snow in Amman!). The more we enjoy a really lovely day in Aqaba (this time it’s Claudia with tears in her eyes, looking over to Egypt and not being there yet).

Since we changed our plan upside down, we have to extend our car insurance which turns out to be a very big challenge. The insurance company in Amman tells us to go to the licence department in Aqaba. When we ask the tourist information office, they tell us we can do it in an insurance office around the corner. There they tell us (and all this in Arabic!) to go to the harbour, where they send us from one gate to the other. At the end, we even convince the security officers to let us in without an extra permit. After 2 hours, we arrive at the right office, but the insurance officer is sound asleep behind his desk!! With the help of some other employees, we wake him up and finally get our insurance extension within five minutes…

Finally we can go to our next destination, Wadi Rum, a very impressive landscape with red rocks, desert and millions of tourists! Shocked about all these masses of tourists, we quickly leave the visitor centre and find a camping spot in a completely empty part of the desert. We are sure to be outside the protected area of Wadi Rum, but the next morning a park ranger tells us we are just inside the park (500 metres).

So we buy an official permission to visit the park, which is really worth seeing.
Back at our campground Thomas finds his destiny: every herdsman who passes by with his sheep or goats or camels gets a free tea or coffee. We get the feeling the word of this new desert cafeteria spreads quickly, since more and more Bedouins are passing by. We enjoy a lot their company. Even the goats love our place and come to drink our dishwashing water…

But anyhow, the next morning we close the coffee shop and leave for Petra…

The trip to Petra is already breathtaking. A steep road climbs up to the mountain range and follows it all the way to Petra. Again and again it offers marvellous views. Finding a campground is not easy in Petra. The only one is under maintenance and closed. We find a Bedouin camp which is rather crowded and we are afraid of their entertainment program at night. So we prefer to hide between the rocks above Petra, since wild camping around Petra is forbidden. Our place is at 1400 metres, so it gets really cold and at 7 pm we are already in our sleeping bags. The next morning it’s not easy to leave the tent early morning with temperatures around 0. But we want to arrive in Petra before 8 am, when all the tourist buses come.

Petra is chosen as one of the seven world wonders and is without doubt Jordan’s most valuable treasure. It’s a waste unique city, carved into the cheer rock face by the Nabataeans more than 2000 years ago. The day in Petra is very impressive, but very tiring as well. We walk around, look at all the major attractions, climb mountains and even the 950 stairs to the Monastery from where we have a wonderful view. At the end we walked 16 kilometres and are completely exhausted when we leave Petra in the late afternoon. We are very happy to arrive at our old campground in Wadi Rum, and the next morning from there to Aqaba, definitely our last station in Jordan. We are surprised to hear that the day after we left Petra, the road we took from Petra was closed due to heavy snowfall! So we escaped exactly at the right time!

We had decided not to write always about the weather, but especially in Jordan this plan doesn’t work! Back to Aqaba, another heavy storm which made us change even our trip to Egypt. In the morning, we go to the harbour to get the speed ferry to Nuweiba at 1 pm. We are told they will not take cars today due to the rough sea and we have to take the slow ferry at midnight! We could understand that for the day before, but today, the sea is flat like a mirror and we cannot imagine that the weather is different in Nuweiba which is only 60 km away from us. So we wait another 3 hours, still hoping they change their mind. But without success! We come back to the harbour at 6 pm, buy our tickets, and wait again… at 9 pm our car is loaded to the ferry and after waiting another 4 hours we finally leave at 1 am. When the ship leaves, the sea became really rough, and the ferry takes 4 hours to Nuweiba (the speedboat would have taken only 1 hour). Sleeping is impossible in an overcrowded restaurant with hundreds of people listening to their mobiles, having loud discussions, and children running around the whole night…

We are happy to enter shore in Egypt at 4.30 am. We are very positively surprised to have our Egyptian visa within 15 minutes, without any waiting time. But fortunately, we didn’t know what is lying ahead of us… we drive our car to customs like the other (only) 9 cars. The customs officers do only a rough check of our car, all others have to totally unpack their cars. So we assume that we should be out within one hour. But now we find out that the customs office for the paperwork is not open yet and we have to wait another 2 hours! When finally the customs officers arrive, we find out that the insurance agents will only come later… And all this waiting in a very cold and windy weather (again the weather). At 9 am we finally leave the harbour after 4 ½ hours and are happy to be finally in Egypt.

Even with the mixed weather, we had a great ten days in Jordan. We really enjoyed the spectacular nature as well as the very friendly people we met, especially in the desert and mountains. We covered 1400 km and endless hours walking.