Jordan
Magical Petra at 6 AM
05 / May / 2010
After a few days at the Dead Sea - floating like a bubble in that sea, saturated with salt and minerals, is always a funny experience - we finally arrive at the site of Petra. Do not mind the amount of buses parked at the entrance or you'd be tempted to run away! Instead, we enter Petra at 6am the morning after, right at opening time, to enjoy a peaceful and lonely walk through the Siq (a 1,2 km canyon) leading to the magnificent Treasury, the 43 m high tomb carved out of iron-laden sandstones. Petra is truly a unique place where you can't stop yourself but imagine the life here at the time of the Nabataeans. The site is large enough to walk and hike for hours, making an early start is in that sense a wise decision. Climbing to the High Place of Sacrifice gives us a long and quite exhausting hike through steps carved into the rocks, but what a reward once we are up hill to view the whole valley of Petra! The magic of this place makes it one of our favorite since we started this strip.
Only downside of Petra is its entry price: 33€ per person nowadays, then from November 2010 the entry ticket will go up to 55€ or even 90€ if you are visiting Jordan for one day only. It seems to us that being listed as one of the world's seven wonders allows them to charge extraordinary prices unfortunately.
Just 60 km south of Petra, we get in Wadi Rum desert. Passing by the visitors center (as useless as usual!), we drive through the small village of Rum, last post before the sand tracks start. All of a sudden, we are both kind of stopped as we are about to drive off sand. Small hesitation maybe on how to handle this new type of ground? It takes about 10 min to make up our mind, switch to four-wheel-drive, decrease the tyre pressure and off we go into the blistering hot desert! The first part of the desert looks like a highway of sand tracks leading in all different directions. But soon enough the tracks fade away to let us experiment real off road driving. Barry adapts his driving style very quickly to the sandy dunes, while Val tries her best to make sense of the GPS and gives proper navigation directions to the pilot! Fun experience for three days, doing wild camping wherever we feel like and going around as much as we can to see most of the landscapes the superb desert of L.E Laurence has to offer. While we gain confidence, the last day a crazy thought crosses our mind: driving further south through the desert to reach somehow the city of Aqaba. What we don't foresee when making this ambitious plan is the enormous chain of mountains lying down there and making our crossing impossible. After 3 hours, reason takes over, we finally give it up and head back using our own track to the last camp. Well, you learn every day!
At the end of our stay in the Middle East, we find Jordan too expensive. You can clearly see that Jordan is victim of its own fame: mass tourism has the side effect of increasing prices while decreasing authenticity. Having said that, the sites remain beautiful to visit but could do with waste bins. There's litter everywhere. The prices listed in the Lonely Planet are at least 50% off. Coach tourism is popular in Jordan therefore single travelers as us are not always as welcome as we were in Syria for example.
Only downside of Petra is its entry price: 33€ per person nowadays, then from November 2010 the entry ticket will go up to 55€ or even 90€ if you are visiting Jordan for one day only. It seems to us that being listed as one of the world's seven wonders allows them to charge extraordinary prices unfortunately.
Just 60 km south of Petra, we get in Wadi Rum desert. Passing by the visitors center (as useless as usual!), we drive through the small village of Rum, last post before the sand tracks start. All of a sudden, we are both kind of stopped as we are about to drive off sand. Small hesitation maybe on how to handle this new type of ground? It takes about 10 min to make up our mind, switch to four-wheel-drive, decrease the tyre pressure and off we go into the blistering hot desert! The first part of the desert looks like a highway of sand tracks leading in all different directions. But soon enough the tracks fade away to let us experiment real off road driving. Barry adapts his driving style very quickly to the sandy dunes, while Val tries her best to make sense of the GPS and gives proper navigation directions to the pilot! Fun experience for three days, doing wild camping wherever we feel like and going around as much as we can to see most of the landscapes the superb desert of L.E Laurence has to offer. While we gain confidence, the last day a crazy thought crosses our mind: driving further south through the desert to reach somehow the city of Aqaba. What we don't foresee when making this ambitious plan is the enormous chain of mountains lying down there and making our crossing impossible. After 3 hours, reason takes over, we finally give it up and head back using our own track to the last camp. Well, you learn every day!
At the end of our stay in the Middle East, we find Jordan too expensive. You can clearly see that Jordan is victim of its own fame: mass tourism has the side effect of increasing prices while decreasing authenticity. Having said that, the sites remain beautiful to visit but could do with waste bins. There's litter everywhere. The prices listed in the Lonely Planet are at least 50% off. Coach tourism is popular in Jordan therefore single travelers as us are not always as welcome as we were in Syria for example.
Ahlan wa sahlan! - Welcome to Jordan!
25 / Apr / 2010
After spending a few nights at Crac des Chevaliers, we are ready for the desert and find our next warm welcome in Palmyra, central Syria. Abu Omar's friend was expecting us and we met at the doorstep of the hotel. While we check in, we are offered tea and a quick lunch is prepared because we look a little hungry. With full stomachs and our luggage in the room we jump in the car and set of for the Citadel to enjoy the view before sunset. By sundown we were in the middle of the ruins which are beautiful at this time of day - a real must see. The ruins are from the Roman time and walking through you can imagine what Palmyra (the City of Palms) must have been like many, many years ago. This was the time of caravans traveling between the Mediterranean, Mesopotamia and Arabia.
At breakfast the next morning we meet an unusual couple: John is 74 and Mora is 80. She is born in South Africa, lived in Malawi and being back to England for 30 years she keeps on traveling the world with local transport. Believe it or not this old couple goes around Syria and Jordan by local bus, managing to find their way around thanks to experience gathered on journeys around the world.
Following the advice of a French business man who is spending a year in Syria doing voluntary work with the Jesuits, we go deeper into the desert to reach the monastery St Moses the Ethiopian in Mar Musa. To our surprise this monastery from the 6th century, hidden in the mountains, is actually located in the middle of a huge military zone with troops training, tanks and fighter planes flying over. Are they keeping an eye on us or should we just relax?
The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus is worth more than a couple of hours of your day. The place is amazing and has a long history. It is one of the holiest in the Islamic world. Valerie could experience what it is to be a Muslim woman as she has to wear a dress completely covering herself (body and head) in order to enter the mosque. At the end of the visit a Syrian girl surprises us and asks if she can take a picture of Val. Before we know it several people want to have their picture taken with us. The mix of people you meet around the mosque in the old city is vast. People from Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, from the most conservative type (women completely covered) to the modern western way of dressing. There are several touristic tours you can walk in the old city but we just walked around and got "lost". This way we end up on places that you otherwise simply do not get to see. We loved the authenticity and variety of Damascus.
Getting into Jordan is almost easier than getting out of Syria, at least that is our experience. Before collecting the necessary stamps in Jordan the car is carefully inspected, this time from underneath. Then the usual happens: change money, get insurance for the car, clear customs for the car (stamping the carnet the passage), get our visas and off we are.
The first things that strike us is that people drive much slower, more defensive and they love speed bumps! We feel many of them on our way to Jerash. We were temped to skip the ruins this time, when you saw one you think you have seen them all, but not visiting the Roman ruins of Jerash would have been a mistake. This large site, that we advise not to visit by midday (+35 degrees) like we did, is stunning with beautifully preserved.
When we enter Amman and drive through the middle of the city, there it is: BURGER KING. The day we left the Netherlands Barry was dying for a Whopper and never got one until Amman in Jordan. Imagine the taste of the best burger and double it, that's how good it tasted!
In Amman we spend the night at Theodor Schneller School. The motto of the school, started in 1860 by Johann Ludwig Schneller in Jerusalem, is learning to live in peace. This institution welcomes Christian and Muslim children to live together. They are orphan, or come from refugee families (the school is situated on the outskirts of a Palestinian refugee camp), or from family in difficult situation. Many of the children are marked with the experience of violence. Read more about this school on their website: www.evs-online.org
At breakfast the next morning we meet an unusual couple: John is 74 and Mora is 80. She is born in South Africa, lived in Malawi and being back to England for 30 years she keeps on traveling the world with local transport. Believe it or not this old couple goes around Syria and Jordan by local bus, managing to find their way around thanks to experience gathered on journeys around the world.
Following the advice of a French business man who is spending a year in Syria doing voluntary work with the Jesuits, we go deeper into the desert to reach the monastery St Moses the Ethiopian in Mar Musa. To our surprise this monastery from the 6th century, hidden in the mountains, is actually located in the middle of a huge military zone with troops training, tanks and fighter planes flying over. Are they keeping an eye on us or should we just relax?
The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus is worth more than a couple of hours of your day. The place is amazing and has a long history. It is one of the holiest in the Islamic world. Valerie could experience what it is to be a Muslim woman as she has to wear a dress completely covering herself (body and head) in order to enter the mosque. At the end of the visit a Syrian girl surprises us and asks if she can take a picture of Val. Before we know it several people want to have their picture taken with us. The mix of people you meet around the mosque in the old city is vast. People from Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, from the most conservative type (women completely covered) to the modern western way of dressing. There are several touristic tours you can walk in the old city but we just walked around and got "lost". This way we end up on places that you otherwise simply do not get to see. We loved the authenticity and variety of Damascus.
Getting into Jordan is almost easier than getting out of Syria, at least that is our experience. Before collecting the necessary stamps in Jordan the car is carefully inspected, this time from underneath. Then the usual happens: change money, get insurance for the car, clear customs for the car (stamping the carnet the passage), get our visas and off we are.
The first things that strike us is that people drive much slower, more defensive and they love speed bumps! We feel many of them on our way to Jerash. We were temped to skip the ruins this time, when you saw one you think you have seen them all, but not visiting the Roman ruins of Jerash would have been a mistake. This large site, that we advise not to visit by midday (+35 degrees) like we did, is stunning with beautifully preserved.
When we enter Amman and drive through the middle of the city, there it is: BURGER KING. The day we left the Netherlands Barry was dying for a Whopper and never got one until Amman in Jordan. Imagine the taste of the best burger and double it, that's how good it tasted!
In Amman we spend the night at Theodor Schneller School. The motto of the school, started in 1860 by Johann Ludwig Schneller in Jerusalem, is learning to live in peace. This institution welcomes Christian and Muslim children to live together. They are orphan, or come from refugee families (the school is situated on the outskirts of a Palestinian refugee camp), or from family in difficult situation. Many of the children are marked with the experience of violence. Read more about this school on their website: www.evs-online.org