Amman
I arrived at Amman, capital of Jordan, the 16th of April. Of course, and as usual, it was late night, dark as a monkey's ass, and I got again ripped off by a unscrupulous taxi driver. As a matter of fact, I was so sleepy, tired, dirty and smelly that I could only dream of a bed to crash in, so I booked a room in the first hostel I saw. Man, you wouldn't believe what a shithole of a place. The bed was so dirty that I unrolled my sleeping bag and I decided to sleep on the floor, and the room was so dark and spooky that my camera flash wouldn't be able to light it up enough to take a shot. This hostel should be displayed in the dictionary under the entry: "awful". The day after I switched accommodations of course.
Amman itself has little to show. Just like any other arab city: smelly, messy, dirty, busy, dirty, trafficked, dirty and dirty.
After three days I couldn't stand that shit any longer, so I decided to speed up my way south towards the Sinai desert (in Egypt) where I had spent a great week seven years ago with my friends Nicholas and Tomas Zlotnik. But before going further south, I spent a morning floating up by the Dead Sea shore. As you probably know, the Dead Sea is a 33% salt-saturated substance, so in fact the water in almost solid. It's creamish solid, and when you get out of the water and get dried up in the sun, there is a greasy foil left covering your skin, just like if you'd dived into a huge Nivea pool. I had fun there, floating naked by myself without a soul anywhere at sight's distance, and then hitchhiking my way back to Amman. A truck driver picked me up by the highway and went on telling me about his three wives and 26 sons and daughters, but that's a whole another story...
Anyway, like I said I was willing to speed up my traveling pace a bit so I went out for a last night out with couple of friends I met at the hostel (an American and a New Zealander heading north towards Syria), and I grabbed a bus early the next morning.
But there was a surprise ambushing me in the southern region of the country... oh yes there was... |
General lookout of Amman. As you can see, it's a shapeless mass of houses built up all over the hills
Bad picture of the Dead Sea. The shore you see across the lake is Israel (or Palestine, as you better say around here...)
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Petra
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David Rico, if you're reading this text, let me tell you this: you don't know what you've missed out man. David is an old buddy from college. He has been living in Israel for the last few months working for the blood-sucking... errr I mean consulting company Accenture. He was supposed to meet me in Petra around this time of the year, but he finally went back to Spain couple of weeks ago to get started all the preparations for his future wedding (congratulations bro!).
Petra... oh man... Have you seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Do you remember the last scenes of the film, where he rides a horse through a deep canyon and, eventually, the canyon opens up into an open yard hiding a rose-red colored temple carved in the stone? well, that is Petra's entrance (also known as The Treasury)... And there is a hell a lot more to see further beyond...
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You walk for over a kilometer through very narrow and very tall natural canyons...
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And keep walking...
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The Treasury: It's so beautiful... and it was built 2000 years ago!
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Petra ranks up with Egypt's pyramids and Syria's Palmyra as the Middle East jewels (beats both in my opinion). Basically, it's a bunch of narrow canyons where an ancient civilization called the Nabeteans created an extensive complex of temples carved up in the rock during the I century BC. Now a days, it's Jordan's number one touristic attraction. Petra had been forgotten by the whole world (other than the local bedouins and their camels dwelling in the area) until a swiss explorer called Jean Louise Burckhardt rediscovered it for our pleasure early XIX century. God bless ole good Jean Louise!
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That thing is like a 5 storeys building
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And they are everywhere!
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In the picture they look small, but the temple on the right (with the stair case) is like a 7 storeys building. This shot was taking from a kilometer away.
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Close up detail
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You need two days to fully walk throughout the whole area, from The Treasury (entrance) to The Monastery (back-end). In fact, you've got to climb up 850 stairs to reach the damn monastery, but trust me it's well worthy. It was late afternoon when I got there, and I climbed up a hill for better views and a bit of loneliness (tons of tourists around). I had one of the best naps of my life there, with a wonderful scenery at my feet.
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The Monastery
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The Monastery from another angle
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The view from up there. You feel like an eagle or something.
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On my way back, I was so tired that I rented a camel for the 4kms ride back to the site entrance. Bad idea, bad idea indeed. The bloody camel not only stank on God knows what, but was also the most uncomfortable thing you could ride on. How can the bedouins ride across vast distances on those beasts? I suffered from an incipient pain right in my royals for the rest of the evening...
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Indiana Yague an the Last Pain in the Balls
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Just a beautiful picture of a donkey ridding through Petra
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Wadi Rum desert
Anyway, two days later I booked a tour around the southern desert of Jordan: Wadi Rum. It is a national park, so nothing can be constructed within the area, and the only meanings to go inside is by hiring a 4WD car driver, which I did for a reasonable price...
I cannot describe what I experienced in Wadi Rum. I know I have used the terms "beautiful", "stunning", "awe-inspiring", etc on this web site before, but nothing compares to that desert. It is, simply, the most beautiful thing I have seen in my 27 years of life. Petra is a mere pastime compared to this desert.
I will try to describe it: Have you seen a film displaying the Mars landscape? you know, with all that deep red sand covering everything, and high rocky mountains popping out here and there in the background? well, that is Wadi Rum. The sand is so reddish that it seems like construction brick powder. The vastness and emptiness is so that blows your mind away, while you cannot help but stare at it and let your thoughts blow. In contrast, far in the horizon, a lonely bedouin rides across the land on his camel
Nop, I cannot describe it out. I will let you simply have a look to some pictures I took. I wish I was a professional photographer, as this has got to be the most picturesque place in the world. I could not help myself from shooting over two hundred photos is less than 48 hours. It's just that spectacular.
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Look at the color of the sand. These pictures have NOT been edited in any way
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Have you ever seen anything like this?
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Only one drawback: we got for two hours in the middle of a sandstorm (a mild one, mind you). We were covered with sand from head to toes, couldn't open our eyes, could barely breath. Everything fills with dust and sand, and you cannot see 20 meters away. Bad, very bad stuff. But after that, the sky cleared up, and we got to see the sunset... oh man... the red sand turned purple, and it was a whole new performance going on right in front of you.
Picture on the right: The dust cloud approaching in the horizon. Time to search for cover!
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Isn't it just like Mars?
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Evocative on another worlds
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Like I said, simply the most beautiful place I have ever been
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The sunset, and its array of colors, will stay forged in my mind forever.
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Jesus Christ! I just could not stop shooting photos!. I have over 200, all of them just as beautiful as this one!
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Or this one
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Imagine this view 360 degrees around you, as far as your sight can go...
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At night, the stars were bright as candles, thousands of them, as no artificial light nor pollution was to be seen in dozens of kilometers around us. Terrific!
Without a single doubt, Wadi Rum has been so far the highlight of this around-the-world journey. I have promised myself I will bring my girlfriend Brani here one day. These sort of things are meant to be shared.
So, right now I am in Aqaba, a coast resorty town in the southern tip of Jordan (nothing worth mentioning about this place: beach and hotels, that's it), awaiting for my boat to sail off across the Red Sea to arrive tomorrow afternoon at the Sinai coasts, and thus entering in my last destination (Egypt) of this Istanbul-to-Cairo first stage of my trip.
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The Wadi Rum desert, of course. Inspiring beyond imagination, second to none. Must be seen to believe it.
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