Life In The Desert & Death In The Sea

Our first view of the Dead Sea.

We had long decided, after my visit to Oman, that when Claire got vacation time from the University she'd drop in for a visit, round about a week. It had previously been arranged that her friend Bev, a British teacher also employed at the same Uni, would be joining her. There was much they wanted to see in Jordan. However, by the time Eid ul Adha rolled around, her school had done so much d*cking around with her schedule that a last minute, 3-day trip was our only option, and sadly Bev could not make this one. Shadi and I were still working on building our furniture (we'd come to the conclusion that buying expensive, arabic style furniture for our apartment when we were in all likelihood leaving the the States in less than 6 months was wasteful and so had chosen to DIY what things we needed instead) and had recently rescued 2 new kittens; this, as you can probably assume, was not the best condition to play host to a guest. After some net-research, Claire, Shadi, and I chose a well-ranked hotel in the downtown area of Amman to be our home base while we took the Dallas Tours trip to Petra and the Wadi Rum, as well as perhaps visiting several Biblical locations like Umm Qais and Bethany-on-the-Jordan. We don't have a vehicle of our own, deeming it too expensive and unnecessary since I am the only license holder of the two of us and Shadi would have most need of it commuting to Amman everyday, so we took several buses to the airport arriving a few minutes after Claire's flight was to arrive. Most planes arrive late to Queen Alia Airport, so we were surprised to find her already awaiting us, fully decked out in a lovely Omani abaya. Claire has a car back in Oman, a real nice French Renault, and so I was slightly worried that traveling by Jordanian standard transportation would not be very accommodating. She didn't seem perturbed, however, and so I scarcely gave it a thought the rest of the trip. I had educated her on the layout of Jordan and its eccentricities, but she was still surprised at a few things, such as the size of the feral cats and their spread. Omani ferals are rather thin, resembling Egyptian & Arabian Mau's more than our common Baladi breeds here. Also, the dirt of even a large, modern city was I'm sure unexpected to her as Oman is a very VERY clean place; sand is not the same as soil mixed with scattered garbage.

Shadi and I had scouted out our hotel in advance before collecting Claire as we had brought our luggage and etc with us from Irbid while escorting my mother and brother-in-law to the travel agency down the street from our midtown haunts that morning. They were off to a week or so in Medina to settle Thamer's residency issues and visit Baba Hassan. All of us, including Cousin Hamoode, had a large breakfast/lunch at Hashem before seeing them off. Afterwards we dropped off our luggage, tried out the shower accommodations in our hotel suite which turned out to be a bathroom closet with a shower head hanging off the wall and a strange water-heating appliance.

After returning to midtown from the airport, and unpacking gifts Claire had brought from both Oman and her recent trip to Sri Lanka, we decided to hit a popular mideast restaurant chain Shadi and I had grown fond of called Tche Tche. It was a nice hike up the hill to 1st Circle my husband had not warned us of, and quite a shock for both Claire and I to notice that it was the pet-store quarter in a terrible condition. Small, expensive breed puppies chained outside and dozens of birds in super-small cages. At least if we looked over the tops of those buildings we could see the brightly lit Amman Citadel rising over the Midtown valley. Dinner was lovely and quite tasty, although as usual served rather late for being a mostly empty restaurant and something that takes 15 minutes to make. The televisions surrounding us either blared Egyptian and Lebanese music videos or a speech given in Arablish by a Jordanian official. The one problem with our choice to stay in Amman during Claire's visit was the rather timely announcement by the government that it would be raising fuel prices beginning with the winter. Jordan is a slow economy, and populated with mostly low-income citizens. Gas powers everything here, and without being an oil-producing Arab nation, they experience the same car fuel prices we do in both the States and Europe. Natural gas runs their cooking appliances, space heaters, water heaters, and the electric grid all across the country. Needless to say this caused a major upset in the country, and a series of random yet large protests had erupted all over the place the week prior to our dinner. The next day a protest the scale of the previous MB hosted one several months before was planned for the exact place we were spending 2 nights; the police and national guard had already closed the main circle that led to this place 2 days ago, trying to prevent large numbers. It was imperative we be out of Dodge by noon that Friday, when the protest was due to start immediately after Jummah. There was no danger to us; protests here are largely peaceful and uneventful for an Arab Spring country, but once it began there was no getting out of town and much of the midtown square would be closed, restaurants, souks and all. We slept early that night as our tour was due to leave around 5:30am, and we were required to be at the tour agency at 4.

My husband woke us at 2:30 after receiving a text from Dallas telling us that our tour had been canceled at the last minute. We did not find our why until late afternoon the same day, nor would we be refunded for another 3 days which severely cut into our vacation budget. While Shadi and Claire decided to catch up on sleep, I could not until I had solved the dilemma of finding something to make Claire's trip worthwhile. By breakfast time I had made a list of places, and after a nice meal on the rooftop restaurant we caught a cab to Madaba to see the Ma'in Hot Springs and finish off at the Dead Sea. We thought there would be buses to take us everywhere, but our cab driver informed us that most were not running today. We hired him as our full-day guide at 30JD and made it to Madaba only to be turned around several times due to a burgeoning protest in that city as well. It was a long drive through the rocky desert to get to Ma'in, an oasis right in the center, and our driver caught us up to speed with the major events and rumors of the day. The rumor of armed gunmen up north stopping cars and robbing them had us the most nervous, as well as finding out that our bus tour was canceled because the bus that had been scheduled to take us to Petra had been vandalized the night before. Thank goodness the desert was all sorts of distracting. Claire observed how strange it was to be driving through the land of Biblical history. Like walking over the footsteps of giants. From a high hill, just before reaching the Oasis, we got our first glimpse of the Dead Sea.

Squinting into the sun.

The falls of the community springs.

The lobster-cooking Family Pool.

View from the bottom of the Hot Springs Oasis.

Ma'in was a 10JD per person entrance fee, as it was a Spa Resort that was much more expensive to stay at. Our driver would wait patiently with his feet in the main pool of the Springs while we ran around in our makeshift swimclothes purchased at the Friday Market in Amman that morning. The existence of a large number of shabab made us weary to enter the pool, but having never been to a hot spring in my life and not wanting to waste the day waiting for them to depart, I led the charge. The water, as expected, was boiling hot and one of the strangest, but not unpleasant smelling water I've encountered yet. The minerals in the water had turned the cave behind the waterfall into a myriad of different colors, looking a lot like dripping paint cans. Pictures didn't turn out well for obvious reasons. We wanted to visit the family pool, but it was supercrowded, so Claire and I ventured to the "womens pool", which turned out to be a dirty-looking, tepid pool with a hastily man-made fall dripping into it to supply it. Again, as in Oman, as we took pictures of the sky from here we were asked to take no pictures, assuming we were photographing the uncovered women. Some women in attendance welcomed us and were surprised at our nationality. After 15 minutes we grew bored, dressed, and left to find my husband. Shadi had stayed at the family pool, and not long after we'd abandoned it, the family's there had too, leaving Shadi to boil like a lobster alone. We reunited with our driver and hit the gift shop to snag snacks to keep us whole until returning to Amman for dinner.

The drive from Ma'in to the shores of the Dead Sea was significantly shorter than Amman to Madaba, so we saved pictures and energy for the shoreline. We stopped at a drop-off to get our first snapshots, and not 20 minutes later we would regret having left it to locate the public beaches. Our budget had not been formed to include paying to get into a hotel beach, and we were unwilling to allow Claire to pay for all of us, so we hit the local spot where the cab driver's family had decided to spend the afternoon as well. A mistake on our part, one we won't be repeating if my Claire returns or my brother decides on visiting. The mud of the Dead Sea is known for its healing properties and ability to sell at high prices, but the copious and disturbing amount of GARBAGE stuck in it and floating around us on the shoreline would certainly not impress anyone. We witnessed locals tossing their plastic both into the sea and abandoning it by the shore. Our horror and miserable disappointment I'm sure was apparent to all. We had planned to wade into the water, but after seeing this, and trying the mud on my own hands resulted in the deepest salty dry-skin burn I'd ever experienced, we left the sea to take a snack with our driver's family, severely let down. I felt terrible for Claire, who'd indicated that the Dead Sea was on the top of her list to visit when she'd arrived. I didn't think the trash problem in this country extended this far.

A sunset view from the hill over the trashed shores; Israel/Palestine

We decided, quite rightly, to only take pictures of the un-blighted shores.

After being fed harissa, a syrupy coconut cake famous here, as well as super-hot tea and much fruit, we headed back to Amman. Shopping was not an option as we had forgotten that the protest during the day would encourage many businesses to close during the duration even up till the next day. We had a quick meal at Hashem to get Claire some good Levantine falafil and hummus, then upon her suggestion hit Afra, a cafe and hookah bar for some after-dinner tapas. The place was damned near empty, so we hung for a few hours while deciding on the final days' events. We'd sleep in that night and hit the Amman Citadel and the Roman Ampitheater before rushing her to the airport to return to Oman.

View from the visitor center at Jabal al Qa'la

A map of the Biblical region of Jordan into Israel/Palestine.

Despite similarities, NOT a mosque. Before Levantine Islamic architecture caught up with the Gulf, this was characteristic of a palace entrance.

Typical remnants of Roman columns.