Farewell Tour of Jordan

King's Highway, Jordan
(Madaba, Macchareus, Mujib, Kerak, Wadi Musa)

From an Ammani evening

As we walked around the Castle Hill in Amman last night, it occurred to me that several of my favorite pictures from Jordan were taken on that hill. This morning, as we were winding our way through southern Madaba and Jabal Bani Hamida, I realized that while I was showing Wade all my favorite places in Jordan, I'm also saying goodbye.

From Farewell Tour

I'm excited about my move to Cairo for a CASA Fellowship. It's a great honor and a fabulous opportunity to immerse myself in Standard Arabic (as much as that's even possible) and learn the Egyptian dialect that I find so challenging. But there are so many things I love about Jordan, so many things I haven't seen (Umm aj-Jammal, Shaumari Reserve, etc.), so many things I haven't done (Petra-Wadi Araba by camel, climb Jabal Rum and the tallest mountain in Jordan, etc.), so many friends I'm going to miss. I've spent 4 years of my life here, and that's no small thing. So if my photos are captioned with nostalgia, well, it's a fair representation of how I'm feeling these days.

From Farewell Tour

Friends With Cars

Jordan's Eastern desert

From Venturing East

It's good to have friends with cars. I can't be stuck in the city indefinitely, and neither can my roommate Mel. We need frequent doses of nature, of broad vistas, of goats and camels and other things that make this Jordan, and if we're lucky, a bit of green. We got all that and more today.

Mel's friend A is afraid that his students will find his pictures on the Web, so I won't mention his name. He's got a car, though, and today's trip was his excellent idea. When Mel said they were going to Azraq, I was really jealous. Much as I love my teaching job at Ruwwad, Saturday afternoons can be an inconvenient time. But unexpectedly, my class was cancelled and I was able to go after all.

From Venturing East

Of course, though our destination was Azraq Oasis, that didn't keep us from making a few stops along the way. I mean, when you see Qasr Harranah rise up out of the desert, how could you not stop? With our residence permits, it cost the four of us no more than one dinar to see three castles, and as Mel pointed out, the stone was so photogenic. For the details, click on any of these photos to check out my Web album on Picasa, and don't forget to read the captions!

From Venturing East

Half way to Qasr Amra, we stumbled across this herd of camels along the roadway, including the most strikingly adorable babies. The one to the far right in this picture was just two days old, and could barely keep his balance on his little feet. We spent almost half an hour following them around taking pictures.

From Venturing East

Next on our tour, the deceptively simple little Qasr Amra. This little pleasure retreat built by an Ummayad caliph to escape the intrigues of the Damascus court was probably a hunting lodge, judging by the scenes of hunting in its amazing frescoes. But that's not all that happened there, with it's Roman-style baths and, well....

From Venturing East

Our Muslim friends had a little difficulty believing that this was actually an Islamic building, insisting that it must have been built by the Romans or the Byzantines, maybe even the Greeks, because a Muslim leader would never paint such things on his walls. But, after all, the Abbasids did justify their toppling of the Ummayyad Caliphate with claims that the caliphs in Damascus had strayed too far from their duties and obligations as good Muslim leaders! And Islamic philosophy certainly holds that kings are inevitably corrupted by the power of their positions.

But we moved on...

From Venturing East

...to beautiful Azraq Oasis! Well, ordinarily it's beautiful. Unfortunately, it was ravaged by a fire, perhaps deliberately set, last October, and the marshlands have barely begun to recover. The blackened trees did make stunning photography, though!

From Venturing East

And I thought it was worth it just for the stroll through the exhibit at the visitors' center. Jordan is a country where criticism of the government is approached with great caution, but the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature seems to have a free pass in Azraq. After showing the fascinating diversity of the region at the beginning of last century, including how water buffalos brought by Chechan refugees actually made the oasis a more hospitable place for migrating birds, they then proceeded to pan the Jordanian government for agreeing to protect Azraq Oasis, and then draining it of unsustainable amounts of water for the faucets of Irbid and Amman. But I loved their take-away lesson: There will be enough water to help sustain people indefinitely if we leave enough water in Azraq to sustain the native and migrating birds like this one:

From Venturing East

Then we made our way back via A's friend's farm in Mafraq for some sunset shots and a delicious little supper of labnah, homemade olive oil and eggs with bread.

From Venturing East

I only wish Ryan were still here. We'd been talking for months about renting a car and doing this same trip....

Wadi Dana Unshot

Wadi Dana, Kerak, Jordan

It turns out that I'm still not fully on board the digital revolution. With my old-fashioned film camera, I changed my battery not more than once a year, and then usually just because the battery had expired, not because it was used up. So I wasn't thinking about batteries when I chucked my new digital camera in my bag....

When I arrived at Dana Village, my camera had just enough juice to push out the lense ... but not quite enough to close it again! Much to my embarrassment, I'm back to stealing other people's photos from Facebook.

From Dana to Feynan

Not only that, but of course there were dozens of great shots I saw on my way down the valley that I just wish I could take.... But I guess that just gives me an excuse to do the hike again!

It's a longer route than I usually do in Jordan - 18km or so - but all downhill. From Dana Village to Feynan Ego-Lodge is a drop in altitude of about a kilometer, from Kerak Plateau above sea level to Wadi Araba below sea level. (Wadi Araba is the region between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea.) Wadi Dana is also a dry wadi, unlike the narrow, wet wadis that Tareef Cycling Club tends to prefer for hiking. Though still carved by water, Wadi Dana is less of a canyon and more of a valley, broad and U-shaped with gentle gravel slopes instead of steep rock walls. The vegetation was different, too, more widely scattered, with even some broad slopes of new grass peeking up among the scree.

From Dana to Feynan

Everywhere I turned, there were these stark, bare trees, as well.

We finished the trip with a good deed. Dr. Ramzi and his brother, who organize the trips for Walking Jordan, are very interested in getting the money and cast-offs of rich Jordanians in Amman out to the desperately poor who need them in the countryside, as well as doing other projects like trash pick-up in Orjan. One of the families they've recently hosted set up a Bedouin tent for us and served us mensef, the left-overs of which will feed them for days. Some hikers also brought along second-hand clothes and other things to give away.

From Dana to Feynan

Top Down

Wadi Al-Ghwayr Revisited

From Top Down

Shobak --> Wadi Araba

This was an awesome trip down Wadi Araba. It was almost like three different wadis. At the top, we saw these awesome enormous boulders littering the ravine floor, and you can hardly imagine what force the water must rush down the valley with to make these boulders do these things!

From Top Down

Then, a little further down, you had a siq like you find at the ceremonial entrance to Petra, but with incredible tracings of dark stone like some sort of splatter painting you'd do as a child. It was easy to see why men began to paint on cave walls, with these kinds of stone faces around them!

From Top Down

Then, it seemed like we were stepping beneath the water table, as you could see first water, then algae, then actual plants oozing out of the bare rock face.

From Top Down

I wish I had brought my own camera, because as beautiful as these pictures from my friends are, I wasn't able to capture some of the fascinating things we saw.
Then, as we got down to the parts of the wadi I'd hiked before, we saw yet another landscape of rock and scree, goats and camels.

From Top Down

Downsides of an SLR

or, If I Only Had a Digital Camera!

From Philip Goes North

Amman, Jordan

I've been teased a lot in the last few years for still having one of those old-fashioned film cameras, and for most of that time, I've been able to counter that it takes better pictures than some cheap digital camera. That claim's getting harder to make, especially in Jordan. I don't know if it's the way the vendors take care of the film before I purchase it, or the heat I subject it to after I've purchased it and taken pictures, or the quality of the developing, but it seems that all the photos I've taken in Jordan this time around have been grainy and poor quality. They tend to be washed out, too, even with my UV-protected and polarized lenses. I think this is probably because I can't find a place to purchase 400-speed film in Jordan. Every shopkeeper I try to ask says, "The sun is so bright in Jordan, you don't need 400-speed film!" But I think using 200-speed is over-exposing my film. (Not to mention that sometimes I want to take indoor pictures of kids whizzing around, or people dancing, for example.)

The other problem with film cameras is the time it takes to finish a roll of film and develop it. I just developed seven rolls of film this week, the best of which I've uploaded to Picasa. These photos go back months, all the way to our first trip with Tareef Cycling Club: Biking in Wadi Musa and Hiking in Wadi al-Ghwayr. Most of the other pictures are more recent, from the trek down the King's Highway with Philip, John and Ann, from my trip with Philip to Umm Qais and Jerash, and from the day that Ryan, John and I rented a car to go to Ajlun, Pella and Umm Qais. There are still a few more pictures left in my camera, and I'm waiting to get the pictures I took with Philip and Ryan's cameras!

From Ryan's Rental

Panorama to Mujib

Ma'een -> Dead Sea -> Wadi Mujib, Jordan

The last time we cycled down the Dead Sea Panorama Road, I got three quarters of the way down the hill and realized that every muscle in my body was tensed almost to the point of cramping. Whether consciously or not quite, I was terrified of wiping out the whole way down. This time, although there were plenty of people who passed me on the way down, I was much more relaxed. I feel much more confident of my balance and competence on a bike now.

At least on the downhill, anyway.

The second half of the trip, though, South along the Dead Sea to Wadi Mujib, was a very different story. For one thing, it was mostly uphill, and on all three hills I eventually got down to first gear and had to disembark and walk, and on the last hill, I just gave up altogether and flagged down Nader. Ammar, however, was having none of that! When he found me in Nader's truck, he read me the riot act, and convinced me to get back on the bike, which I'm glad I did (especially since it was all downhill again from there!)

Donkey Ravine

or, Philip Communing With Nature

From Wadi Himara

Wadi Himara, Dead Sea, Jordan

Finally, another hiking trip on a Friday! This was a Bike & Hike day, actually, starting from near the Baptism Site, taking the bikes down to the Panorama Road, and then hiking up into Wadi Himara (which means, Donkey Ravine). This is the first Bike & Hike I've been able to do, and as I was coming up that last hill to the Panorama Road, I started to wonder if I really wanted to then hike up a wadi. But when we got off the buses at the bottom of Wadi Himara and started in, it was like a whole different trip on a whole different day. I can't tell you how many times I completely forgot that we'd even been biking. I don't know if it was the scenery and the fresh air, or the fantastic company, but I got a substantial second wind.

I think, perhaps, that I may have worn Philip out this week, though. It's true that I didn't warn him to bring crick-stompin' shoes, so he only had the sneakers he has to wear home on the plane tomorrow, but this was a hike you actually could do without getting your feet wet. Nevertheless, when it started to get wet, Philip decided to sit and commune with nature till we came back down, and he insisted that I go on up the ravine, so eventually I did. He says he had a wonderful time sitting there in nature, and I can certainly believe it.

As for me, I had a wonderful time with Emily and her father, visiting from Chicago. And while he was hauling people up cliffs, Emily and I had some long, therapeutic girl talk!

More pictures will be coming when I get mine developed, and Philip sends me his!

From Wadi Himara

P.S. When I got to Safeway this morning, one of my Tareef friends comes up to me and says, "What's my name?" Apparently, I'd had Ammar and Raslan confused again, and it was in fact Ammar and not Raslan who, two weeks ago, commented on how much I had improved, and I got their names mixed up on my blog. Apologies. It's been fixed now. But I could definitely tell today that I am improving, because I've done the biking stretch a couple times before, and it was easier than ever today!

On Biking

Mount Nebo, Madaba, Jordan

From Mount Nebo to Wadi Mujib

Much to my surprise, though perhaps not surprisingly given both my nature and nurture, I've got a competitive streak and a need for speed!

I mean, with the exception of that first trip in Wadi Musa, I've been very pleased to find that I'm usually ahead of the middle of the pack. And I have a practical reason for passing people along the way: I know that my reaction time is not very fast, and I'm afraid that if I get stuck behind someone else, I'll wipe us both out. Even moreso on a precipitous downhill like the road down from Mount Nebo. At least four people did have wipe-outs, and while that may have been because there were more people with less experience than usual, it still made me want to get ahead of anyone I got too close to. And yet, every time I pass someone, I hear Dad's Goose and Maverick impression in the back of my head....

"I've got a neeeeeed ... a neeeeeed ... for speeeeeed!"

Maybe it has something to do with Dad's mantra I grew up with on the sailboat: Any two vessels on a similar tack is a race. Ergo, any two bikes going to the same destination is a race.

In fact, I learned a lot more than just sailing from Dad. I learned a surprising amount about bikes! On this trip and the last one, I found myself handing out all kinds of instruction and advice on bikes. Your seat should be high enough that your knee is straight when the pedal's at its lowest point; you get more power that way. When you start to go uphill, downshift so that you're never pedaling either too hard or too fast; use your mechanical advantage. Your helmet's on backwards; it's more aerodynamic the other way around. It was maybe the sixth time I'd said, "It's all physics!" in just four hours that I realized how much I sounded like my father. So, you see, Dad, I really was listening to you all these years, even when I was rolling my eyes!

From Mount Nebo to Wadi Mujib

Crick-Stompin' Shoes

...or, What Protests?

Wadi al-Kerak near the Dead Sea, Jordan

On Protests
I've been getting messages from Germany, Switzerland and the USA concerned about my safety here in this volatile part of the world. And yes, it's true, there were protests in Amman today. The US Embassy sent out warden messages advising caution:

The Arab Islamic Leaders asked the people to demonstrate over all countries and they called it the anger day against Israel and to support Gaza, so in Jordan the people will demonstrate after the pray and start from the biggest mosque in each province, in Amman from the Al-Husseini Mosque to the Amman Municipality building.

I understand that tear gas was fired into the crowds again at the Israeli Embassy today. One of our friends from Tareef Cycling Club, Jad Madi, was there and has put up his photographs on his blog. But the photos of my Friday midday are far more serene:

From Wadi al-Kerak

This weekend, Tareef Cycling Club left the bicycles at home and opted for hiking far, far away at the other end of the Dead Sea. And this time, I came prepared with my crick-stompin' shoes! (For those of you who didn't grow up in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, a "crick" is what some parts of the country call a "creek" but may also describe a "stream.")

On Jordanian Customer Service
You see, when we went hiking in Wadi al-Ghwayr, I didn't know that I would not be able to avoid getting my feet wet, and I got blisters, and my hiking boots were wet for more than a week. So, last night, I went to Mecca Mall to get a pair of shoes that I could hike in but that were meant to get wet. I knew just where I would find these shoes, and made a bee-line to Champions, where I explained what I was looking for. "Water shoes?" says the salesman, without even looking around. "No. We don't have anything like that." So I walked all around the entire Mecca Mall, went into every shop with shoes, and found nothing but ordinary trainers. So I thought, well, I don't know of anywhere else in Amman where I'm likely to find just what I'm looking for, so I'll go back to Champions and get a closer look. Guess what? I found a dozen styles of shoes meant for the water! And I found a pair that were perfect. No blisters!

On Hiking
So this is the biggest crowd I saw on Friday, today's incarnation of Tareef Cycling Club:

From Wadi al-Kerak

It was a perfect day for hiking, about 19C down below sea level, sunny, and green. The scenery is just beautiful, very green because of the crick we were stompin', sometimes with boxy, wind-scoured rock walls, sometimes with more curvaceous water-carved siqs that evoke the landscape of Petra. I saw several different species of frog in different shades of green and brown, and some freshwater crabs, and at one point a bird flew over head that looked very much like a North American blue heron from the bottom of the canyon.

It did seem, at times, to be the same as Wadi al-Ghwayr, but when we came to our lunch spot, with this gorgeous waterfall and palm trees, we agreed that it was much more spectacular. The company was pretty good, too. Stephanie brought her three German roommates along on the trip, Sina, Lena and Theresa, and they spoke a lot of German to each other and some with me. To my chagrin, however, when I tried at the beginning of the trip to translate Ammar's Arabic description of the trip into German for them, I failed miserably. Oh, sure, I could get the first sentence out in decent German. But after that I switched back to Arabic without even noticing, until finally Sina said, "In English! In English!" Embarrassing. I need a lot more German practice! Unfortunately, the girls are leaving soon, with the semester over, and I'll have to find new Germans to pester with my crazy, Arabized, Swiss-influenced German!

It was the perfect day, and perfect timing to get out of Amman. The closest we ever came to the issue of Palestine was watching the sun set over the Dead Sea and the West Bank. It looks so peaceful from Jordan's Dead Sea Highway!

From Wadi al-Kerak

...I'm much more comfortable hiking!

Wadi Ghwayr, a tributary of Wadi Araba, Jordan

From Hiking in Wadi Araba

This is more my pace, a nice moderate hike up the Wadi Ghwayr, a tributary valley to the Wadi Araba. I only wish I'd known in advance that we'd be wading in the stream on the way up, or I would have picked up some hiking sandals instead of wearing my hiking boots, which gave me blisters when they got wet, and are going to take days to dry!

I couldn't help but think, as I picked my way across the rubble-strewn ground, of the Eastern side of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State, USA. After our Swisschicks reunion for Christi's wedding in Seattle, Karla took Staci and I hiking up a very similar mountain valley on her side of the Cascades. It was also a trip in which I failed to keep the water from spilling over the tops of my hiking boots. I remembered, too, how I had said, on my first trip to visit Karla in the desert of Eastern Washington, how much the cliffs and hills looked like Jordan, and she said, "That's why I didn't need to visit you in Jordan!" (I still think she needs to come and see Bethany Beyond Jordan, Mount Nebo, Um Qais/Gedara and the other religious sights in Jordan, plus Petra, Jerash and Wadi Rum, of course!)

After the halfway point, though, the Wadi Ghwayr looked less like the Cascades and more like the siq at Petra or any of a number of other sandstone canyons across Jordan. At one point, the most athletic and confident of the group had to brace themselves horizontally between the siq wall and an enormous boulder so that we could, essentially, walk across the sides of their feet in order to pass. Next time Wesley comes to Jordan, I'll know just who to introduce him to!

There's one club member in particular, Anis, who fascinated me on the hike. He's one of the professional cyclists in the group, so of course I barely even saw him yesterday. On the hike, though, I was first struck by how much he looks like Carter, and how, like Carter, he can interact in a group like natural introvert, but as we were hiking it seemed more likely that he is actually a solitary sort. While everyone else was hiking in clumps of two or three or five, Anis always hiked alone. A couple of times, he took the high road, scrolling effortlessly along the slick sandstone walls of the siq some 10 or 20 feet above the rest of us. That was when it occured to me how much he looks and acts like my brother Wesley, too!

It all just goes to show you that Jordan and America are not all that different after all. The scenery can be similar, and of course, people are essentially the same everywhere I've travelled.

Despite how sore and blistered I was by the time we got back to the bottom of the wadi, I'm so glad I went on this trip! Glad because, despite my wimpiness on a bike, I proved perfectly competent for a moderate hike. And glad because the people I've met are fun, lively, interesting and engaged, and constantly plannning for something new and exciting.

From Hiking in Wadi Araba

Conservation Meets Job Creation

Feynan Eco-Lodge, Wadi Araba, Jordan

At first, when the Tareef Cycling Club said we'd be staying at a hotel with no electricity, there was skepticism, especially from high-maintenance Stephanie, who was only convinced to go on this overnight trip when it was revealed that there was electricity in the bathrooms. We were all worried that it would be cold, especially after coming over the mountains from Wadi Musa to Wadi Araba.

We were still more skeptical when our two rented kindergarten buses, one laden with two dozen mountain bikes on its roof, began bumping across a dirt road so faint that, for all intents and purposes, we were off-roading. There was some disagreement among the men in the back of the bus as to which faint dirt track, exactly, we were supposed to take, and we seemed to bump about in circles in the dark for a very long time. And then, right there in the middle of the desert, the busses stopped and everyone was ordered off. There was a stream to cross with a low embankment on the far side, and the busses couldn't make it with their passengers aboard. This really raised our eyebrows, but we switched on the flashlights in our mobile phones and filed out of the bus.

However, as the two busses carefully maneuvered the obstacle, Megan, Stephanie, Nara and Ester quickly determined that this was the perfect opportunity for a much-needed bathroom break, and crept off in the dark, determined to believe that no animals live in the Jordanian wilderness. Everyone filed onto the first bus, and the man in charge came looking for the riders of the second bus. "They're waiting for the girls," I said. He got an annoyed look on his face and began to say, "Why are they waiting for the g--Oh!" Even as dark as it was, he quickly turned his back on the direction the girls had gone and hurried back to the busses.

When we did get to the Feynan Eco-Lodge, however, it proved to be an amazing place full of indoor courtyards, wrought iron furniture and fixtures, and candelabras and shelves and chandeliers of locally made candles bathing the whole place in a romantic glow. They served us tea and assigned our rooms, putting Megan, Stephanie, Nara and I in one room, and we went up on the second floor to find the corridor open to the sky and the full moon. The room was built like a Nabatean triclineum, with a wide shelf on three walls holding our mattresses, with mosquito nets draped from the ceiling over each bed, and niches on each wall, lined with fragmented mirrors to reflect and refract the light of three candles so it filled the whole room. It was surprisingly warm, considering how cold it was outside, and we all stripped down to the lowest of our sweaty layers of clothing. The brochure on the table said no showering after 7pm, because the water was only hot when the sun was shining, but it proved warm enough for showering. And in the bathroom I discovered Orjan Soap, handmade by the women of a village up north in Ajloun where my friend Betsy was a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Normally, I've read, the lodge serves a vegetarian menu, but we were visiting with a significant number of Jordanian men, and when Jordanian men travel, they grill meat! With all the outings we've been on with Aboud and his friends, or the regulars of the Dove Bar, we should have known better, but we girls made the very American mistake of offering to help. We were very kindly but unequivocably told that we should just wait and let them handle it. And I have to say, they did an excellent job with shish-kebabs and gallayat bandoora (tomato and onion cooked in a frying pan, in this case with added big chunks of the men's excellent grilled beef).

Much to our chagrin, we girls were so tired when we'd finished eating at 10 that we went to bed, except for Nara, who filled us in the next day on the games and singing that went well into the wee hours of the night.

From Hiking in Wadi Araba