Road Trip Jordan (Part 2)

For Part 1 of Road Trip Jordan, please click here.

“Umm guys, I think we've just been locked in the castle!”
“No way!” exclaims Tom, as everyone leans over the edge, looking down towards the gate.
“I think Ken's right, the gate is closed and there is no one there!” Jay replies.
 

Taking advantage of our high vantage point, Tom points to an area along the north-west side of the castle, where the wall had partially collapsed, “We could climb out through there.” he says. Looking over, it does seem like a plausible way out of the castle, but one wrong move could send any one of us plummeting down 50 feet off a cliff!

 It has been a long day, and having already “escaped” out of one castle earlier in the day, did we really have to escape out of this one too? Heading towards the exit, Laurence, Philip and Tom find a flimsy construction scaffolding along the east facing wall, leading down to a steep retaining wall (that we could probably scramble down), and onto a ring road circumventing the old castle. But before any one of us risked climbing onto the scaffolding that was over 30 feet high without any safety equipment, common sense got the better of us, and we decided to try the main exit, hoping that someone would be there to let us out.

Walking towards the exit, we could tell that the gate was indeed closed. With the thick iron grills filling the entire archway, there was no way we could climb over it. Coming around a bend, the whole gate comes into view, and leaning against the outer wall, partially hidden from view, was the castle attendant grinning from ear to ear and smoking a cigarette. Somehow, I get the feeling that he knew where we were all along, knowing that we could see him walk away from the top of the castle walls. Unlocking the thick iron gates, we were freed – once again – relieved to be let out, and ending the day on a high!

 
The Dead Sea

  
Standing at the lowest point on earth at 400m below sea level, I gaze across a calm, clear, mirror-like lake. Across in a distance, are the lifeless barren peaks of the West Bank. The heat of the blazing sun is starting to feel unbearable, and wading into the cool salty waters of the Dead Sea offered a welcome reprieve.

Unwilling to pay an arm and a leg to visit one of the resorts along the Dead Sea, we found a secluded spot along the Dead Sea Highway, parked along the sandy shoulder, and hiked down an embankment to a quiet rocky beach along the Dead Sea. Floating effortlessly on my back, the silence is broken as Laurence and Tom dives head first into the water, surfacing to cries of agony as the salty waters burn their eyes, turning them bright red.
 

Spending just a few minutes in the water, my body starts to burn all over. Every graze, cut, and mosquito bite that I've been scratching all over my body has swelled up, turning bright red from the salt burning into the raw skin. After quickly posing for pictures typical of any visit to the Dead Sea, such as reading a book while floating on our backs, we call it quits, rinsing ourselves off with bottles of fresh water brought along for this very purpose!
 

Been there! Done that! And one more check off my 'things to do before I die' list!

Slip and Slide at Wadi Mujib

Moving through another canyon, another Sig. This one, like the one at Petra, is narrow, about ten meters wide on average. The cliff faces are streaked in the same bursts of orange and pink, dancing in the mid afternoon light. However, unlike the Sig in Petra, where the Nabataeans built dams and aqueducts to divert the water, we are wading through about a foot of rapidly flowing, crisp, clear, fresh water! One of the few inlets of fresh water into the Dead Sea, the Wadi Mujib Nature Reserve hosts a dazzling array of plants and wildlife, anchored there by this little stream, cutting its way through the canyon.
 
Taking advantage of the cool, clean, fresh water to wash the salt off our skins and hair, we hike two kilometers up through the narrow canyon. Along the way, small whitewater rapids, cascades, and natural slides. Around every bend, a surprise. Culminating at the end is a waterfall. Over thirty meters high, a torrent of water pours down from a crack in the canyon above. Like kids in a playground, we climb on the rocks, going behind the wall of falling water, jumping and splashing in the natural pool, and getting knocked around by the currents.

With no pictures to show, I make a mental note to get myself a waterproof camera for my next trip.

More Car Rental Woes!

After leaving Wadi Mujib, we continued driving north along the Dead Sea Highway, looking for a shady spot where we could have a picnic lunch. Having identified a site and parking along the side of the highway, we were surprised when a gray car suddenly pulls up along side ours. To our even bigger surprise, Ahmad, the service taxi driver who recommended his 'friend' the rental car guy to us jumps out! Seeing the five of us, he starts shaking his head, and goes on to reprimand Laurence and I for taking three more people along on the trip, claiming that it was illegal to carry more than 4 persons in that car! Was he following us? Spying on us? What was he doing hundreds of kilometers from his home in Petra, where he claims he is from, on a Saturday anyway?

“We rented the car...and we paid for the car. How many people we take with us is our problem!” Laurence argues.
“And besides there are 5 seat belts in the car, which means that legally, we can carry five people!” I chime in.

Refusing to get into an argument with Ahmad, who by now is on the phone with Bayan, we tell Ahmad that this issue is between us and Bayan, and is none of his business anyway, leaving him standing on the side of the road on his phone and walking off to have our lunch.

During the drive to Madaba, Laurence pours through the entire rental contract, and nowhere in there does it say that the maximum occupancy was four. And besides, we have driven through multiple police check-points over the last two days, and not once were we stopped for carrying five people. Knowing that Bayan was certain to ask us for extra money for carrying five people, we prepared to fight it out!

Getting into Madaba, we made sure to arrive at our agreed drop off point, a side street next to a popular hotel in Madaba, right on time, so as to not give Bayan any other excuse to charge us more money. Arriving over an hour late, Bayan first complains about how expensive it was for him to travel all the way to Madaba from Petra to pick up the car. Our response: That's your business – we agreed to a price, and we're sticking to it.

Next he tells us that he was going to charge us 20JD more for carrying a fifth person. And at this point, a full on argument ensues.

“You never told us that we could only carry four people. You agreed to a price, a price for renting the car for two days, not the number of people in the car, and then you raised it by 15JD, now you want to raise the price again? Is that how you run your business? You realize we will NEVER recommend you to anyone else ever, and in fact, we'll tell people not to rent from you!” Laurence argues.
Responding to Laurence, Bayan responds, “This car, not for five people. Two okay, three okay, four okay, but not five!”
“But you never told us! These are things that you need to tell the renters when they rent the car, not after the fact!
Jumping in at this point, I add, “There are five seat belts in the car, and I've rented cars all over the world, and as long as every occupant has a seat belt, we are not breaking any laws.”
“But not in Jordan!”
“Well then, show me where in the contract does it say that? If it is that important, it should be clearly stated in the contract!”
“Or you need to tell us that!” Laurence adds.

Realizing that he is getting nowhere with us, Bayan turns to a Jordanian passerby on the street, and rattles off to him in Arabic, clearly bad mouthing us and pointing to us! Losing my temper, I immediately jump between Bayan and the passerby, shouting, “Why are you getting someone else involved? This is between you and me! Don't be getting strangers involved!”

At this point, Bayan starts complaining about the condition of the interiors of the car. Pointing to the mud stains on the rear floor mats and food crumbs on the seats, which in my opinion, was making much ado about nothing, for the interiors were about what you would expect after a two day road trip that involved outdoor activities.

After arguing for about 15 minutes, we finally come to a compromise. Five more pounds for the fifth person to make the total 100JD! Agreeing to the deal, Bayan hands me back 150JD, a refund for the 250JD deposit we had to pay when we picked up the car. In the heat of the moment, I completely forgot about the 4JD we paid to get the brakes fixed, but in the big scheme of things, that wasn't anything to cry over either.

It is infuriating whenever an agreed upon price, even a price that is printed on a contract is a moving target, and can be renegotiated. Typical of the Middle-East, and many other parts of the world, I've actually seen this happen to both tourists and locals alike. The only difference is that locals are used to dealing with situations like these, and they have more leverage with unscrupulous business owners. I'm glad we stood our ground and fought hard, and overall, we made it out alright! 100JD for two days of car rental is about the standard going rate, and after splitting between five guys, it was well within my travel budget.

Glad that this ordeal was finally over, we left Madaba, catching a ride in a minivan taxi for the capital Amman. The last two days have been quite the adventure. Five people, five countries, one shared experience. In a day, we would all be going on our separate ways, we might never see or speak with each other ever again. And as for me, I will be crossing borders again, this time, on the road to Damascus.

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Road Trip Jordan (Part 1)

The following is an account of a road trip through Jordan, from the town of Wadi Musa, just outside of Petra, up along the King's Highway, to the capital Amman.

The Players (from left): Herb (Jay), a chef from Austria whose real name is Herbert, but because he impersonated someone else when I first met him, I never knew what his real name was until we got to Amman, so for the purpose of this post, I will continue to call him Jay; Louis-Philippe (Philip), a student from Montreal, Canada with a very royal French sounding name but answers to Philip;  Laurence, a student from Buckinghamshire, Britain whom I've traveled with for several weeks now, and have been mentioned before in previous posts; Tom, a loud Italian from the Northern Italian Alps region who earns his keep working in the family farm during the summer months so that he can travel the globe the rest of the year; and me, the Lost Backpacker and designated driver. Some other important characters: Ahmad (not his real name) – because I cannot remember his real name – a service taxi driver; and Bayan, the car rental guy.

Preface

Hitchhiking from Wadi Rum to Wadi Musa (Petra), Laurence and I were picked-up along the highway by a service taxi driver, Ahmad – a seemingly friend and chatty middle-aged man with a growing pot-belly. After a short negotiation, we agreed to pay him 10 Jordanian Dinars (JD) – equivalent to US$14 – for the 1.5 hour ride, about what it would have cost us to take the bus, but with the convenience and speed of a private car.

As with most conversations with taxi drivers throughout the middle east, our conversation soon turned to how long we were going to stay in Jordan, and how were we going to get to the places we want to go to. This always then leads to an offer to take us to all the places we mention for a fee. In his defense, Jordan is a relatively hard place to travel around cheaply. Long distance public transportation is nonexistent or unreliable at best, and most budget travelers end up hitchhiking their way up or down the King's Highway, where most of the major sights lie, or join a 1-day organized tour rushing through all the sights. Laurence and I had ruled out any possibility of joining a tour, and had been weighing the option of renting a car, allowing us to visit all the major sites over a leisurely 2 or 3 days. When we brought this up to Ahmad, he immediately tells us that his “friend” runs a rental car company, and he could get us a car. When quizzed about how much that would cost, he calls his “friend” – Bayan, and hands the phone over to Laurence.

After a quick conversation, we get the basics. Pick up in Wadi Musa, return in Madaba (about 1 hour outside of Amman – so we don't have to drive in the chaos of a big city) for 40JD a day, including all insurance coverage. “Hmm...not bad”, I thought, especially if we can recruit a few more people to split the costs. We tell Bayan that we will think about it, and let him know in a few days.

Over the next couple of days, we decide that two days was sufficient, and we had recruited Philip, Jay and Tom to join us on this road trip, splitting the cost five ways. Calling Bayan to arrange for the car, we are informed that the price now is 95JD for the two days, 15JD more than what we initially agreed on! Used to having to deal with this infuriating practice of bait and switch pricing, and frankly too tired to put up a fight over what really amounted to 3JD more per person over two days, Laurence and I agree to the new price and collected the keys to a light metallic green Hyundai Accent.

And We're Off

Packing five guys, five backpacks, lunch, water, and all of our gear into a Hyundai Accent was no easy task, but miraculously, we manage to fit everyone and everything in without anyone having to sit on someone else' lap!

Leaving Wadi Musa early on Friday morning, I quickly learn the rules of the road in Jordan. First, use of the honk is necessary and recommended! When honked at, it could mean a friendly 'hello', 'hey, I'm passing you', 'thanks for letting me pass you' or 'GET OUT OF MY WAY!' Second, two lane roads are wide enough for three cars, so driving three abreast is perfectly normal. And third, passing another car around blind corners on mountainous roads with no guardrails is a perfectly acceptable practice (remember, the roads are technically wide enough for three cars)! So when going around a blind corner on a two lane road, do not be alarmed when you suddenly see a bus passing a watermelon laden truck heading straight for you. There is no need to frantically swerve out of the way, for they will somehow manage to squeeze between the cliff and your car, going at 100km/hr, without causing a scratch or taking out your side mirror!

Escape from Shobak Castle

Crawling on our hands and feet, we inch our way down the steep incline of a subterranean secret passageway. Any remnants of stairs, or notches cut into the near vertical tunnel to provide any form of footing has long eroded away! Lit only by a headlamp and a hand-held flashlight, we slip and slide down the sandy pitch-black tunnel, kicking up clouds of dust, turning all of our clothes, skin and hair a pale yellow. One wrong move could lead to a domino effect, sending those in front of you sliding uncontrollably down into the pitch black hole! All of a sudden, I hear a frantic cry from behind, and the telltale sounds of someone losing their footing! Bracing for impact, I grab at whatever jagged rocks I can, hoping that I won't be taken down as well. First, a rain of sand and small rocks hit me, followed by back to back whizzing sounds as two rather large objects fly by my ear, bouncing off the tunnel walls, cartwheeling down into the black abyss below, and then silence! “Phew! That was close!” Tom exclaims, with hands and feet spread out, gripping at anything he can to stop sliding. “But I think I just lost my sandals!”
 
Shobak Castle, built by the Crusader King Baldwin I in AD 1115 sits on a grassy knoll about 40km north of Petra. As one of the lesser visited castle ruins on the main tourist trail, it was practically deserted when we arrived, and free to enter! Scrambling through dark dungeons and remnants of vaulted arches, we spent about 30 minutes following the directions in the Lonely Planet guidebook locating a crusader cross, etched into a doorway inside of a ruined church on an east facing wall! Finding this cross was like a scene right out of the DaVinci Code, with five of us scouting out every doorway and scouring every east facing wall with a flashlight. When we finally did find the cross, it was rather underwhelming, measuring only about six inches across, it was faded from hundreds of years of weathering.

The highlight of Shobak Castle has got to be exiting the castle grounds through the secret tunnel. Not for the faint-hearted or claustrophobic, we managed to make it to the end of the passageway in one piece, without any more mishaps or lost sandals, and finally surfacing out of a manhole via a ladder at the bottom of the hill.

Spare Brakes?

“Shit! I think we have a flat!” was my reaction as soon as I heard the telltale woosh woosh woosh sound coming from the front right tire. Immediately pulling off to the side of the road, we jump out and inspect all four tires, strangely finding them still fully inflated and intact! Back in the car, we move on, and the sound mysteriously disappears. We were on the way to the city of Karak, to visit the Karak Castle, we had just departed the Dana Nature Reserve, where we stopped briefly for a picnic lunch overlooking a deep rift valley that was formed when the tectonic plates pulled apart.

Just outside of the medieval walled city of Karak, the strange sound reappears. This time however, I notice that the sound gets louder whenever I hit the brakes, positively indicating that we are having brake problems! Since this could potentially lead to a very dangerous situation, given the narrow hilly streets of Karak, we all agree to immediately find a workshop to get the problem fixed.

 

  
Finding a workshop, that happened to be open on a Friday (the traditional Muslim day of rest) was surprisingly easy. Explaining the problem to a mechanic that didn't speak a word of English was a whole different matter! “Faramil (the Arabic word for brakes)...Faramil broken...errr...Faramil Kaput!” Tom yells while animatedly pointing at the wheels, drawing a blank look from the mechanic and laughter from the rest of us.  “What language is 'Kaput' anyway? Is it an internationally recognized word for broken?” I ask. Only after a lot more pointing, and a quick drive up and down the street to let the mechanic hear the sound, were we reasonably satisfied that he knew what the problem was.

Calling Bayan to report the problem, and to make sure that he would be covering the cost of fixing the brakes, he tells us to look for the spare brake in the trunk. “Spare brakes? I know you have a spare tire in the boot, but are you sure there are spare brakes in there too?” Laurence asks.

Pulling all of our bags out of the trunk and piling them on the sidewalk, we lift the cover, and lo and behold, there together with the spare tire and accessories is a box of spare brake pads! I guess this happens enough that people in Jordan carry spare brake pads. Fortunately, the mechanic was able to quickly rectify the problem, and with the car back in business, we continued on our little adventure.

Karak Castle

  
One of the more complete and well preserved of the Crusader Castles, Karak Castle, unlike Shobak, is on the main tourist trail, and busloads of tourist visit it daily. Fortunately, due to our unscheduled pit stop, we did not arrive till about an hour before close and most of the groups of tourists were leaving as we were entering.
 
Wandering through what used to be stables and barracks for the soldiers that lived there, we ended up at the far southern end of the castle grounds. Climbing up a set of hidden stairs, and then scrambling up a crumbled wall, we found ourselves perched high atop the fortified southern wall of the castle. With nothing between us and drop-off of over 300 feet, we had commanding views of Wadi Karak, all the way to the Dead Sea, overlooking an area thought to be where the sinful towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, as described in the book of Genesis, once stood.

Descending next into the bowels of the castle, where a prison was once located, we find rows of tiny cells, lit only by a small slit on the back wall, or through a single hole in the ceiling, sending a dramatic beam of light into the room.

Staying well past closing time, we decided to climb up to the northern castle walls on our way out, overlooking the modern town of Karak, the dry moat, and the Ottoman's Gate - the main entryway into the castle. Looking down towards the gate, I see the attendant locking up, and walking across the bridge that was spanning the moat, heading into town.


“Umm guys, I think we've just been locked in the castle!”

...to be continued.

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Petra

For over a thousand years, the Nabataean Kingdom welcomed travelers, traders and visitors to the magnificent rose-red city of Petra, with the offer of safe passage, supplies of food and water and a place to rest for the night. Hidden amongst steep canyons in present day Jordan, the entire city sat at the cross-roads of ancient commercial trade routes, controlling all trade north towards Damascus and Europe, west towards Egypt and Africa, and south into the formidable Arabian desert towards India and the rest of Asia!

Spending three nights and two full days in Petra, I was able to take my time, and visit all of the major sights at my leisure. Some of the highlights include, arriving through the Siq (canyon), bathed in colorful streaks of pink and orange, and catching a sliver of a glimpse of the magnificently preserved “Treasury” though a narrow gap in the canyon walls; hiking up to the top of the canyon opposite from the Treasury to get a whole new perspective of the iconic structure; scrambling up an unmarked trail through an overgrown ravine to discover a deserted overhang on the cliffs above the Royal Tombs for a picnic lunch and a nap in the middle of the day; and hiking up to the High Place of Sacrifice, and down the back side of the mountain.

The Nabataeans were a desert tribe indigenous to the area. As master sculptors, they carved tombs with wonderful facades into the canyon walls, employing elements from Greek, Roman and Egyptian architectural styles. Because they lived primarily in tents, the actual city where they lived is no longer in existence, leaving only the remnants of the tombs and temples which they built around.

Walking through the ancient ruins of what remains today, Petra has surprisingly changed little from the time of the height of its influence. The rhythmic trotting of horse drawn chariots as they move through the narrow confines of the cobbled stone Siq still echo through the canyon walls. It continues to host visitors from all over the world with hawkers and coffee shops still lining the streets selling, food, drink and wares (mostly touristy souvenirs) to the visitors. Back at my hotel, I am sitting around a table having dinner with a group of backpackers representing France, Canada, America, Austria, Italy, Holland and Britain. All night long, we share jokes about travel mishaps, exchange travel tips, befriend each other on Facebook and extend an open invitation for each other to visit our home countries in the future. In so many ways, the city of Petra today has remained true to the original. A cosmopolitan city attracting people from all over the world; a center for the trading of ideas and opinions across cultures. If anything did change, it has only evolved and adapted itself to fit the needs of the 21st century traveler!

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