Some Of My Favorite Things

When we travel the we buy a lot of stuff.  The Wife is very practical.  Most of what she buys can be used such as table clothes, shawls, scarves, and small tables.  I tend not to buy much but I too have purchased things on our travels.  This used to mean T-Shirts.  I have since moved away from collecting T-Shirts.  Looking back I think I cherish things given to us as gifts.

I've mentioned a few of these things before.  In Peru I was given a glass llama and a small reed boat made by the Uros Indians.  The boat is one of my favorite mementos of my travels and has hung from my desk lamp ever since our return.  From our Jordan trip we were gifted two small camels - they sit on my computer speakers.

From our last big trip to China, Nepal, Bhutan, and India, we received gifts in India.  We received little carved elephants - one intricately carved with an elephant within an elephant and another colorfully inlaid.  In Tibet I bought a small stone with the Buddhist mantra on it.  In Bhutan I bought a small mask of Chagna Dorje, a deity signifying power and looking quite evil even though he is said to be benevolent.

But my favorite, after the Peruvian boat, is the one I bought in New Orleans: A Sugar Skull bobble head.

Sugar Skull Bobble Head from New Orleans.

I'm sure he was made in China is is just made of plastic but he makes me smile.  He has a prominent place on my desk next to my computer monitor and when I type with extra force he looks like he is agreeing with what I'm writing.  I think I'll keep him.

Suicidal Camel

Sitting next to our computer, on opposite corners of our corner desk, sit two speakers.  On the speakers sit two little plush camels.  One is all brown.  The other white and brown.  They were gifts from a friendly shop keeper in Jordan.

The all brown camel is content to watch me as I compose posts ... or, more likely, play Facebook Scrabble.  The white and brown camel is ... suicidal.   It has made several attempts.  Jumping off the speaker, off the desk, and onto the floor.

WHY!?!?!?

P.S. I know this post is strange. I blame the non-stop political commercials.

2010 Vacation: Jordan - Day Seven - Getting Home And Epilogue

Our last morning in Jordan was uneventful except for a couple things:

1. A bird, probably the damn Falcon, took a crap on me and my camera bag at the airport.  Splattered off my forehead onto the bag.  Okay.  I get it.  I shouldn't have gone in the women's mosque.
2. We bought water after passing through airport security just to find out that you had to pass through security one more time before getting on the plane.  To top it off, the free water we got on the plane after we left Amman had to be chugged because we had to go through security once again in Frankfurt.  A pox on the liquid explosive idiots waging a war on my water bottles.

Other than that, the flights home went fine.  No delays.  Better seats.  We also landed in Omaha during a rather spectacular and harrowing lightning storm.

A few observations about Jordan:

• Talking to people after we returned they wanted to know about the women we saw in Jordan. While most of the women wore the traditional head covering, exposing the entire face (the Hijab), the more conservative head-to-toe, hands gloved, and only the eyes showing was rare.  I saw, maybe, a handful.  In fact, I saw more women with their head/hair exposed than I did with the full covering.  I saw a family at Jerash where the woman was totally covered, the husband was in leisure, western attire, as were their two children.  What struck me as I watched them is that the man and the children seemed under dressed.  I kept thinking that the man should have been in a suit.
• Jordan is a country of men.  We saw women wherever we went but the men usually out numbered them.  All the waiters, shop keepers, and hotel attendants were men.  The only exceptions were at Petra where there were quite a few Bedouin women selling their wares and at security posts there were often one woman police office to search the women (The Wife was inspected by two different women, short women, while going through airport security).   Beside these exceptions, you only interacted with men.
• Jordan is Bilingual.  Most of the signs are in Arabic and English.  Everyone we met knew some English.  The Wife wished they would have encouraged us to use more polite Arabic greetings but, frankly, the Jordanians were quicker at the Hello-Welcome than we were with the as-Slām ʻLykm
• Jordan, while 94% Muslim, is not a very religious country compared to, say, Saudi Arabia.  Jordan is pretty Liberal which may explain why everyone in the Middle East likes Jordan and have made Jordan a vacation destination.  It may also explain why a Mosque was not on the tour itinerary.
• Another question often asked was about the heat.  It was hot in Jordan but, as they say, it was a dry heat.  We arrived in Jordan at approximately the same time of day that we left Omaha.  The temperature in Jordan was cooler than Omaha and the lack of humidity made it much more comfortable.
• Water is scarce.  Typically a neighborhood has running water every three or four days.  When they have water they fill tanks which you see on the roofs of most homes.  A big water pipeline is being built to bring water from the aquifer under Wadi Rum that will leave the water on all the time.
• Cats are the animal of choice.  I saw only a  few dogs.
• After we got back we rented Lawrence of Arabia.  Neither of us had watched the whole thing.  The movie was filmed in the Wadi Rum area.  It was kind of fun to see where we'd been - I swear I recognized some of the rock outcroppings in the movie.  Some of the blown up trains in the movie were actually filmed on the wreckage of the original destroyed train.  All I have to say about T.E. Lawrence is that he was a nut case.

We enjoyed Jordan.  It wasn't perfect.  Jordan is a rather drab country.  Our hotel was not in a very walkable area of Amman so we were a little limited in the evenings.  I would have added a day at Aqaba and a night in Wadi Rum to sleep under the stars which are said to be spectacular there.  Despite this the new cultures, the many firsts for me, and the hospitable people made Jordan a memorable vacation.  I can now add one more red country on my travel map (At the bottom of the sidebar on the right in the margin).

Next on our list of vacations (all subject to change, of course): 

• 2011 - Spain to walk the Camino and a visit to our friends in California via Route 66 (Chicago to Santa Monica)
• 2012 - China, Tibet, and Nepal followed by RAGBRAI.

2010 Vacation: Jordan - Day Six - Wadi Rum

I only have one picture from our last full day in Jordan so you'll have to use your imagination ...

We checked out of our hotels in Wasi Musa and drove south out of town.  As we left we stopped at an overlook and took in the sweeping vista.  Our guide pointed out the extent of Petra.  The site is much larger than most people realize.  It would probably take a week or more to explore all its nooks and crannies.

[Insert Petra Panorama Here]

On the mountaintop on the left of the panorama, the white dot, is a mosque/shrine.  It is the purported burial place of Aaron, brother to Moses.

We continued south, driving through small desert towns.  We passed by fields with herds of camels [Insert Picture of Camels Here].  We crossed our first train track and the exit to the Camel Racing course, before arriving at the Wadi Rum visitor's center.

Wadi Rum, a valley named after a prominent mountain in the region, Mount Rum, reminded me a lot of the American desert southwest.  Parts of it were reminiscent of formations I saw near Moab.  This makes since as the Moabite kingdom was located in Jordan though not in Wadi Rum.

We walked out back of the visitor's center and saw a group of pickups, the ubiquitous Toyotas that are found in all countries all over the world, decked out with seats in the bed, and a sun covering [Insert Picture of Pickups Here].  We climbed into two of the trucks and raced out into the desert.  Ours was the lead pickup so we were spared from eating dust.

Our first view was of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, [Insert Picture of Seven Pillars of Wisdom Here] a rock formation named after the book by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia).  Lawrence based his operations out of the Wadi Rum area in 1917-1918.

The tour continued past large sand dunes, petroglyphs marking caravan routes [Insert Picture of Petroglyphs Here], and stunning vistas.

[Insert Stunning Vista Here]

After driving through one stunning view after another we stopped at a Bedouin tent to have tea.  Outside the tent were carvings of three faces, one of them being Lawrence of Arabia [Insert Picture of Carved Face Here].  Now, I know this is a sin to some of my bloggy friends but, frankly, I am not fond of tea.  I especially am not fond of hot tea when it's in the 90s in the shade.  Having said this, I didn't want to anger Allah any more than I already had so I took tea with the Bedouins and drank it down once it had cooled off enough (I think I burned my lips a bit - it was very hot tea - and I'm not used to hot beverages).

We returned to the visitor's center and got back on our short bus.  We drove north the rest of the day.  We made one stop at a rest house where I took my last picture - a picture of a falcon.  I would come to despise this falcon.

The rest of the day was a long drive back to Amman.  We dropped some of the tour group at the airport so they could catch flights out that evening.  We returned back to our Amman hotel and spent a quiet last night in Jordan.  It felt odd.  When we went to Peru we left rather late in the evening but before most of our group had left.  It felt right.  In Jordan I felt like we had over stayed our visit.

2010 Vacation: Jordan - Day Five - Petra

Every vacation usually has that on destination, that one attraction, that you really look forward to visiting.  For Peru it was Machu Picchu.  For our summer vacation last year, it was Yellowstone and Arches National Parks.  For our Jordan vacation it was Petra.

We had a whole day at Petra.  We started, early in the morning to beat the heat, outside the gates where we met up with our fellow tour people (they all walked from their Hotels) and guide.  We passed through the gates and started down a dusty road that, after passing some simpler tombs, led us to the start of the Siq, a narrow valley that leads to the Petra ruins.

The Siq, which is Arabic for shaft, is a narrow canyon with sheer stone walls three to six hundred feet high.  In places the canyon is only ten feet wide.  Along the way are small shrines carved into the stone.  One impressive sculpture was of a caravan including three life size camels and their leader.  Only the bottom half of the leader and some hooves remain.  Water channels run the length of the canyon walls on both sides.

Petra - The Treasury.

As we approached the end of the Siq, a guide for another tour group started humming the Indiana Jones theme.  Why, you ask?  Well, at the end as you turn a slight corner you see possibly the most spectacular, and most recognized, ruin of Petra - the Treasury - famously showcased in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  The carved facades are memorials and tombs of wealthy and/or powerful Nabataeans who made Petra their capital sometime in the 6^th century BC.  This would make Petra the oldest ruins that I've ever been to - very cool.

Our guide took us along the winding canyon pointing out other facades and, eventually, more Roman ruins.  Petra has changed hands many times in its lifetime.  The last residents, Bedouins, left in the 60s after King Hussein payed them a personal visit to ask them to leave so that it could be preserved.  In return for them leaving, they were given a new village not far away and they were allowed to work and sell things in Petra.  Most of the vendors we saw in Petra were Bedouin.

We wandered down the canyon admiring the swirling strata of the stone (I had better pictures of the stone but my camera card decided, after this picture, to take a crap and they all went *poof*).  We looked into one chamber to see the burial niches.  We passed Roman temples.  Our guided tour ended at a museum.

At this point we were given choices.  The afternoon was ours to do with what we pleased.  Our guide had told us of another facade known as the Monastery.  By the way, the names given to these facades have nothing to do with what they were used for.  They were all tombs.  The treasury was not a bank.  The Monastery never had monks.  The Monastery lied past the museum ... up 900 steps.  It was probably in the high 90s or low 100s Fahrenheit.  I looked at the Wife and she said Hell Yes.  We hadn't traveled all this way to be turned away by a few steps.

What Would Jordan Be Without A Smiling Camel.

The steps were not all contiguous.  You would walk up a few dozen steps hewn in the stone and then hit a flat stretch.  The path up twisted and turned in and out of shade.  In the flat areas small Bedouin shop keepers had set up tents where you could get shade and buy crafts.  We were passed by surefooted donkeys carrying tourists up the stairs.  I let the Wife set the pace as I figured my usual pace would be too fast.  We were doing pretty good.  Soon we could see a large tent, larger than all the others, up above our heads.  Thinking this was our destination we pushed ahead.  It wasn't the Monastery but it was the location of our most memorable Jordan vacation moment.

I reached the big tent first.  The tent covered a large rest area with chairs, a jewelry store full of Bedouin jewelry, and a snack bar.  I turned around looking for the Wife.  She looked winded so I tried to steer her to one of the chairs.  She passed me, ignoring the chairs, and sat on a step.  I wondered what was happening when she started wheezing, crying, and said she couldn't breathe.  She was having an anxiety attack and hyperventilating.  I tried to calm her down.  She laid flat on her back gasping loudly.  Two French women came over and fanned her with their hats.  I got up and bought cold water and rushed back.  I got back in time to hear one of the French women, her face only a few inches from the Wife's face, say:

"You must promise me you will hire a monkey.  You must ride the monkey down. You must have you husband hire you a monkey."

Now, this was a very confusing thing to hear.  I was confused and you could see in the Wife's eyes that she was thinking about what the French woman was saying.  All this talk of hiring a monkey distracted the Wife so much that she forgot that she couldn't breath and she stopped hyperventilating.  The Wife said later that she was thinking "She means Donkey but she's saying Monkey" and she didn't know if she should laugh or not.  We think that the effort and the heat had combined to deprive the Wife of air which triggered the anxiety attack.

The Wife recovered and downed the water bottle.  I asked if she wanted to go back and she insisted on continuing so, after we had rested a while, we continued.  The Monastery was only about ten minutes further ahead.  At the top there was a very large, lush Bedouin tent with carpets, pillows, hookahs, tea, and cold drinks.  Opposite the tent was a huge facade.  Very impressive and worth the climb.  Because of reasons beyond my control ... damn camera card ... the only picture of the Monastery is a scan of a postcard the Wife bought.

The Monastery - Resorting To A Scanned Postcard - Damn Camera Card.

I left the wife at the tent and went up to some view points.  At one of these viewpoints was a geocache.  I figured it was my last chance to find one in Jordan.  To get to it you had to walk out on a four foot ledge with a knee shaking drop off and search the pock marked cliff face.  I searched and searched and did not find it.  My GPS said I was two feet away from it at one time.  It probably was gone.  Or maybe I was just too tired to see it.  I left Jordan without finding a single geocache.

I rejoined the Wife and we headed back down.  Going down is so much easier.  We stopped at a lunch place near the museum at the bottom and ate ... a buffet lunch.  After eating and drinking our fill we headed back up the canyon to our hotel.  Since it was the afternoon, the temperature had gone up several degrees since the morning and it was really, really hot.  By the time we got to our room we were exhausted and a bit ripe, if you know what I mean.  We had been walking around Petra for about nine hours.  We walked about 10 miles per my GPS (Actually it said 11.67 miles but GPS reception was shaky in some of the valleys and the track actually shows me walking through solid stone in some places so I'm guessing it over did it on the distance).  The vertical, from the museum up to the Monastery was 768 feet.

After showering and cooling off a bit we were crazy enough to go back out and do some shopping.  Prices were pretty reasonable as it was the off season.  We even negotiated for some ice cream.  If we'd known the ice cream was so good in Jordan we would have bought some sooner.  Those Eskimo Pies were awesome.

The last of my pictures have been added to my 2010-07 Jordan Google Photos album.

2010 Vacation: Jordan - Day Four - Madaba, Mt. Nebo, And Al Karak

Jordan is a Muslim country.  Some 94% of the Jordanians are Muslim.  The rest are mostly Greek Orthodox.  After spending three days exploring Muslim, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman cultures, day four of our Jordan vacation was primarily focused on Christian culture.

We checked out of our Amman hotels, got on our short bus, and headed south.  Our first stop was the city of Madaba.  The city of Madaba is roughly 45% Christian.  One of the first things I noticed as we entered the city were signs advertising liquor and beer.

In Madaba we stopped to visit an example of the Christian churches of the area, the Greek Orthodox Basilica of Saint George.  The church is known for it's extensive mosaics including a mosaic map of the holy land dating back to the 6^th century.  Our guide took us to a room with a blowup of the map and explained several landmarks on the surprisingly complete map before we entered the basilica to see it for ourselves.

Basilica of St. George - Mosaic Map of the Holy Land

From Madaba we went to nearby Mount Nebo, the supposed location of Moses' death.  There is no physical proof of this but it has been visited by two Popes so I presume is is accepted by the church.  From the top you do have some awesome views of Jericho and the Dead Sea, despite the ever present sandy haze.  This is where God gave Moses a view of the promised land before burying him, somewhere, on the mount.

There is a 4^th century church and monastery on the highest point but it was being restored and we could not go in.

Near the entrance of Mount Nebo is a sculpture with representations of Jesus, Moses, and Mohamed.  While the faces of Jesus and Moses are fairly detailed, Mohammed's image is vague to satisfy Islam's prohibition on images of the prophet.

General Tours, our tour company, has a custom of taking it's guests to one charity location, a way to give back to the host country.  In Peru it was an orphanage in Cuzco.  In Jordan it was a mosaic factory outside of Madaba, and not far from Mount Nebo, that employed women and  handicapped artisans run my Queen Noor's charity foundation.  It was interesting.  We learned how mosaics were made and we had the chance to buy the finished products.

Farther south we passed through the "grand canyon of Jordan", Wadi Mujib ('Wadi' means valley in Arabic).  We stopped at a viewpoint and admired the beautiful water-worn landscape and one of the dams that was slowly choking the Dead Sea.

Wadi Mujib

Lunch time approached and we pulled into the city of Al Karak.  We ate at a restaurant facing the crusader castle of Kerak.  After another tasty buffet lunch, we explored the castle.  The crusaders built the castle in the 1140s.  The castle had been used and reused, built and rebuilt, many times over.  The castle felt bigger that the Saracen Castle we'd seen in Aljun.  There were tunnels running under the castle that we were able to walk through.  It was pretty cool.

A Chamber in the Kerak Crusader Castle.

There was a geocache at the castle which I failed to find.  My geo-senses and my luck just weren't working on this trip.

Kerak was the last stop today.  The rest of the day was a driving south, passing by dry farm fields and desert landscapes, ending in Wadi Musa, a town located near Petra.  Our hotel was only a few hundred feet from the entrance.  We checked in and got to our room in time to watch the sunset.  Pictures can be found here.

Sunset Over Wadi Musa.

2010 Vacation: Jordan - Day Three - Ajlun And Jerash

Day three was a big day with two very cool sites being visited in addition to expansion of our tour group.

This morning we graduated from the mini-bus to the ... short bus.  Well, the short bus was definitely more comfortable.  We three Americans were joined by a German couple and two Costa Rican couples.  After a few introductions we realized that the Costa Ricans couldn't speak English.  This made the tour guide's job a lot more difficult.  I'm sure it wasn't very pleasant for the Costa Ricans as well.

As we drove north we passed by groves of olive trees.  This area is famous for it's olives and olive oil.  The road wound through hills until we approached the town of Ajlun, the location of a 12th century Saracen castle.  Ajlun Castle was built by the Saracens, Muslims, to protect against the crusaders.  Our first view, as we approached, made it obvious why the castle was erected where it had been - the castle was at the top of a hill overlooking all approaches.  It would be easy to defend and you could keep an eye over a lot of terrain including the valuable iron mines in the area.

We toured the castle including mosaic floors, cannonball-sized head-bonking ammunition, a small museum displaying artifacts excavated in the area.  The view off the top of the castle was impressive.  One thing we discovered is that Jordan is in an active earthquake zone and most ancient sites, including this one, had been destroyed in earlier earthquakes.  What we saw today was reconstructed using whatever could be salvaged from the original ruins.

As we were leaving I realized that there was a geocache near the castle.  Unfortunately, I realized this as we were pulling away from the castle.  I wasn't paying very much attention to my GPS.

Our second stop was the Roman city of Jerash.  Jerash, another of the decapolis cities, is one of the best preserved Roman cities in the middle east.  After walking through the gauntlet of vendors trying to sell all all sorts of souvenirs, we enter the Roman ruins through the Arch of Hadrian, past the hippodrome where chariot races are reenacted.  First stop was the visitor's center for lunch.  We met up with the last four members of our group, a Swiss couple, a Canadian, and a Romanian.

After lunch we walked by the Temple of Zeus before entering the piazza.  This was one of the most impressive parts of the ruins to me.  The large area surrounded by pillars hinted at how many people lived/worked/worshiped here.  The call to prayer started and our guide explained to the larger group about the call, how it was recorded in Amman, and it was performed live elsewhere.  The call was definitely more chaotic here but still quite beautiful.

After the call finished we entered an amphitheater and listened to a group, two drummers and a bagpiper, play.  A Bagpipe, you say?  Yep, a remnant of British rule.

After the mini-concert we walked along the main thoroughfare of the city passing by the nymphaeum and ending in front of the steps to the Temple of Artemis.  It was very warm hot and our guide wasn't going to take us up to the temple so a bunch of us, including the Wife, took the initiative and headed up the stairs.  The stairs are actually interesting.  There are seven flights with a deeper step in between each flight.  From the bottom the long steps are not visible and the stairs look like one long flight (signifying the difficult journey to be with the gods).  From the top of the stairs looking down you only see the seven deep steps (signifying the easy journey back home).  It was an interesting illusion.

I walked around the temple and pulled out my GPS to look for a geocache near the temple.  The GPS took me around to the back corner of the temple.  I looked around a bit, getting as close as six feet, when I looked up and saw one of the tourist police looking down at me.  I guess he was making sure I wasn't taking a part of the temple with me.  Not wanting to explain what a geocache was, I abandoned my search and rejoined the tour group.

This was our last stop.  After shopping for souvenirs, we got on our short bus, returned to our hotels, rested up, and packed.  Tomorrow we were heading south into the desert.

Photographs of Aljun and Jerash have been added to my 2010-07 Jordan Google Photos album.

2010 Vacation: Jordan - Day Two - Um Qais, Pella, Dead Sea

On day two we joined up with M_SD and headed north.  We left Amman passing reforested areas, cities, towns, and Palestinian refugee "camps" (They were more like towns and cities).  The northern part of Jordan is the agricultural area of the country and is the 'greenest' area of the country.  It reminded me a lot of parts of southern California in the summer - hints of green amongst very dry browns.

We arrived at our first stop and our guide pointed toward some vendors who had some cards for digital cameras.  This wasn't exactly the camera store I'd envisioned.  The largest card available was 2 GB which was less than what I photographed the first day (over 3 GB).  The card was also rather expensive so I passed.  I gambled that my camera card would work and it did ... for a few days anyway.

Our first stop of the day was Umm Qais, location of Gadara, one of the decapolis cities.  Here we walked through Greek, Roman, and Byzantine ruins.  Like most ancient cities in the area, the main part of the city was built on a hill to take advantage of the cooler, breezier conditions.  The heights also had strategic advantage as trade routes ran through here and those who controlled the heights controlled the trade.  In the main thoroughfare you could see the worn wagon wheel ruts of years - hundreds of years? - of trading caravans.

Northern Border - Syria

From a nearby view point we had a sweeping view of the Jordan/Syria border and the Sea of Galilee.  There was a dusty haze this time of year in most of Jordan, the dry season, so our view of the distant hills, especially the Golan Heights, were just barely visible in the distance.  It reminded you where you were and the issues that still plague this region.

Byzantine Church Of Gadara.

As we explored the site, a young boy in a window overlooking the ruins yelled Hello down to us.  He made sure we heard him by repeating himself ... 10,000 times.  It was funny for the first 100 times or so.  I exaggerate, of course, but the boy was insistent.

Back on the minibus we headed for our next stop, Pella.  Along the way we passed through several military checkpoints where bored soldiers watched you warily over large caliber automatic weapons.  Something you don't see in the United States except, maybe, Arizona.  I have to say that I never felt safer than in Jordan.  To enter the lobby of our hotels you had to put your bags through x-rays and walk through metal detectors.  Cars were inspected on the way in using mirrors.  Unfortunately they also used bomb detecting wands which, as far as I could tell, were just a radio antenna attached to a small metal handle.  Similar bomb detectors have been deemed fraudulent.  It looked like they were dowsing for water or something.

We stopped at a rest house which, in Jordan is a combination rest area, hotel, and restaurant.  The rest house overlooked the Roman ruins of another decapolis city, the city of Pella.  This is also near where Jesus supposedly went out into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights.  The building of the rest area and some of the initial excavations of Pella were done with help from USAID.  Unfortunately funding has dried up and only a little excavation is done now.

Pella.

We ate lunch here overlooking the ruins.  The owner/manager of the rest stop asked us where we were from.  He got excited when he found out that we were familiar with Iowa.  Apparently he has been trying to contact the Iowa governor so that they could set up a sister city relationship with Pella, Iowa.  The Wife promised to try to contact someone from Pella.  We left with Mr. M.G. Deeb Hussein's card.

The call to prayer was heard and we sat down to eat an okay meal while surrounded by some of the skinniest cats I've ever seen.  The Wife and M_SD fed some of the cats from their plates.  Not sure what I would have thought if I was the owner.  Feeding pets is very American.  Not sure how Islamic cultures interpret that.

We were given glasses of mint-lemonade.  The past couple of mornings I'd had bitter orange juice for breakfast and the lemonade continued the trend.  I think sweet juices are not the norm in Jordan.  I discovered that adding one part pineapple juice to three parts bitter orange juice made it much more palatable to my American sweet tooth.

There was a geocache some 500 feet away from the road house but I never had the opportunity to search for it.

After lunch we drove further south to the Dead Sea.  Here we stopped at a resort/spa where we were given the opportunity to swim at the lowest point on Earth.  The Wife and I changed into our swimsuits and headed to the beach. I waded in.  They recommend that you not get water on your face or in you eyes and I discovered why very quickly.  The salt water made every little cut, scratch, and nick burn.  I now understand the phrase "Rub salt in the wound."  The water is one third salt and feels very oily to the touch.   As I walked out into deeper water my feet came out from under me and I found my self floating on my back and bobbing like a cork.  I never could float very well before but in the Dead Sea I had more difficulty trying not to float.  No need for a floaty in this lake.  The Wife discovered this as well.  I've now been in the lowest lake and the highest navigable lake in the world.

The Dead Sea and a couple of umbrellas.

On shore there was free mud that was supposed to help your skin.  We did not partake but I saw other people smear it all over before getting in the water.  Dead Sea Spa products were on sale all over the country.

Sadly, the Dead Sea is dying.  Its main source of water - the river Jordan and two smaller rivers - have all been dammed up and diverted to support agriculture and to provide drinking water.  The lake has dropped 50 ft in some ten to twenty years and may be completely gone in less than thirty years if something is not done.  Fortunately the Governments in the area are looking into bringing water from either the Red Sea or the Mediterranean.  The new construction, mostly resorts, indicate that there is some optimism for the lake being kept alive.

The sun was hot, in the upper 90s, so I got out before I burned.  We rinsed off the saltwater under the showers and changed back before heading back into the spa.  By the time we got back with our driver and guide I was sweating buckets.

The place where Jesus was baptized was not far away but was not on our itinerary.  Our guide says, due to the diversion of the Jordan river, the water is very narrow at the site and is not very impressive.  I think the Wife was a little disappointed that she didn't get to baptize me.

We headed back to Amman and the Wife and I crashed early.  We rarely went to bed later than 9:30 PM this vacation.

I've added more pictures to the 2010-07 Jordan Google Photos album.

2010 Vacation: Jordan - Day One - Amman

Monday, Day One of our tour, started at midnight for me.  I couldn't sleep.  I suppose it wasn't a very good idea to sleep on the airplane.  I went in and out of consciousness all night.  The Wife was smart and took an Excedrin PM.  I would have been totally irritated by my insomnia except for one thing: at 3:35 AM I heard the Call to Prayer.  It wasn't as loud as I expected it would be.  It sounded ghostly, ephemeral, and quite beautiful.  In Amman the call to prayer is a uniform recording that is started at the exact same time for all mosques.  The result is an harmonious citywide chorus.  Outside of Amman the call is sung live and the many different voices are more cacophonous.

After breakfast (beef bacon ?!?) we met our guide for the next six days -  Suhaib Al Nweihy.  Suhaib was twenty-something wearing a polo shirt with his collar turned up.  He looked like some bar hopping gigolo.  He turned out to be a nice guy and fairly knowledgeable.  He led us to a minivan where we met the first of our tour mates - M_SD.  M_SD was a retired civil servant from San Diego.  She would be the only other American on the tour.  She would also be our only companion for the next two days.  Ultimately our group would consist of twelve people of six nationalities living in three different hotels.  Our group would not be completely together until the afternoon of day three.

The first stop of the day was the Citadel.  Amman is built on a series of hills in the east mountains.  The Citadel, a group of Iron Age, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman ruins, is located on one of those hills.  The Roman city built here is called Philadelphia and was one of the Decapolis Cities.  This is where we were first exposed to the mixture of cultures that make up the history of Jordan.  Everywhere we went it was mainly Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman.  The ruins were my first Roman ruins and were very interesting.  After touring the grounds we went through the small but well stocked museum that included some of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Temple of Hercules

After leaving the Citadel we travel into one of the many valleys/canyons criss crossing the city to the Roman amphitheater.  The place has a capacity of 6,000 people.  The Wife and I climbed up to the top, not an easy feat in 85°F heat.  Along the way I looked for a geocache that was supposed to be hidden there.  We didn't find it and the cache logs appear to indicate that it's been gone for a while.

Roman Amphitheater from the Citadel

At this point our guide said that we had a free afternoon.  This came as a surprise as I didn't realize we had a free afternoon scheduled.  On the way back to the hotel we passed a shopping district and some of the more modern areas of Amman.  The guide explained that most buildings were built of Jordanian limestone which gives it the sandy beige - white -rose color.  Amman is sometimes refereed to as the white city.

At the hotel we decided to do a couple of things.  We found out that we were not visiting a mosque on this tour so we would visit one.  We also decided to go back to the shopping area we'd passed to do some shopping.  This is also where I had a pang of insecurity and a mild panic attack.  What is it about being in a foreign country in a taxi that sets the hair on the back of my head aloft?  What's worse, I would have to ask questions ... the horror.  Fortunately I got over my hissy-fit and we got on with our business.

We went to the hotel desk and asked about a taxi.  They suggested hiring a taxi as a city guide for about 15 JD per hour.  We went out front and the bell hop called a taxi over.  Talking with the driver (in English of course) we negotiated for 25 JD for two hours of his service and off we went.

Our first stop was the King Abdullah Mosque, a mosque we'd passed on the way to the Citadel.  The taxi parked opposite the visitor's center.  The traffic was fairly heavy and I wondered how we would cross.  Before I could wonder for long, the driver just stepped out into the street and walked across.  The cars didn't stop.  Horns were not honked. He just walked across like there was no traffic and the traffic avoided him.  I decided, rather foolishly, that I could do that too and I just walked out across the street.  It felt a little like playing Frogger without the stress of being hit.  When I reached the other side, frankly, I was amazed that I hadn't been run over.  I looked at the Wife who was still on the other side.  It became obvious that she was not as crazy as I was.  The taxi driver, also realizing what was happening, stepped back into traffic and managed to stop the traffic so that the Wife could cross.  Crazy.

First stop at the mosque was to get some coverings for the Wife.  She was given a black robe-thingy that covered all but her face.  Then we walked through a small museum featuring models of other famous mosques all over Jordan.  We picked up a brochure that explains Islam and, most interestingly, condemns those who "have done gruesome and criminal acts in its name."  This was followed by the main attraction, the interior of the mosque.  We had been a little strategic in picking the time of our visit, planning it to be between times of prayer.  We took off our shoes and entered the main prayer area which was empty except for three or four men praying.  It felt a little like a round church without pews.  A niche in the wall, where the Imam would preside, was set in the direction of Mecca.  The dome was ringed in stained glass.

We then went to the room where the women pray.  Unfortunately I didn't realize where we were going.  The Wife went in as I approached (I was taking exterior pictures).  Our taxi driver took off his shoes and then put them back on.  I took off my shoes and went in.  The taxi driver then took off his shoes again and followed me in.  There was only one women in the room but the Wife said that she had an horrified look on her face (again, I was taking pictures and missed the look).  Next thing I know a woman police officer came in and ushered us out.  She also chewed out the taxi driver.  When I realized what was going on I looked at the taxi driver and said "You could have stopped me."  He just shrugged and smiled sheepishly.  We were a little embarrassed.

Our next stop was shopping.  Unfortunately to the taxi driver this meant taking us to one of his friend's store.  While it was a very nice store, it was obvious that it was also overpriced.  I sort of let him know with my look and manner that I wasn't very happy.  He knew exactly where we'd wanted to go and was just trying to make some extra money on the side for his friend.  We bought some small trinket and the Wife wisely used this chance to find out what overpriced looked like in Jordan.  This helped us find some better deals later on.

Back in the Taxi and off we went to the shopping area that we'd seen earlier in the day.  We stopped and the driver showed us a shop that he said was pretty good.  We walked the street a bit before returning to this store.  Fifteen minutes later, after talking with a real salesman, one who probably watched too many westerns,  we had some Christmas shopping done and we got pretty good deals on all of it, I think.

When we got back to the hotel we were a half hour over our two hour time allotment.  To the driver's credit he did not ask for more money and stuck to our original agreement.  We recognized the honesty by paying the original 30 JD and added a tip on top for him.

Later that night our guide picked us up and took us to Kan Zaman, an Ottoman trading post whose stables had been converted into a restaurant.  Here we had another buffet but it was a more authentic Jordanian food experience than what the hotel offered.  We invited our driver (Mohammed) to join us and we had interesting dinner conversation over interesting food.  I would never have guessed that I would like lamb in a yogurt sauce (Mansaf) but I was surprised.  I'm not sure I can say I liked it but I can say that I had no problem eating it.

After eating I took out my camera and took pictures of the stone domed arches and the impressive dinning hall.  I decided to check out a few of the other pictures I taken earlier that day.  That is when I discovered that my camera would not display several pictures.  Actually, of the 167 pictures I'd taken that day, only about 35 to 40 were viewable.  My heart sunk.  I had an extra battery but I did not have an extra SDHC card. On the way back to the hotel I asked the guide if we could stop somewhere to buy a new card on day two of our tour and he said we would.

That night I spent about an hour in the business center trying to see if the pictures were good or bad.  Unfortunately there was no RAW viewer capable of viewing the pictures I took.  Everything looked okay.  The files were there and they varied in size like pictures would.  I didn't accomplish much except to infect the camera card and my thumbdrive with Viruses/Trojans.  I went to bed, after taking an Excedrin PM, hoping that the pictures would be there when I got home.  I slept better that night - better than I expected I would - while it was the Wife's turn to hear the call to prayer at 4:00 AM.  (The time of the call to prayer is based on the rise and set of the Sun so it varies as the day lengthens and shortens.)

The Wife and I have come to the conclusion that my camera problems were punishment for entering the woman's mosque.

The few pictures I took that survived can be found in my 2010-07 Jordan Google Photos album.  What is missing is most of the Citadel, the museum (including pictures of the dead sea scrolls), the roman amphitheater up close, the King Abdullah mosque, the Kan Zaman, and, most disappointing, the seven goat heads lined up in a butcher's window.  As I post, I will add more pictures to the set.

I'm Beginning To Hate ... Falcons

I've been putting off posting about Jordan until I find out the results of my latest attempt to recover my corrupt pictures.  Well, the pictures arrived in the mail today on four DVDs.  I would like to share a small sample of the recovered pictures:

The last picture I took in Jordan was of a Falcon at a rest stop.  Every picture that was "recovered" was of the falcon.  Several hundred pictures of the F-ing falcon.  When I click on the thumbnail, I get "invalid image".

I haven't given up all hope.  I think I'll visit a local camera store to see if they have any ideas. What bothers me is all the files on the card are of varying sizes consistent with a RAW format picture but all the recovered pictures have the same size.  Seems odd to me.

Anyway, I plan to start posting about Jordan tomorrow with the pictures I have.  I'm missing three quarters of the first day, half of Petra, and all of Wadi Rum.  All in all, I lost about two of the six days.

Sorry for the delay.

2010 Vacation: Jordan - Day Zero - Getting There

Day zero ... actually two days, Saturday and Sunday ... was travel day.  We had a flight scheduled to leave in the late afternoon and we were at the airport the requested two hours before our flight time.  When we checked in we discovered that the flight was delayed.  Instead of 4:55 PM our departure was tentatively scheduled for around 8:00 PM.  This was a little distressing as our layover in Chicago was only two and a half hours and a three hour delay guaranteed us missing our Royal Jordanian flight.

We went through security and headed for our gate and waited.  I couldn't sit much so I had some dinner (a BBQ pork sandwich - the last pork I would eat before returning home) and stocked up in bottled water (four bottles - the first water related mistake of many on this trip).

At time went by the news got better as the estimated time of departure slowly creeped earlier.  We boarded our plane at 6:45 PM and our flight made record time arriving at 8:00 PM - an hour before our connecting flight was scheduled to depart.  We hopped on the train and went to the international terminal where we discovered that we had to go through security once again.  Four unopened bottles of water and an unopened bottle of Diet Dew, all bought at inflated airport prices, pulled from our bags and dumped into the trash.

We hurried to our connecting gate, buying more expensive airport water along the way, arriving as they were boarding the flight.  The flight ended up leaving an hour late.  To our relief, we'd had plenty of time.

Our seats turned out to be in the center row, not the best for a 12 hour flight.  Looking around It felt odd being the only Caucasian-Americans.  Everyone else were middle eastern or Arab-American.  Our row mate to my left was a Kurdish gentleman with family in Syria.  He worked for the U.S. Customs office in San Diego.  I have met a few middle eastern people and they all tend to be talkative and very social and our seat mate did not disappoint.  Actually he talked a little too much for my taste.  I was a little relieved, after taking off and pulling out our books and magazines, that he left us to our reading.

Actually very little reading was done.  Probably less than a half hour into the flight the Wife and I both closed our eyes and tried our best to sleep.  I never sleep well on planes but I managed to get some sleep, a fact confirmed by our Kurdish friend when he informed me that I snore.

Twelve hours later we arrived in Amman, Jordan.  I hadn't moved from my seat.  Didn't even need to use the facilities.  So much for that concern.  We got off the plane and were met by a gentleman from the tour agency holding a sign with our name on it - a first for me I think.  We grabbed our bags and headed for immigration.  Our passports and 20 JD ($28.24)  were handed over and he ran off. Before you could ask "where did he go", he was back with our passports with visas stamped inside.  He took us to a private car that took us to our hotel.

At the hotel things got a little weird.  We expected to have our hello - hi there dinner but were told we were on our own and that we would meet our fellow tour mates in the morning.  It kind of felt like we were being dumped off.  It would become obvious the next day why we didn't have the dinner.

We ended up eating alone in the hotel restaurant (Dinners were included with our tour).  The food, a buffet, was a lot of lamb, beef, and chicken along with a lot of stuff I didn't recognize.  It was spiced a little different from what I'm used to - spiced taste not spiced hot.  It was okay and my worries about food were eased a bit.  This first night I skipped the dessert table, an oversight that I corrected on subsequent meals.

We spent the rest of the night in our room checking out the satellite TV (i.e World Cup Futball).  Not the most imaginative way to spend our time but our hotel was not really in a very walkable area and we were a little unsure about what was prudent.  Looking out our window we could see a lot of new construction and at least one of the ubiquitous Mosques (The dark dome is just left of center and the minarets are near the center of the panorama below but are hard to see.)

Hotel View Panorama.

Some observations mostly from the drive to the hotel from the airport:

• Amman is a rather monochrome city.  All of the buildings are roughly the same color - a sandy beige to pale sandy rose.  Very few buildings are painted.
• Most housing is multistory apartment/condos.  The buildings are boxy, with regularly space windows, stark, and utilitarian.  I saw very little exterior decoration of residential buildings.  I can only assume that most decoration is on the inside.
• While there are camels, donkeys are more common.
• I would not like to drive in Amman where you have to be pretty aggressive to get about.
• On the plane, between movies, they showed a map showing the progress of the plane.  One of the alternating maps was a compass rose indicating the direction of Mecca.

2010 Vacation: Jordan - Recovery

We got back home late last night from vacation.  Jordan was great and I will post about it over the next three or six weeks.  Today, Monday, was reserved for recovery.

In the case of this vacation, recovery pertains to two different issues.  The first is the one familiar to almost anyone who has taken a vacation - you often need a vacation to recover from the vacation.  Jordan was no different.  For me this recovery is more difficult than usual because of the eight hour time difference and the resulting jet lag that I have never experienced to this magnitude.  I think I am recovering better than I expected but I still feel like I'm in a fog.  I'm sure it will take a day or two to get everything back on rhythm.

The second issue that I'm recovering from was unexpected and very disappointing and ate up most of my day.  I took some 636 pictures in the six days we were in Jordan.  When I got back I discovered that 284 of these were corrupt and unviewable.  Yep, 44% of my pictures went *poof* into the ether.  Now, I suspected that something was wrong when I was taking pictures, and I'll talk about it in future posts, so I wasn't totally surprised today but I did have some hope that I was wrong.  I wasn't.  The files are corrupt.  Damn.

I spent most of the day downloading photo/file recovery programs in the futile attempt to recover some of the lost pictures.  Fortunately most of the programs are free to try out (you only have to pay to save the files) so when they didn't work I was out nothing.  I tried out three and had the same results.  The files are of varying sizes and appear 'normal' but they are not recognized as an image.  I suspect that the problem is with the memory card I was using.  If any of you have any suggestions for a utility/program that may help me recover my pictures, please share in the comments.

To top it off when I plugged the card into the computer to copy off the files, my virus scanner lit up like a Christmas tree.  After I first suspected a problem, I'd gone down to the hotel business center to see if I could view my pictures (I couldn't - no RAW viewer).  Apparently I infected the camera card and my USB thumbdrive with four viruses/trojans.  Fortunately my virus scanner caught them and disposed of them for me.

As I said, I will post more over the next few weeks.  For now I'll say that I had an awesome time, experienced a lot of firsts, and saw a lot of interesting things.

Anticipation ... Planning ... Worries ... Vacation Planning

Make a list.  Check it twice. That's what I've been doing for the past week or so.  Preparing for our Jordan trip.

• Scan passports and copy them to a thumb drive.  Oh yeah and e-mail a copy to yourself just in case.
• Frequent flier numbers.  Where are they?  Write them down and don't forget to apply them to the tickets at check-in.
• Turn off half.com and amazon seller accounts.  Can't fill them orders when you are out of the country.
• Hold the mail.  The snail mail, that is.
• Can I trust the foreign computers?  Copy Portable Chrome and KeePass to the thumb drive as well ... oh and an antivirus thingamajig too.
• Replace the camera screen protector.  The old one has started to curl.
• Charge the camera batteries ... both of them.
• Are there any geocaches in Jordan?  38?!?  Copy them to the GPS.  Oh yeah, batteries for the GPS - pack 'em.
• Send the itinerary to the families.  Don't forget the emergency number.
• Speaking of numbers, what are the lost credit card phone numbers?  (Hope I don't need them.)
• Call the credit card companies and tell them I'm traveling.  This always reduces the amount of hassle when using the card overseas.
• Do I need a packing list?  Damn, I don't have one yet.  What's taking me so long?
• Jordanian Dinars ( $1.00 = 0.7077 JD) to buy the visa with.
• US Dollars to buy the Wife's new Bedouin jewelry.  Do I have enough?
• Who will water our plants?  Oh yeah, that's taken care of.
• How do we get to the airport?  Right, that's taken care of as well.
• What am I missing?  So much,  I'm sure.

That's what my mind has been going through.  Too many nit picking little details that have to be taken care of before we leave.  Obfuscating all of these preparation ruminations are the niggling worries that are spinning in my head.

• Will I like the food?  Fear of food has been a lifelong companion and the food of other cultures ... *shiver*
• Will I forget something important in all the chaos?  I have to remember to consult the list.
• Will I be able to sleep on the airplane?  We have thirteen and a half hours of flight time and I need to sleep.  I don't sleep very well on planes.  I don't want to be a zombie on the first day of the tour.
• I hate airplane bathrooms.  Silly, I know.  I think I've used bathrooms on airplanes three or four times in my 46 years of life.  I hate interrupting the person beside me to get out.
• Will I be overwhelmed by the exotic nature of it all?  The strange language?  The strange customs?  Okay, I doubt this will be a problem but ...
• Will I accidentally eat with my left hand?  The left hand is considered unclean to Muslims and using it to eat or to hand something to someone is offensive to Islam.  I am right handed and it shouldn't be a problem but ... one careless moment is all it takes for awkward to make its appearance.
• Will I sweat my guts out (90+ everyday).

All of these plans and worries will soon fade away, forced aside by all the cool stuff and new experiences.  Jordan, for a Muslim country, is pretty liberal and we will probably be prepared well by our tour guides.  Our Peru vacation was similar ... except I knew the language.

I am soooo ready ... I think.

Why Are You Giving Me The Bird?

Last week we received our Jordan tour package from our tour group.  It reminded me that we are leaving the country in less than two weeks, something I'd almost forgotten ... out of sight, out of mind.

The Wife and I are really looking forward to this trip.  I'm going to experience several firsts.  First trip over the Atlantic (The Wife has been to Europe several times).  Longest air flight - 12 hours non-stop from Chicago to Amman.  First country with a non-Latin/non-English language and a non-English alphabet (All my travels have been either English or Spanish speaking countries).  First non-Christian country - I'm not religious but it will be outside my normal experience.  I'm sure there will be several more firsts before this vacation is over.

I think the language will be the toughest.  I'm used to being able to read signs and stuff.  The tour package has a couple of pages of useful words and phrases as well as pronunciation aids.  I like one line:

"As for the stress pattern, a good rule of thumb is to place stress exactly where you would not expect to in English."

That  clears things up, doesn't it?

Another good example is with the words Hamam and Hammam.  They look similar but one will get you a pigeon and the other will get you a bathroom.  I will have to be careful.