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Middle East - part IV

Amman, Petra, Wadi Rum desert

Hector Yague
2005-10-07 17:04:47

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Amman

I arrived at Amman, capital of Jordan, the 16th of April. Of course, and as usual, it was late night, dark as a monkey's ass, and I got again ripped off by a unscrupulous taxi driver. As a matter of fact, I was so sleepy, tired, dirty and smelly that I could only dream of a bed to crash in, so I booked a room in the first hostel I saw. Man, you wouldn't believe what a shithole of a place. The bed was so dirty that I unrolled my sleeping bag and I decided to sleep on the floor, and the room was so dark and spooky that my camera flash wouldn't be able to light it up enough to take a shot. This hostel should be displayed in the dictionary under the entry: "awful". The day after I switched accommodations of course.

Amman itself has little to show. Just like any other arab city: smelly, messy, dirty, busy, dirty, trafficked, dirty and dirty.

After three days I couldn't stand that shit any longer, so I decided to speed up my way south towards the Sinai desert (in Egypt) where I had spent a great week seven years ago with my friends Nicholas and Tomas Zlotnik. But before going further south, I spent a morning floating up by the Dead Sea shore. As you probably know, the Dead Sea is a 33% salt-saturated substance, so in fact the water in almost solid. It's creamish solid, and when you get out of the water and get dried up in the sun, there is a greasy foil left covering your skin, just like if you'd dived into a huge Nivea pool. I had fun there, floating naked by myself without a soul anywhere at sight's distance, and then hitchhiking my way back to Amman. A truck driver picked me up by the highway and went on telling me about his three wives and 26 sons and daughters, but that's a whole another story...

Anyway, like I said I was willing to speed up my traveling pace a bit so I went out for a last night out with couple of friends I ...