Amman, Amman, our last stop in Jordan, we’ve made it to Amman. A big, busy city with everything you could need from loud & coulourful local fruit & veg markets on the streets to souvenir shops on the sidewalks to proper malls with Western fast food restaurants and movie theatres just up the road. It was going to be easy in Amman. And I learned to drive like a pro in Amman. Here, the streets are as busy as the people, the roads are from highway wide to back alley narrow, and the hills still had me stalling and squealing tires when I had to stop and start on them, but by the end of the trip, easy breezy. Oh my poor road trip partners, they must have been so happy to get out of the car. But me, I still wanted to drive, drive, drive!
Amman was a bit hectic for us as the girls only had a couple of days so we wanted to cram in some sight-seeing. Together with another couple that was also staying at the hotel, we road tripped it to a town called Jerash to see some old ruins with a plan of going to the Dead Sea (finally!) in the afternoon. A late start and typical directional difficulties got us to Jerash later than we had anticipated so it was close to sunset by the time we finished all the sightseeing and were heading towards the salty, floaty water. We had a great plan and again, it all revolved around being very, very deceitful.
Remember I told you that it was bizarrely difficult to access the Dead Sea? No beaches, no places to pull off and wander down to the water. There was one small section of a public beach that would charge almost $20 to access it and we had all been warned against going there as the locals were prone to intolerable agendas of harassment apparently. Not selling stuff, just being supremely unpleasant. So local beach was our BACK UP plan. Plan A came from the couple who stayed in the bedouin camp with us at Wadi Rum. The Holiday Inn has a STUNNING resort just next to the public beach with proper sand, obviously brought in from somewhere else, and all of the luxury you could imagine of a 5* resort (Holiday Inn apparently does it up right over here!) So, all agreed, we were going to drive up to the gate and tell them we wanted to go for a drink/dinner then sneak our way down to the beach. Could we pull it off? Damn security everywhere in the Middle East! Let’s see how it goes.
Gave my name at the gate, I’m a rock star now because my new name, as pronounced by the attendant, is “Janet Beatle” and they wrote down our license plate. Bags and bodies places through x-rays and scanners and we confidently strolled straight down towards the restaurant area (took my best guess as to where that would be) and then followed the bathing suit clad guests from there. Turns out that the restaurants are near the swimming pools which lead out to the beach… BONUS! So we made like we owned the place, changed into swim gear and booked it for the water. Two older Jordanian couples were heading for the Sea at the exact same time and security stopped us to tell us that the beach was now closed. WHAAAAA???? Security reasons, Israel, terrorist, who knows, but yeah, they close the beaches at sunset. Lovely Jordan couple pish-poshes him, says give us 5 minutes, so off we went. Oh yippee!
10 minutes floating, bobbing, and laughing our heads off in the strangest water on the PLANET! I mean, if you lay on your stomach or your back, you can’t keep your feet from bobbing up and out of the water. It was the most bizarre feeling ever! EVER! Loved it! Tasted horrible, any small scrape or cut was quickly identified by the burning salt, and left your skin feeling amazingly soft and oily. A short but complete unique experience. Felt very alive in the Dead Sea.
The sun had set and we were whistled out of the water by impatient staff members so spent some time lounging in and around their oh so fancy pools before packing up and heading back to Amman. All were exhausted and very happy with the day. Our lies paid off quite nicely, thank you very much.
So up, up, up we head in our little putt-putt Citroen on the way back from the lowest point on earth. Rumble, rumble, rumble… suddenly… race-car-with-no-muffler-sound. Whatever little piece was tying our car together from that quick fix a couple of days back was no longer doing the trick. Damn. Pulled off to the side of the road and my phone has not been working in Jordan for some reason but those oh-so-handy police vehicles hanging out on the sides of the road were in the perfect spot again. There was a rough little coffee stop shop right where we pulled off and the guys from there immediately came to our assistance, rolling around under the car, trying to do what they could for us, while Mr. Police Man and I made phone calls back and forth to the car company. It was way late by this point so I wasn’t sure how much luck we’d have with getting the car sorted out but I knew we were in good company no matter what the outcome was to be. While I flitted back and forth between the car, the cops, and looking out for a new car that was supposed to be arriving, the guys at the coffee shop were keeping the rest of the crew very entertained. Coffee and tea flowed freely, lots of stories via charades as they didn’t speak English and our group had no Arabic, and so much laughter echoing through those mountains we were meant to be driving through.
A new car arrives and we head off into the night. New friends made and hearts filled with the warmth of kindness from strangers. Car trouble didn’t end up seeming like trouble at all.
To be continued…
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