By the time Oyv and I met up in Istanbul, I’d been travelling for a couple of months; he was joining me for three weeks. I was running on a self-imposed and somewhat radical budget, and had started competing with myself to spend less from one day to the next. Travelling for a while in cheap countries where you can do what you want on practically nothing will do that to you. Or it does that to me, anyway.
Now, Oyv’s no stranger to warped travel budget restrictions himself, but for this short trip he apparently thought he’d prance around the Middle East like some kind of Saudi sheik, staying at nice hotels and eating unlimited quantities of pricey hummus. Wrong.
The daily cost of travel in Jordan (and Lebanon before that) came as a bit of a shock to me. The Middle East in general is not a budget traveller’s dream destination. I had a can of Nescafé and some oatmeal in my backpack and I informed Oyv we’d be having it for breakfast; what’s more, we would take rooms without aircon despite the searing heat outside.
But the thing is, if you haven’t gone crazy like me, or if you can (also like me, under force from your husband) reign in the crazy before you find yourself living off instant oatmeal and complaining about the high cost of hummus these days, there is a lot of great stuff to do.
Just, like, so much. We didn’t realise this in advance. OK, mainly because we didn’t do any research. We really wanted to visit Petra, alright? We knew all about that and couldn’t wait to see it for ourselves. But we quickly found out that the ancient city is not all there is to Jordan (although it is pretty awesome).
No, as it turns out, there are plenty of totally diverse ways to entertain yourself around here. On that note – this is what five or six days in a row in Jordan looked like for us.
First things first, we made an excited beeline for Petra. It definitely is the country’s biggest draw.
And no wonder: it’s amazing.
The Nabateans built Petra over a span of about 500 years starting from the 6th century BC. Eventually falling into ruin it was a forgotten city until 1812 when it was discovered by a Swiss explorer.
We visited the site three times over two days (it’s huge, and it’s different in every light).
All the walking and climbing in the heat left us exhausted and it was a bit of a relief to exit the site on the third visit and go back to the hotel pool (yup, we had a pool, that was all Oyv).
So we were hot and dusty. But that was fine, since the very next day we found ourselves submerged in the cool Red Sea, snorkelling in some of the clearest, bluest water I’ve ever seen, floating over stunning reefs teeming with fish and gently wavering plants.
After snorkelling we returned to our hotel in Aqaba which coincidentally was next to a local restaurant where we ate to our hearts’ content (the hummus, in addition to being delicious was also really cheap. I was thrilled).
Magnificent ruins and the Red Sea behind us, it was obviously time to hit the desert so we went to Wadi Rum. Inhabited since prehistoric times and still home to local Bedouin, this desert’s most famous one-time resident is Lawrence of Arabia.
Our visit to Wadi Rum started at the village outskirts where we met a man named Shaker, who was waiting there to shake us down. We were with two friends who during the bargaining process observed that Oyv and I had a Good Cop/Bad Cop thing going on. (Those of you who know us both can guess who’s who).
Reaching an agreement about guides and activities with Shaker, we set off into the desert to explore. Riding in the open back of a 4WD we clung tightly to the sides as our guide drove at breakneck speed over the empty expanse of sand. It’s not safe….but it’s really, really fun.
We slogged up dunes under the relentless sun (and ran back down). We climbed on massive sandstone cliffs and we watched the sun set over ancient canyons.
When it got dark we went to camp, where the guides had been cooking vegetables and chicken in a pit.
We ate, and slept soundly in our tent surrounded by the total silence of the desert.
And after the desert, it stands to reason that we got back in the water.
First, we took a quick dip in the Dead Sea. Calling it a ‘dip’ is kind of a stretch, given that you literally cannot sink in this salt-saturated body of water.
Coated in salt – it’s itchy and it stings, you don’t want to do laps in the Dead Sea – we went to Wadi Mujib. There is no better way to almost lose your bikini bottoms rinse off all that salt, than to nearly drown in wade through torrents of rushing water in this beautiful biosphere reserve.
At some points you don’t wade anymore:
And there’s a waterfall awaiting you at the end.
I usually try to avoid cliches but sometimes I can’t help it: Jordan really does have something for everyone. And (here I go again) each day you spend there is in total contrast to the one before.
Scrambling over the ruins of an ancient civilisation; off-roading in the desert. Snorkelling in the Red Sea; bobbing like a cork in the Dead Sea. A combination hike/swim right up some rapids…all this, and you don’t even have to be a Saudi sheik to enjoy it.
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For more of my adventures (and misadventures) in Jordan, check out the rest of my stories from the road.
