9/02/2009
Jordan
I am often amused that so many customs people find my last name amusing. In Canada MacDonald is a pedestrian name but I am often asked if I own the restaurants and once in Yemen one of the customs guy was actually singing Old MacDonald. Same thing going from Syria to Jordan. One of the custom’s officers actually yelled over to his co-worker about my last name and they had a good laugh.
I have reached a new low. I can add cigarette smuggler to my traveling resume. The driver wanted to bring a bunch of cigarettes into Jordan so I had a bunch in my suitcase, pants and some even tucked into my socks. I think they were for all personal consumption so it was no big deal to me.
When I was kid we had a priest (and …insert joke here) named Father Gaul and I remember him telling me a story about visiting the Holy Land and swimming in the Dead Sea. I remember being fascinated by the fact it was the lowest place on Earth and that you could float so easy.
I went to check this out today. After a long walk, two bus rides and some hitchhiking I arrived at Amman Beach. The ride was interesting. They had jugs of gasoline on the bus with various smokers around it. I was trying to imagine when movie character I would end up resembling if it went up. I decided on the English Patient.
The Dead Sea was a neat experience. The salt and minerals make you incredibly buoyant. Really easy to float and hard to sink. I didn’t do the popular hold up the news paper while you float but I did pose. The water is disgusting and painful to swallow and burns after a while.
While it is impossible to sink people still end up drowning. I think what happens is that people try swimming and swallow the water and it is a bit shocking to your system and it is also hard to get on your back for some people. Sure enough, this large guy was hacking and joking and could not get turned over. I was going over to help him (I was in knee deep water) but I was shoved out of the way by a life guard. I don’t think the guy would have drowned but he was roughed up a bit.
After the Dead Sea I went the site where John the Baptist baptized Christ. It was not far and I kind of stumbled into it. Not much of a hike to along the Jordan River and there is an ordinary shrine there. Actually, the Jordan river has receded quite a bit over the last 2000 years so there is no water there. All the same it was still very thrilling even for an Atheist to stand where Christ was baptized.
The Jordan River was not as mighty as what I thought. I literally could jump across it over to the Israeli side. Speaking of which. It was interesting to see the Israeli soldiers keep an eye on the Jordanian soldier and vice versa.
Yesterday I went to Petra and saw the amazing village and ancient carvings made into the mountains; made of solid rock and 49 meters high and 49 meters wide. Just astonishing that they could do this in ancient times.
is an archaeological site in the Arabah, Ma'an Governorate, Jordan, lying on the slope of Mount Hor[1] in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah (Wadi Araba), the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. It is renowned for its rock-cut architecture. Petra is also one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. The Nabataeans constructed it as their capital city around 100 BCE.
The site remained unknown to the Western world until
1812, when it was introduced to the West by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. It was famously described as "a rose-red city half as old as time" in a Newdigate prize-winning sonnet by John William Burgon. UNESCO has described it as "one of the most precious cultural properties of man's cultural heritage. In 1985, Petra was designated a World Heritage Site.
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