Last update: Monday, September 05, 2005

Camel caravan heading for the Saudi border.

On Saturday, September the 30rd, we headed for Jordan. But getting ourselves out of Damascus was an adventure on itself. It took us almost 2 hours to find our way through the very busy centre of Damascus! Gues what? We actually had to wade through the crazy traffic downtown (near the big souq for any-one who's been there) in order to get to Jordan (the official and only way). It has been the craziest city trip we've ever made by car. A tip for anyone going there by car (be sure you really really really want too) just turn left at the first traffic lights on the highway coming from the Turkish border or the camping and follow the big stream of cars. Jordan will (only) be signposted from there. Forget the map, sit tight, and hope for the best. The two maps we had listed future(!) highways around the city centre. Don't try and find them :-)

The border-crossing with Jordan was a smooth one (only one hour) with only a little bit confusion in what order we had to get the visa, the necessary stamps and so on. But again, it's a lot of money to get into Jordan: a visa costs 10 JD p.p.($ 14), 57 JD ($ 80) for the car-insurance (3 months) and some sort of tax (1 JD p.p.) because we stay more than 3 days in Jordan. The latter we found rather weird.
We were heading to Jerash, but because of missing road-signs (worse than Syria) we lost our way and ended up almost in downtown Amman. But lucky for us Jordan isn't that big, so after a few hours we finally were in Jerash. We planned to camp at the Olive tree resort, the only official camping-ground near Jerash. But where the hell is that place. Again, it took us almost 1 hour to find it. Completely wasted we parked our car, with no energy left to even take a shower. That evening we decided we needed a treat, so we had a nice diner at the restaurant. Slowly we recovered from the very busy day.

Sunday we spent the morning to get some money from the bank in Jerash, read emails from home in an internet cafe and did some shopping. That afternoon we wandered through the ruins of ancient Jerash. It's a very big and beautiful site, like Palmyra in Syria, but I think the setting of Palmyra is more special (in the middle of a desert).
To save some money we decided to camp at the parking-place at the ticket-office. Soon we had company of two French couples with campers, who thought the same. Well, wrong thought. The police came to tell us that it was strictly forbidden for us to camp here and that they would escort us to Dibbeen National Park, where we could camp. In colonne, the police car with flashing lights in front and 3 campers following him, we drove 10 km to the National Park. It must have been a strange sight for the people of the little town we crossed, grin. And lucky for us, we could stay at the police-station over there, for free!

The next morning we decided to make it a lazy day, so we spent a couple of hours with the police-men, sipping our tea and making small talk. Although the latter was a bit difficult because our Arabian still isn't good and their English isn't either. Still, we had a great time.

Tuesday, we first drove to Jerash to do some shopping and refill our empty Turkish gas-bottles. And you don't want to known how that's done, but hey the city centre hasn't blasted to pieces so far, so why worry?
After that we went to the RSCN Shaumari reserve, a small reserve (22 sq km) in the middle of the desert. On our way we explored two desert castles: Qasr Kharana and Qusayr Amra. The first one is a two storey, well preserved, building which looks very much like a fortress but actually was an ancient hotel. The latter is smaller, but also well preserved, which was a part of a complex that served as a caravanserai. There are some frescoes inside and what makes these frescoes so remarkable: they not only show illustrations of living beings (which is prohibited under Islam taken strictly) but even an illustration of a nude woman bathing (!).

At 3 o'clock we arrived at the reserve. Camping isn't allowed in the reserve but we could camp on the small parking-lot in front of the entrance. Amazingly the other visitors there where American soldiers accompanied by a few Jordanian soldiers. They had large hummers (big & wide 4WD cars) with them, armoured to the max. Later that night we saw them practice with flares and bombs and some small flying toy thing, which might be some recognisance toy plane. One of the guys at the reserve assured us that there wouldn't be any locals out there. But what about the animals living in bombing zone at that moment!

The reserve is a small one, but they do a very good job in reintroducing wildlife which had disappeared in the region and teaching locals and children about nature preservation. They have a breeding-project for the Arabian oryx, which became extinct in the 1920s. We learned that it is possible to "adopt" an animal, and after reading a lot of information and talking to one member of the staff, we decided that they were doing a very good job. So we now officially are the foster parents of an Arabian oryx! We don't have a name yet, but we can inform you that "mother" and child are doing fine, grin.

Top left:      Camels taking a walk in the park :-)                Top right:     Arabian Oryx sign at Shaumari reserve.
Above left:  This is the real Arno!                                        Above right:  Going through the Oryx learning
                                                                                                                 program at Shaumari reserve

Because we had a wonderful time with the members of the staff, especially with Aqel, and because it was a nice spot to camp we stayed there for a couple of days. Aqel took us several times on a desert safari. We saw a lot of Oryx, even from a distance of 1 mtr. We also ventured into the desert at night by car and by foot with Aqel as our guide and desert expert. An exhilarating experience, bashing through the deep sand watching into the deep dark night. We tried to find some Jackals, Hyena and Wolfs but too bad we couldn't find any. The only thing we saw were a pair of eyes from two jackals. I think they were more scared of us than we of them. The wolfs we missed because we went in the wrong direction. One hour later, we learned from a Bedouin that he was chasing a wolf by car because it was trying to kill some sheep. Never thought that there would be wolfs and hyena in a Jordanian desert, and never thought that we would walk in the middle of the night through the desert trying to find them!

Top left:        The arabian Oryx (clickable).                           Top right:       Autumn has arrived !!
 Above left :  Aqal and Arno posing :-)                                    Above right:  Aqal taking us on a safarI
                                                                                                                     to see the Arabian Oryx. 

Saturday, the 7th of October, we drove to Amman, because we wanted to get some information about visa to the Emirates and Saoudi, and because our car needed service. Finding your way in Amman with your own car is something else!! After asking a lot of directions we found a Nissan dealer downtown, but too bad for us their service-garage was somewhere else, and they had only time for us at 8 am the next morning. After we had done some shopping at the big safeway supermarket, we started our search for a safe and quiet place to sleep. We asked at the reception of a big hotel (Ambassador) if it was all right if we just could sleep on their parking-lot. Ofcourse, that wasn't allowed. They told us that they needed every inch, because of a big international conference. And we couldn't book a room either, because it was fully booked, again because of the big conference. But we could sleep on the public parking-lot next to the hotel if it was OK by the police. Lucky for us they allowed us to sleep there and they told us they would be there all night, so we would be safe. And strangely, all evening and the next morning, the parking lot of the hotel stayed nearly empty. Hmm, I think we must have looked really dirty, we should have booked ourselves a room by phone :-). Later we heard there actually is some sort of a camping in Amman near the city sport centre.

The drive to the Nissan service centre was easy. We explained what we wanted and before we knew it some young guy was driving our car into the garage. Well that precise moment could have been the end of our trip if we didn't looked where this guy took our car. Trying to enter a 2 meter high garage with a 3 meter high car makes a lot of damage. But luckily because of our frantic yelling and waving he stopped the car just shortly before the small entrance. Phew!!!

At the Nissan service centre we had tea with the reception manager and somehow the conversation diverged to Iraq. He told us about his visit to Iraq a few weeks ago. It seems that Iraq is everything else than what we've read and heard about. We also had noticed ourselves that trading with Iraq is very much alive as we camped out in the desert near the Shaumari reserve. Trucks going on and off to the Iraqi border, exporting(!) food and goods from Iraq to Jordan which was confirmed by the reception manager. Also live over there doesn't seem to be so bad as the western media is reporting. Apparently he had a good time in Iraq. We left with a feeling that we should at least check some more about Iraq now we're in the neighbourhood.

By taxi we went to downtown Amman, first to the Embassy of Saudi. After being frisked (only Arno) we where allowed to enter a big square with a lot of little offices. Their was a huge line-up in front of one, but lucky for us, we were allowed to go to another one. Apparently Saudi is a country where many people want to go.
After asking we got the good news: we can get a transit visa if we have a visa for the Emirates and a letter of recommendation from our own Embassy. The bad news: the processing time takes a minimum of one month, and we should at least count on six weeks! What a bummer, but again this is the official path, knowing anyone (specially for work) in Saudi would speed things up considerably.

Next, we went to the Embassy of the Emirates. And again, we can possibly get a visa to the Emirates, but it would take at least one month to know if we definitely got one or not. This was bad news, because it means that if everything went well, we will have our Saudi visa halfway December when we take the official way. The fast way is booking a Hotel which can supply us with an Emirates Visa within a week, but again this route is taken mostly by air, not by land.
Taking the official visa application route we would not have enough time to travel and explore the countries (i.e. the Emirates). We're not sure if we could get a transit visa back to Jordan through Saudi again without sitting out the full processing time again. We knew it would be hard, specially when going from north to south but all this paper work kills too much of our time in this stage of our trip.

Just to get some information, we went to the Embassy of Iraq. And what we didn't expect, we can get a tourist visa. Either by invitation or contacting Iraq Air. Teh latter can arrange the visa and the invitation, a multi US dollar (how ironic) transaction ofcourse. Also Iraq is apparently a country people want to go to because there where long queues of people there applying for a visa.

Anyway after all this information we're still thinking about what we shall do the next couple of months. To think things over we decided we needed a float in some very very salty water, so after picking up our car, we headed for the dead see. Although this is very near to the border of Israel, we didn't notice anything about the increasing tension in that country, especially the West Bank and the Gaza strip.

We can be short about the dead sea, it's VERY VERY HOT there. The place is about 400 meters below sea level (lowest place on earth) and temperatures didn't fall below 29 degrees at night. (in October). At 9 am the following morning it was 40 degrees in the shade with some wind. We don't want to know what temperature it will reach when it's summer. The dead sea resthouse is also quite expensive to spend the night at. For parking including shower we where asked to fork out 21 US$. Staying at the dead sea without a shower closeby is plain hell, you need to wash of the salt with that heat. The swimming itself is quite strange. Actually we can't call it swimming because our legs where just hitting air instead of water. They pop-out from the water when trying to swim.
We left the dead sea at 9am the next morning, happy to breath cooler air at mount Nebo which is really close by. After cooling down (25 degrees in the shade) we headed for Petra driving through huge wadi's with amazing views.