Hopping through the Holy Lands

Jordan

Wadi Rum

Our 'guide' was the second son of a Bedouin, home from business school. He was young, early twenties, and it might have been that, but it could have also been the silence of the landscape, but he rarely ventured beyond a few words when he spoke. Wadi Rum is a sandy desert scattered with large basalt and granite outcrops with sheer vertical faces up to 100m high; the type so favoured by climbers. The was the land of T. H. Lawrence who waged a guerrilla war against the Ottoman empire. In an attempt to elicit some conversation I broached the subject of Lawrence of Arabia but the response was seemed cold, suggesting that Lawrence was an agent for the British goal of setting up the state of Israel. Being in Jordan I thought my best diplomatic option was to drop the subject. 

We camped in the desert, warmed by a fire, drinking strong sweet tea and listened to our guide play the oud and sing melancholic songs about love and the desert. Like any country lad, he seemed more at home driving his old land cruiser across the open plains than discussing how to build a web page to promote his father's business. We had one day to ourselves to walk into the landscape, but it felt hard to feel isolated, even though we saw only saw two distant people, as tyre tracks cris-crossed the sand and at the foot of many of the mountains was another Bedouin tent.

Petra

The bus never arrived for our trip to Petra, something that is not unusual. But a racing driver managed to be on hand to give us a lift for twice the fare. Eventually Roselin worked her magic and managed to squeeze 6 passengers into his dual cab for the same price as the bus. Our assured us that he paid a lot of money for his license and seemed to think that meant he was ready for the track despite protests that we wanted to live to see more of Jordan from our Korean co-passengers/co-sardines.

The ancient city of Petra is approached through a narrow canyon and the first glimpse lives up to the hype. The slither that peeks at you through the slit in the rock tantalises; promising more the further you approach. And finally you burst out upon The Treasury, glowing in the morning sun. The hills are carved thought with these facades that served as tomb to the Nabateans who, from here, controlled the trade routes from Egypt. But it is not the tombs that were most surprising but the rock itself that they were carved into. It is a glorious rainbow of reds, pinks, yellow, and blue gray that is the colour of the the mountains. Today Bedouins live in Petra, some of the cave-like tombs acting as home or stables. 

We stopped on the trail back from the hill top Monastery to drink tea with a Bedouin woman as we watched other tourists drifted on by passing us side ways glances. We sat on a dusty carpet while the woman heated a blackened teapot over a juniper fire, and were joined by a young man of 23. With the kohl darkening is eyes and his head wear he had the appearance of Jack Sparrow. He called to the tourists passing but none would stop, and he commented that they were so typical, too much in a rush to appreciate anything. He was full of bravado, explaining that this was one of his mothers and his father had five wives. Roselin was quick to ask why there were so few men about, and he retorted that they didn't need to work as they made the women happy at home! He tried to invite us sleep in a cave in Petra like a 'real' Bedouin but thoughts flashed to me of the New Zealand woman who was "Married to a Bedoiun" and has now written a book of the same title. We declined as graciously as we could and made our retreat.

Jordan Tour 

We completed our race through Jordan with a taxi ride to the crusader castle of Kerak, a dip in the Dead Sea and a peek at the mosaics of Madaba. Or taxi driver was a talkative senior gentleman who used the trip to get a tax invoice for his last stop at a garage, some vegetable and some eggs. All a little eccentric but nice none the less, when he dropped us off in Amman he thought that some of the locals would take "1000 years to be human".

Israel

We had not planned to go through Israel at the start of our travels but to overland through Syria. But the world changes and we thought discretion the better part of valour. One plus is that we had friends we met 10 years ago in South America that we could catch up with. We crossed the King Hussein bridge from Jordan and ran into problem with our telephoto lens. They security check seemed not to have seen one before and even asked me to take it apart. Next was immigration and that was another kettle of fish. Roselin was getting grilled about not wanting a stamp in her passport and then admitted to travelling with me, to which the woman official exclaimed "You are married to HIM!". On producing our marriage certificate and some sort of evidence of a flight out (of Turkey) it was my turn. I was going OK until I was asked if I had been staying in the same hotels as my wife. Then I lost it (briefly). What are we meant to do on our honeymoon? But fortunately I must have answered the other questions correctly as we were let in. The German next to me who was coming to see some aid project that his company was working didn't join us on our bus from the airport. He seemed to be getting a tougher grilling than me. Our next shock was the bus check before entering Jerusalem. A girl, possibly all of 18, with braces, an iPhone in one hand and a machine gun over her shoulder boarded and started checking passports. The prevalence of guns was one thing but to see them in the hands of children was another. 

Jerusalem was clean and well maintained, not the deterioration of other ancient walled cities that we had seen. But it still maintains that street market atmosphere of a Marrakesh or Varanasi, just a lot cleaner. It is a city divided into four: Jewish, Arabic, Christian, and Armenian quarters. This is just fitting with the theme that Jerusalem is a multi-layered cake; Romans, Crusaders, Mamaluks, Arabs and Jews have all had a part of building on the remains of what went before. This was no better seen than when we toured the underground tunnels of the Wester Wall. So many sights to see that we extended our stay a day. We even made it to the Holocaust museum and the visited the museum of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In Rehovot we met up again with our friends Nadav and Keren and there shy son Shalal. They were so generous that they took a day of work to show us around the old port city of Jaffa outside Tel Aviv. Really such a fleeting visit but we had just one more country to see.

Was it good? Did you like? Baksheesh?

Egypt Photos

There was none of the violence that our government had warned us against, but there were still a few signs of the January 25 revolution. Tahrir square was still occupied at least partially by a motley collection of tents and flags and a few revolutionaries. There is a multistory building across from the Egyptian Museum that is a burnt out shell, its crime being Mubarak's headquarters. The police force has basically ceased to function since they fired into the protests but the Tourist Police are still about protecting whatever tourists do come here from walking the wrong way. But for us this means we have the attractions virtually to ourselves; I couldn't imagine the hordes if Egypt were to again reach its tourist capacity.

There is a poignant sentiment expressed in the Ipuwer Papyrus at the fall of the first dynasty millenia earlier : "Events have taken place that had never occurred since the dawn of time: the King has been deposed by the rabble! He who had been buried as a Falcon was brutally dragged out of his sarcophagus! The burial chamber in the pyramid profaned! And now a handful of incompetent men in the government of the kingdom managed to deprive the country of its royalty". The question now is what men will be in the government?

The city of Cairo is ragged with the signs of decline everywhere, perhaps no longer the 'Paris of the Nile'. Although I can not tell if this has been a slow and gradual process or something more sudden. The motorways are fighting a constant battle with the desert and are filling up with sand. Cars park randomly along its length, sometimes to answer mobile phones or to shop at seemingly impossible stalls perched over the edge of the motorway, otherwise because it is the only available park, The traffic everywhere is heaving, belching, chaotic mass oozing through the veins of the city mixed with animal carts, pedestrians, road-works and breakdowns. Pedestrians incongruously seem to have right of way as long as you have nerves of steel required to step from the footpath. The is buildings being constructed across the country yet many are shells seemingly stalled mid-way to completion, others are empty shells. Still this is a city that isn't desperate for the tourist dollar, there even remains some of that old world charm in the souqs of the Old City.

The revolution may have caught up with is on the way to Luxor as the train was delayed at Assuit for many hours. In the end we followed a tour group onto buses and led in a poilice convoy to our final destination. We later learned from reluctant hotel staff that protestors had blocked the tracks. We met up with Roselin's cousin Priscilla and hubby Daniel for tours of the west bank, Abydos, Dendara and they also talked us into a balloon ride. We even met an Egyptian who didn't want anything from us. The "Music Man" bought us tea, sheesha and took us all to a belly dancing club. Unfortunately there had been some drunken revelry the night before and the police came and closed the place 10 minutes after we arrived. We did still manage to get an insiders glimpse of the underbelly of Egypt; alcohol, uncovered women, and men showering the dancer in money. 

They are good salesmen in Egypt. The usual pickup line of "looking is free" contests with many more witty baits:

"Let me help you spend your money"

"Come into my shop and buy some useless trinkets"

"I don't want all your money only half"

"I don't know what you are looking for, but have a look in my shop"

They are masters of the up-sell or add-ons, and once they have you business they will push for every extra they can. Still the humour is lost in the blatant double pricing (one for you, one for locals; one for when you start, one for when you finish). Even asking for directions can provoke a call for baksheesh (or hashish to some). Faux guides will start to follow you around a tomb pointing out in broken English a man or a cow and then ask for tips. Even though we can read the Arabic numerals, rarely are the prices marked and vendors are not shy from multiplying any local price by 7. 

Aswan didn't live up to the relaxed hype we had heard of, and perhaps this was as much my fault as anything. The ferry to Elephantine Island is blatantly 5 times that for a tourist as it is for a local and the ferry to the Temple of Philae can not even be negotiated until after you are locked in by buying an entry ticket. But in the end I was the biggest loser as it meant that I missed out on both. My frustrations are minor when compared to the local frustration at the lack of tourists in Egypt that means you have to ignore the near constant calls for you business when you walk anywhere.

The revolution probably did catch up to us on our way to Abu Simbel when we came across a road block 20 kms from our destination. We were only two of four tourists on a local bus but we could see tour groups on the other side milling around waiting to see what would happen. It seemed to be the usual stoush with lots of shouting and arm waving. Men from our bus would move the rocks off the road and protestors would move them back. Then in a single moment of insanity our drive drove through the human barricade and the bus was pelted with rocks (several coming through the windows). We sped to a nearby police post and were sheltered in a room with the of all people the driver as police raced about everywhere with there automatic rifles. We apparently only ran over one protestor. And although a few came to the door to abuse the driver we finally made it into Abu Simbel. Consequently, the next day we basically had the attraction all to ourselves.

In Ismailia, on the Suez Canal, we stood on the ferry that crossed every few minutes to watch the cargo boats sail through the desert. On our way back out in the afternoon to get a second helping of the freighters we were adopted by a local family. They spoke little English but we spoke less Arabic, which made Google Translate very useful. We circled the coast of the Sinai through Sharm el Sheik and Dahab before making it to our last port of call - Gebel Musa or Mount Sinai. This is Bedouin country, one of the many groups that make up Egypt. Bedouins are the nomadic groups from Arabia that hold onto all the Arabian traditions of old. Yet they are not shy about going into the street and blocking a road and shooting their guns into the air when they feel aggrieved. There are the Muslims usually discerned by the golf ball sized callous in the middle of their forehead from their devotion to prayer 5 times a day (Islam does mean submission). There is the Nubian in the south, they are darker and get there name from the Egyptian word for gold. Apparently there are good Nubians and bad Nubians. The good ones got to be pharaohs and the bad ones were the usually shown in carvings as about to have there heads crushed by the pharaoh. There are the Coptic Christians who built Byzantine in churches in ancient Egyptian temples. In many temples and monuments you can see where the Romans plastered over the inscriptions or the Copts have converted into to a church by chiseling off every pagan image, 17th century holiday makers from Europe have taken a bit home or left their name and date, or even in ancient times the latest pharaoh didn't like his mother-in-law too much. But I digress.

The village of St Katherine is a small community near the monastery of the same name built to protect the site of the burning bush of Moses. Mt Sinai being the sacred mountain Moses brought the Israelites to after leaving Egypt. We of course climbed the mountain (because it was there) and met about 300 Nigerians on a pilgrimage heading up in the dark as we were on our way down. The next morning we walked through local villages and gardens to the ruined Turkish fort on the summit of Gebel Abbas Bas. Most of Egypt that we saw was a sea of sand (with a sliver of green through the middle that is the Nile). But in Sinai that sea becomes a tempest of sharp ragged waves of rocks, this is a great place to walk and when the Bedouins are in their gardens in Summer camping would be easy.

The next day would be our last in Egypt - the 25th of January, a year since the Egyptian people "took their revolution back". Still Sinai was isolated from the turbulence of Cairo. We took the Bedouin Bus to Nuweiba and bought our tickets for the slow ferry to Aqaba, Jordan. It hindsight we should have probably gone via Taba and Israel as the ferry is a exercise in frustration. There is a queue to get to passport control, then a queue to get on the boat, then a queue on the boat where you surrender your passport. The boat actually leaves Nuweiba several hours later as this whole process takes forever. Much longer than the boat trip itself that is only a couple of hours. On arriving in Aqaba I was greatly relieved Roselin was able to talk the officials into us keeping our luggage as the free-for-all as passengers clambered through skip-bins to reclaim their bags looked like a nightmare. We still had to collect our passports in the processing centre and get though immigration. Luckily we are obviously tourists and used this to jump most of the queues. Jordan, a new country and one step closer to the end of our trip, we had better make the most of it.

Cape Town to Casablanca

Cape Town

Photos of Cape Town

Cape Town is an exceptionally pretty city, shame about the unpredictability of the weather. It has beaches a harbour and to top it off Table Mountain (a new Wonder of the World). We had a few days to enjoy the Cape Malay cuisine and drive down to the Cape of Good Hope.  There weather was excellent for our cable car ride to the top of Table Mountain, which was really the only totally clear day we had (Ra-selin at work). Unfortunately we couldn't do the walk up because we we carrying a few niggling injuries from our ATC tour on the truck. But the cable car ride had some great views as well, you just have to brave the madding crowds from tour buses. 

On the way down to the cape we stopped for some fresh seafood at Hout's Bay. It was very fresh as just outside we saw fishermen dragging nets of fish (and the occasional seal) to the beach. Chapman Drive was picturesque and we could see where the cold Atlantic and warm Indian ocean currents mixed and formed cloud that was sucked up over Table Mountain. At the Cape the weather began to turn but we still had to dip our feet in. There was of course a trip to Robben Island where we had ex-inmates give the history of the island and one that pointed out his cell and the conditions there. We had to race to visit the other cell blocks after our tour as the last ferry was leaving in15 minutes. We should have got an earlier ferry and took as long as we wanted. The District 6 museum was small but brought back to life the people who were displaced from the area. Certainly somewhere you could come back to.

Morocco

Photos of Morocco

Three weeks is really not enough time for Morocco; the consequence trying to pack too much in at the tail end of this trip. Morocco had been praised by many of the travelers that we had met and consequently had a big reputation to live up to. We landed in Casablanca, which offers little to the time strapped tourist, and is perhaps not the greatest introduction. It is a city more devoted to getting on with business than caring about visitors. We had long enough to have hot showers and see possibly the only sight - the Hassan II Mosque. We caught the train up to Tangiers and slipped through there even quicker onto a bus and across the border into Ceuta (Spain). It is odd how imperial Spain still clings to these small peninsulas of northern Morocco. Ceuta has an old fort but also alcohol, tapas and churches and lots of ferries across the Mediterranean to Spain or Gibraltar. 

After a little taste of Europe and an EU stamp on our passports we headed south to Tetouan. A fantastic low key place with a clean medina (walled city) and what Roselin would from then on refer to as 'the wizards'. These were guys wearing what I can only describe as hooded, ankle-length dressing gowns (djellabahs). Add leather slippers (babouche) and you complete the ensemble. This is a country that has perfected street-sleep wear. It fits in with the observation that nothing really opens until late morning. We were taken in by one such white wizard at the Dalia riad and enjoyed some French wine and flamenco guitar from the only other guest who was there to learn Arabic before heading back to Yemen as a logistics engineer for an NGO. Onto Chefchouan in the Rif Mountains, which has a beautiful blue washed medina. It reminded me of the blue city of Udaipur in Rajastan. According to our guide book this colour was due to the Jewish population that settled here but to our guide it was to keep the flies away. It was true, there weren't any flies, but it was also winter so I reserve my judgement on whether it works or not. We had a day walk in the mountains to the Bridge of God though villages than echoed to the rhythms of kif being pounded. 

Our next stop was Fes, which is "all about the medina". Small narrow streets wind past wall to wall shops that overflow out onto the cobblestones. Everything is sold and made in here, but it is the tannery that is the biggest draw card. Leather from camels, goats, sheep and cattle are cured, dyed and fashioned into handbags. It harks of days from centuries before and could be Varanasi if you replaced the cats with cattle and filled the streets with the detritus of all those that live there. The drinking fountains of Fes are testament to the Fassi fascination with harnessing water. Yet the state of plumbing in today's Fes would surely make a Fassi engineer tun in their grave. Meknes was a stopping point to visit the Roman ruins of Volubilis, but we did have time to see the tomb of Moulay Ismail. Then it was to the Saharan dunes of Erg Chebbi in Kamlia. We rode camels, camped in a Berber tent and watched the international gnaoua act Les Pigeons du Sable. The houses at Kamlia stand like sand castles in the desert, made of the earth they stand on, embellished with crenelations and occasionally outlined with the blue of a clear sky.

With it being winter, we had to find somewhere else to walk besides North Africa's highest peak Jebel Toubkal. With limited time we decided on only day walks within the Dades and Todra gorges and also Jebel Sarhro. They were places of dry rocky mountains with the occasional Juniper tree and nomads herding sheep and goats, but with the golden rocks and distant snow capped peaks it was hauntingly beautiful. We walked with a guide in Sarhro and the Dades who cooked for us on a borrowed tajine. The food in Morocco is excellent, and the citrus is probably the best we have had anywhere in the world. There are many walks in the are if you have the time. You can walk from between the Todra an Dades gorges as well. The Dades glows red and gold in the evening light and the pink house fade into the cliffs, the only contrast is the olive groves that grow along the rivers.

We made it to Marrakesh on Christmas day. Djemaa el-Fna is Marrakesh's main square has been a centre of hustle and bustle for just shy of 1000 years with snake charmers, fortune tellers, musicians and all manner of other entertainers. We dined in the market stalls that are setup and torn down every night, but stayed away from the sheep's head and snails. The night was bustling with people as it was a Sunday night and the sky was lit by points of blue lights as toy salesmen shot tiny helicopters high above the crowd clustered in circles around the various entertainment. It is a carnival that plays every night. To round off Morocco we took a bus to the coastal town of Essaouira where we indulged in seafood and caught up with the Euro tourists who had brought their families away for the holidays. Finally our time was up, it was another bus back to Casablanca for one night before it was onto the next country.