Day 297 Ferry Beyond Belief

I took a bus to the Red Sea port of Aqaba to catch a ferry to Egypt. I had missed the daily ferry and took a cheap room at a hotel without air conditioning. I assumed that the extreme heat of the day (113 F or 45C) would turn into a delightfully cool night like everywhere else I have been. Wrong. It was so hot that I ended up sleeping under a wet towel under the ceiling fan. This was great as long as the towel stayed wet, requiring a number of re-wettings during the night. When I woke up in the morning, it was 93 degrees (34 C) in my room.

The tickets for the noon fast ferry would sell out very early so I went to the port at 7:30am. This was the start of the biggest clusterf@#k I have seen so far.

Getting the ticket was not such a problem, only expensive at $50 USD for a one hour ride. Next, I waited in another line right next to the ticket seller for an hour so the clerk could stamp my ticket without even looking at it. Why they didn’t do that when I bought it I do not know, maybe to increase employment? Then I had to go downstairs and find the mislabeled exit tax office and pay 7.50 USD for exit stamps. Then it was back upstairs to immigration to get my exit stamps and passport stamped. Then I waited for a few hours to get on the ferry. It was 11:30 and no one was moving. I went outside and looked around. There was not any obvious ferry embarkment point. There was no visible ferry either. I went to a covered area next to a big vehicle gate and was told I had to wait for a bus to get to the ferry. All was fine and not extraordinary so far. I am baffled by the disorganization of what happened next.

I waited with for only fifteen minutes before there was a huge commotion and everyone rushed the gate. Police kept people from going through the gate while silently listening to people waving tickets and yelling. I pushed my way in to the crowd and waited. Close to noon the police let a surge of people, including me through the gate. I could now see the ferry only 500m away and could easily have walked it if they would have let me, but no.

We waited for a few minutes and a bus finally showed up. Of course everyone rushed the bus as if it was the only one coming all day. It is a frickin’ shuttle. It fills up, drives for 60 seconds, empties, and comes back. Come on people.

Police held the would-be riders back with threatening batons and lots of yelling. A dozen or so women and children were escorted through the crowd and got on the bus and then door started to close. People were trying to hold the door open in desperation but it overpowered them, almost crushing one woman. The bus then moved ten feet forward and opened the door again. The same process of police, batons, waving tickets, pushing, and yelling was repeated as a few more women got on. Then again, people tried holding the door open and threw themselves inside as it closed on them. Then the bus moved backward twenty feet. Repeat clusterf@#k again. Finally, the bus moved fifty feet forward, stopped for ten minutes before driving to the ferry.What the F@#k?

Then the police pushed everyone back to the other side of the gate. Little by little we edged our way right back to where the bus had been parked and waited about ten minutes in the hot sun before it came back. Although, this time it parked across the parking lot next to a covered area. Nothing happened for about ten more minutes until the police started letting one or two people at a time go over to the shaded area by the bus. They would do this about once a minute, randomly picking people out of the crowd. These lowly policemen were showing that they were in control and had the power in this situation. Finally a policeman pointed at me and said to me in English, “You are a winner!” and waved his baton for me to cross and get out of the sun. We stood next to the bus, waiting for another ten minutes before the napping driver decided to open the door. We got on and waited another ten minutes for a ticket check and nothing in particular. When the bus actually started moving, it went barely faster than walking speed to the ferry. I was just thrilled to get to the stupid boat.

It was an entirely enclosed ferry, with no open decks. The seats were comfortable and I watched Tom and Jerry cartoons for the hour and half that it took to shuttle everyone that 500 meters. Obviously the noon departure time is not set in stone. I could have taken the slow ferry that was ten dollars cheaper, but it usually left five or six hours late. The travel time for the slow ferry is somewhere between three to eight hours, but apparently, it once took three days to get there. It only took an hour to reach Nuweiba, Egypt on the fast ferry. Unfortunately, it took an hour before the police would let anyone off because they were searching for some criminals.

Once again we were bused to the terminal, but this time the ride was smoother. The terminal on the other hand was complete chaos. There is no obvious flow or signage to indicate a process at Nuweiba. There are many scattered buildings and no official in sight to ask. The bags had been loaded into a giant flatbed trailer sized cart that was sitting in the center of a mass of people desperately digging for their things. I found my bag, bought visa stamps at the difficult to locate bank for 15 USD, they only take USD for some reason, and then went to the exchange office to get local currency, went through security, went back through security to find the immigration office, went through security again, was ignored by customs, and finally got out. It took about thirteen hours to take a one hour ferry. They do this every day. I am assuming merit is not involved in the promotion of port managers.

The first taxi guys I asked said that there were no “service” taxis, which are shared taxis, to across the Sinai Peninsula to Cairo and I would have to pay $150 USD to get there. They were lying of course. I easily found some. I bargained the price down to a little over seventeen USD for the five hour drive. My taxi was a newer minibus that would be comfortable. I waited for two hours while they found more passengers and loaded the top rack with what looked like a houseful of possessions. It was comic to see them load and reload and reload to get it all up there. It wasn’t funny when we were switched to an old Peugeot 504 because there were not enough people for the minibus. I waited another hour while they moved everything to the other vehicle. There were several problems with this decrepit taxi. First, it was so overloaded, we could not go that fast. Second, the ceiling was so low I could not sit up. In fact, if I had been able to sit up, the roof would have been at my chin level. I spent 8 sleepless hours hunched over or with my knees on the ceiling so I could rest my head on the seat. Not fun. And then it got better. I was dropped off at four in the morning at a highway crossroad outside of Cairo. I could not even see the city. Thankfully, I caught a passing minibus after only fifteen minutes. Then I had to take a taxi to my hostel. I went straight to bed.

Day 296 Petra, Jordan

I got up early and was the first person in Petra. I even beat most of the Bedouins that foist over-priced trinkets and camel/horse rides on the tourists. For fun and $2 USD, I did take a horse the one kilometer to the start of the Siq, the 1200m narrow gorge that leads to the ancient site. Going down the Siq alone and in silence was otherworldly. And then, finally seeing the magnificence and grandeur of the Treasury suddenly appear was magical. If you don’t know, the Treasury is the building featured as the resting place of the Holy Grail in the Indiana Jones movie. The rooms inside are big, but not as cool as in the movie. It is much bigger than it looks. Check out the little people in the last picture.

Having only known about the Treasury, I was surprised at how extensive the ancient city of Petra was. It was big and quite grand. The buildings were carved out of the sandstone cliffs instead of being built by individual rocks. The skill of the sculptors is incredible. Huge columns and decorative elements that would have been hard to carve separately were all carved in place. Unfortunately, the elements have taken their toll and worn away most of the fine detailing on the structures. They are still very impressive.

There was a wide ancient stairway (mostly restored) hewed out of the rock and I followed it way up to the top of the mountain. I ended up with a view of the valley and eventually a perfect view to look down on the Treasury. By that time the tourist were swarming like little ants far below. I had been at the site for a little over three hours and I had easily drunk three liters of water in the blazing sun. I saved my last few gulps and made a slightly scary climb down an unofficial route to visit the Treasury one more time before I left.

Day 295 The Dead and Untasty Sea

I took a bus for one dollar to a crossroads near the Dead Sea and then hired a taxi to take me to the water, wait for me while I swam, and then take me all the way back to Amman for only $20 USD. The Dead Sea is so incredibly full of dissolved minerals that you do not exactly have to swim. Bob around like a piece of balsa wood is more like it. Staying vertical, I floated so high in the water that it was at my nipples, making me look like I was standing on something. On my back, it was like sitting in a floating lounge chair and was very easy to keep my head dry. Bizarre! It was hard to swim on my stomach though because it felt like there was a beach ball under my stomach and I had to work to not flip over. I accidentally got a few drops of the water in my mouth…..uhggg….it was like taking a mouth full of salt and minerals. It was oppressively hot that afternoon and a little hard to breath there. On top of that, the sea water was warm and not refreshing. I tried letting the sea water dry for about ten minutes on my skin, but it didn’t. Even with the heat and wind, it was like a layer of mineral oil that would not dry. I lucked out and there was a trickle of fresh water running into the sea and so I could wash off. It was an interesting experience. It is not a place I would want to vacation though.

The taxi driver was nuts on the way back to Amman. We drove at 100 mph (160 kph) for much of the way and he was not a good driver. I was thankful to get out safely. I immediately jumped into a three hour taxi to Wadi Musa, the town next to Petra.

Day 294 Amman, Jordan

With my Arabic translation in hand, I had no trouble getting back to Damascus or on the right bus to Jordan. The Jordanian border was much easier than Syria’s. Fifteen USD and three windows, and I had my visa.

There were two young Jordanian guys who were desperate to talk to me. They had a vision of America that was purely drawn from our movies and I tried my best to dissuade them that that was not reality. The one guy said he wanted to visit the US, but not Chicago, and he made gun motions with his hands, indicating it was way too violent and dangerous. I laughed and told him that I really liked Chicago. There was no way I could convince them. They knew the truth from our movies. Then they asked me if I liked Bush. When I said no, they told me that they wanted to kill him. They said this with such vehemence that it worried me a little. I was about to launch into the beauty of a democratic government, term limits, and the horrifying prospect of a president Cheney when we had to leave.

The buildings in Amman are a little more attractive than Syria—not much. The city is entirely monochrome. All the buildings are shades of dirty white/grey. It is a desert city with no lack of dirt and almost no sign of greenery. It is also a very conservative city with the highest percentage of completely covered women I have seen. In general, it is boring.

I was still feeling a little unwell and out of sorts when I took a taxi to the US embassy to get more pages added to my passport; to my delight and chagrin, it was full of stamps and visas. After I got out of the taxi and he drove off very fast, I realized that I had given the driver the wrong note, but he gave me the change for a smaller bill. My unfamiliarity with the Jordanian money and the driver’s dishonesty resulted in a 26 USD tip. Doh!

The embassy was easier than I thought and it only took about an hour to get more pages stuck in. The problem was getting back to my hotel with the pittance of Jordanian money I had left. I found some people by the side of the road that were waiting for a minibus. We ended up taking a shared taxi back into the downtown for only 40 cents each. I also discovered that there was a much shorter way from downtown than the way the first taxi took me. Errr….!