Pt 1 - 14: GOODBYE MOSES About 20kms north of Kerak the King’s Highway took a vertiginous dive into the broad and spectacular Zarqa Ma’in valley. Poised on the lip of the descent the valley looks more like a deep canyon with the road winding through it like a giant black serpent. The thrilling hairpins demanded my complete concentration, not easy with the others still venting the tension of the gas station riot by doing dumb shit like introducing themselves to the long-haired sheep wandering along the narrow verges with much mirth and giggling in the back seat. It might also have been a means of diverting attention from the fact that I still occasionally felt for the door handle to change gears. Nevertheless, we reached the bottom the long way and in one piece. The laborious climb up the far side was made even more so by the lumbering truck in front of us, and by the time we crawled to the top of the pass the little Feroza was running pretty hot. I veered off at a lookou...
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Pt1 - 13: NEARLY CACTUS IN KERAK We swerved off the road to Kerak for a squiz at Shobek Castle, famous as the first of a chain of fortresses stretching from here to Turkey built by the Crusader king Baldwin 1 in the early twelfth century. The castle is largely rubble but its position on the trig point in the landscape offered 360 degree views of the desert hills which looked through the heat haze like currant buns in an oven. In a narrow valley below the castle entrance lay the modern settlement of Shobek, its cubist houses surrounded by cedar plantations and citrus orchards planted on wide terraces sculpted into the gently sloping sides of the valley. We took tea with the Bedouin who had a trinket stall at the gate and he explained that New Shobek is a model community established by the government to test the feasibility of reclaiming these lunar hills for the people of Jordan. Good luck to them, I say. At the crowded, grubby town of Taffila we took another, un...
Pt1 - 12: PETRA The high road took us up through the starkly beautiful ash-Sharah Range to Wadi Musa, The Valley of Moses, the township adjacent to the Nabataean ruins. We found a cheap, passable hotel and spent what remained of the afternoon exploring Al Beidha (Little Petra), which lies about 12kms out of town along a narrow winding road that offers tantalising glimpses of Petra proper on the way. It’s worth taking a short paragraph to explain the idiosyncracies of Arab hotels. Government regulation requires the traveller to have their passport photocopied and surrender it at reception for the duration of their stay; I was always a bit nervous about this because some of the characters I handed my passport over to didn’t exactly inspire confidence in getting it back, and who knew what they got up to with it while it was in their possession. Hot water is only available for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon, if at all, so learn to love showering...
Pt1 - 11: THE WADI At 7 the next morning we took the highway north out of Aqaba in a boxy little Daihatsu Feroza stuffed to the roof with four bodies and all our gear. The first stop was a place called Wadi Rum. I’d never heard of it but Micha assured us that according to his guidebook it was worth a detour en route to Petra. I was designated chauffeur for the first leg. It only took an hour of changing gears with the door handle and indicating with the windscreen wipers to get used to the left-hand drive thing, by which time we arrived at the Beau Geste-ish police post at the mouth of the wadi. We paid a modest entry fee and proceeded to the Government Rest House in the little village to orientate ourselves on a vast wall map of the 30km deep wadi and all its tributaries. After dense black coffee we headed through the village and into the wadi proper. I had no expectations about this place so what unfolded before us as we rounded the first bend was a complete and stunning ...
JORDAN 6th March - 16th March AQABA I liked Aqaba immediately, mainly because its clean and prosperous streets were full of clean and prosperous people driving clean and prosperous Mercedes, so if I was doomed to end up as a Middle Eastern road statistic I’d at least go out in style. It was unlikely to happen here though, because – and while there were a few unpleasant surprises awaiting us in Jordan, this was one of the pleasant ones – Jordanians in general observe the road rules in a most un-Arab way. Apart from dawdling sheep the most dangerous hazard on the road actually turned out to be me, but I get ahead of myself. We took a taxi from Aqaba port into the town centre where we parted ways with Micha, Lea and our Japanese friend who went off in search cheap digs. We were in the market for something a bit more luxurcous and soon found an excellent mid-range hotel right in the heart of town. For the hard-bargained sum of A$26 we scored a spotlessly clean top floor ...