Jordan!

We are currently sitting in the Amman airport waiting for our flight to Dubai and connection to New Delhi. We can’t believe our life right now. What an amazing time we have had so far! We have now been on the road for 56 days and loved every minute of it. Jordan was no exception!

On our last update we were in Egypt our final day there, waiting to take a ferry to Jordan. Our very last memories of Egypt were definitely the lowlight of the trip so far. We had to wait for our ferry in the dingiest terminal you can imagine, and of course our 1 hour wait, became close to 5 hours by the time the ferry left. We were all expecting the worst when we got on the boat; if the terminal was that bad imagine what the ferry could look like! What a pleasant surprise! The boat was actually quite nice! The good surprises kept coming as we arrived in Aquiba, Jordan. Immigration was a breeze, the streets were clean, we were encouraged to walk around the city and explore it at night, and the food DELICIOUS!

It all couldn’t have come at a better time as I was quite homesick that day. I was missing the birth of “the girls” first baby!! My friend Amy gave birth that morning to an adorable baby boy, and I would have given anything to be there with my girlfriends for this momentous occasion.  Congratulations to Amy and Shane on little Parker! I love him already!

Our first morning in Aquiba Chris and I decided to remove some of the weight from our bag and mail a package home. Chris had bought a hand carved stone statue in Egypt and as you can imagine a stone statue is not light! When we arrived at the post office we were sent directly to the customs office where they wanted to look at everything we were sending back. Well let me tell you, that stone statue caused quite a commotion. Two men were looking it over and then asked for our passports. He made a few calls gave our passport info to someone over the phone. (Nice purchase Chris). They were both asking lots of questions; where we got it, how much we paid for it, and if it was real…. Yup, real. As in, some stolen treasure from a tomb or something. Hmmm. Maybe not such a bad purchase after all… these guys think its real! They then told us an expert was going to have to come look at it to ensure it was not authentic. Ok, we’ll wait. While we sat in this customs office we had about 10 different people come in the room, check out the statue, and apologize for the inconvenience. They didn’t want us to have a bad feeling about their country. We met the Post office manager, he yelled at the 2 guys to turn on the air conditioning so we were comfortable, and finally the expert and her (yes HER! Women work here!!!) entourage came to look at the statue. She took one look at it, basically rolled her eyes and ok’d the statue. I guess it’s not such a good fake after all! They then helped us pack everything up and gave us a great price to ship everything because they were so sorry for the inconvenience! Such nice people!!  We would totally come back here.

That day we drove to Wadi Rum where we went on a 4×4 jeep tour of the desert and slept in a Bedouin desert camp. What a cool day. The desert was awesome, sunset amazing, and when we got bat to the camp they had candles in brown paper bags lighting up the trail to our tents and to the fire! It was so beautiful! Unfortunately that night I didn’t have the best sleep. I’m not sure if it was getting tangled in the mosquito netting, the laughing hyenas, or the cat trying to get in the tent (ok Chris didn’t seem to think the cat was trying to get in the tent, but I was sure it was actually in there at one point)… but it wasn’t my favourite night on the trip.

The following two nights were spent at Petra! WOW! I had no idea that Petra was as big as it is. We spent 9 hours hiking around Petra looking at the tombs and after dinner returned for 2 hours of Petra by night! A totally amazing sight. I would recommend it for everyone!

We also had the opportunity to experience a Turkish bath. It was the most vigorous massage/scrub down you could imagine, but a funny/relaxing time none the less. Everyone in the group left not sure what exactly happed.  Chris felt a bit man handled (you can ask him directly for his more “personal” story!) and I wasn’t sure what to think.. For a modest region where the women don’t show their shoulders, I’m not sure how it was ok to be scrubbed down by some man… part of me thought he should be paying me for the treatment, not the other way around. Regardless, I left feeling much cleaner than when I went in, so all’s well that ends well!

Our last major stop on the tour was to the Dead Sea. It is the lowest point in the world and the water has over 30% more salt than other sea’s or oceans. What a crazy feeling. When you sit down in the water no matter how shallow or deep it is, you float! It was really fun to relax in the sea and cover ourselves in the mineral rich mud. A definite must to experience if ever in Jordan.

On our last and final day we had a city tour of Amman which is a pretty nice city. We got to see how the wealthy side of Jordan lives, and they live well! I was dead tired by this point and opted to shop with some of the girls for the afternoon, while Chris went to Jerash to explore the Roman ruins. As this city was buried under sand for so long, it is one of the best preserved ruins on earth. Chris had a great time there, and liked it even better than Petra!

So that completes our time in Jordan. We loved it here.  All the people are very nice, and it is quite a bit more progressive than we thought it would be. We have said goodbye to the new friends we made on our tour and look forward to the new one’s we will meet tomorrow in India!

Love to everyone. (Especially Amy and Parker!)

Ashlyn and Chris