Jordan DIY
Some countries will slam on your face all their beauty. It’s already there, right in front of you, and you have no choice but be aware of it, and be careful not to step on it.
In Jordan, however in most of cases you have to sweat a bit to reach beauty. Just a random example: you pay the ticket, two steps on the gravel and the Taj Mahal stands majestically in front of you.
At Petra is not the same. There is more than one kilometer to get to the first wonder, the Treasury; the first time I saw it in the Indiana Jones movie, I remember I thought this place could not be real, such a fairy scenery had to be prepared in some way just for the film
Not to mention the Monastery, almost a thousand steps under a merciless sun for most of the climb
And what about the trek to reach the mountain top that allows you to see the Treasury from above …
Let’s say a trip to Jordan is not just a walk. One may be happy to see things from a distance : 3 hours at Petra, 15-minute peek at Wadi Mujib from the King’s Highway lookout, a quick lunch under a Wadi Rum tent might be ok for some people. On the contrary, if one has no time constraints (like a tour operator bus waiting with running engine), and wants to be kidnapped by beauty, it’s really a matter of consuming the shoes soles, sweat, climb, get soaked in streams, or in the hot springs, and so on.
Here is a brief trip schedule.
Travel Time: one week in Jordan and one in Dahab, Egypt (here)
Egypt Air flight, 352 Euro
10/11/2010
Milano 00.55 – Cairo 04.35, Cairo 08.30 – Amman 11.00
10/24/2010
Sharm el Sheik 08.30 – Cairo 09.30, Cairo 12.15 – Milano 16.15
Leaving at night time is not the best, but allows to have almost a complete day more for leisure.
Alle hotels have been booked from Italy. I made arrangements directly with the reception. In some cases they wanted the credit card number but did not charge anything.
Madaba – Mariam Hotel
http://www.mariamhotel.com/
3 nights, 40 JD per night for a double room with breakfast
The website photos correspond to reality
Petra, Amra Palace Hotel (Wadi Musa)
http://www.amrapalace.com/cgi-bin/rez60load.pl?0001/petra_amra_palace_jordan_hotel.html
3 nights, 69 JD for a double room with breakfast
Aqaba, My Hotel
http://www.myhotel-jordan.com/
1 night, 70 JD for a double with breakfast
I spent a fortune, dammit!
In fact, Jordan is an expensive destination, compared for example to Morocco, or Egypt. Moreover, you have to move with taxi or car rental, because the public transport very often does not link the tourist destinations. The archaeological sites have Euroland prices.
All hotels in Madaba, in their website, have a section dedicated to the prepaid taxi trips. The Mariam was a pioneer in this field. The good thing is that the prices quoted are fixed, and the drivers do not try to change them as it happens in Egypt, for example.
Oddly enough, since it’s the opposite of what normally happens, normal taxis have better prices, which is logical, if you think about, since they have to survive… Even in this case, however, once the price is fixed, there are no requests for various bakshish. What a relief! And they even do not stop at their friends’ shop. What a relief! (again). 🙂 🙂
Another “strange” fact (compared to some neighboring countries), if you ask for information about a bus and they tell it does not exist, well, it is true. They do not lie in the hope that you take a private car, so that they can extort money.
Read my story about Dahab and you will see how much things change as soon as you cross the Gulf of Aqaba.