It's been quite a long time since my last entry. It's hard to decide where to start and which of the adventures of the last couple of weeks to write about. Does it even make sense to write about things that happened to a group of 50 guests (we tourist guides try to avoid using the word “tourist”) beside me? Maybe it does, because everybody has their own, unique way of perceiving a certain event.“Good day!” ??? Oh, it's cops again. How many times have they visited me since I've been lying in the military hospital of Aqaba? What the hell do they want this time? I was about to move grouchily on the bed, when I realized Omar came to visit. He's the cop I met two days ago in the tiny city park, when he was walking there with his friend, off duty. He read the report of the traffic (!??) accident and came to ask how I was and if I needed anything.
Some days ago we went for a ride in the snow. Real, white snow fell from heaven and covered the desert surrounding Petra. Our Mohammed drove steadily at 40 km/h, there was hardly any traffic, the road was covered with about 3 cm of snow. They closed the road behind us so one of the groups had to have a late dinner in their hotel. They even have snow ploughs here, because the hills often reach as high as 1000 and 1500 metres of altitude. At the same time half of Amman was under water, there was big panic and excitement.
My friend Djamál, the manager of the Jordan’s Royal Falcons, a four member aerobatic team based in Aqaba, which operates within the army and is serviced by the national airline Royal Jordanian, invited us to see the show. Despite the fact that it was free to visit and watch the show, most of the group who I was with in Aqaba at that time, decided to go swimming and sunbathing. Pity, because the show was breathtaking. Not exactly as the Frecce Tricolori, but the guys deserve all the admiration in their one-propeller little planes. A couple of days ago they all went to the Gulf to an air show and they're coming back in February, and then apparently going on to Austria. They fall nearly to a vertical spin and then downwards over the head, they overturn and roll, and then finally pick up the speed again, when practically in horizontal position. We also saw loops in formation at just a couple of metres of distance from each other. Beside us the show also took the breath of a young lady. She got married a week ago and this was the first time she witnessed the devilries her sweetheart was doing in the air, almost over the border of the western neighbours. She did pretty well! The show and us, the spectators, were being filmed by the cameramen of three Jordanian television stations. The atmosphere was very solemn, we were listening to Top Gun music, coming out of the loudspeakers, Djamál’s commentary, and the radio connection among the pilots. Something else is also interesting. At every step Jordanians are genuinely friendly and hospitable and it's obvious how much they love their country and how important tourists are to them. Even the manager of the aerobatic team first addressed the foreign visitors, wished them a pleasant stay in his country, and said he hoped their performance would improve the country's tourist offer.
The Swiss couple, Manuel and René, who were visiting when I was lying in the hospital and helped me keep in touch with the world, flew back to Switzerland helter-skelter yesterday, from Aqaba, through Amman, someplace else, and Vienna. Manuel's father is on his deathbed. He might make it, but it looks bad. One day earlier our charter with some empty seats flew to Graz. What a shame. I still see their red Landcruiser every day through the windscreen when I wake up. When it's all over, they'll come back and continue towards India or some other place. Interesting, this freedom. Luckily the Europeans are generally rich enough to do as we please in these countries, while we're sitting on the beach south from Aqaba: India or Sudan? Damascus, Aqaba, or Dahab? Hmmm. The situation with me is like this... For those interested: I was about to go back to Damascus right after my last group of tourists flew back home sweet home on Sunday. But I started feeling too confined in Damascus and it seemed useless. I wasn't profiting too much fromthe course – in the fourth of altogether seven levels we were still dealing mainly with grammar which I consider basic, so in one month I learnt NOTHING new in that field. I lack conversation, which we didn't often get to in our group of twenty, I lack vocabulary, which I can just as well work on outside the four walls, one of which was decorated by papa and another by junior president. It was cold (I'll tell you something you don't already know). It was very cold. In the compact, crowded city, where it took a very long ride to get to the countryside, I started to feel cramped. I could go on, but enough of excuses for now. I'm staying in Aqaba. The last couple of days have been windy again, but the temperatures are about 10 to 15°C higher than in Amman or Damascus, and I have available:
- a desert (in 17 days),
- 3 radio stations in my car (in Damascus there was only a Lebanese one),
- diving (in maybe a little less than 17 days),
- Arabs and along with them Arabic,
- McShit (ooh, it felt good after one month of Syria),
- friendly driving manners (Aqaba is small, it only has 85000 inhabitants, so I already know all the sleeping policemen),
- the freedom of movement!!!
Marwan is the owner of the camp where I'm staying on the South beach. While we were having dinner yesterday he talked to me about some of his plans for the near future. Jordan made a deal towards the end of the 60s with their southern neighbours: the Saudis gave them 12 km of coast (now they have 26) in the part where I stay myself, and the Jordanians gave them some sand in the hinterland. The Saudis started digging there and laid an oil pipeline, but that's a painful subject that we'd better leave aside. Jordanians, on the other side, built some harbour terminals, which they regret now, because they'd like to seriously start developing tourism. Nevertheless, there are still some intact areas and the plans for the future are unbelievable. They plan to dig out an artificial lagoon and build tourist residences around it. There's even talk about buying off some extra Saudi coast. They have a young king supporting them. He’s a smart man, has a beautiful wife, is a keen diver and is ready to lend an ear to ideas and problems. They’re also supported by European capital and of course the Saudis, who can't have tourism at home (no round roulettes, no round beds, but I'm not sure if they still chop hands off – for exceeding the speed limit they put foreigners in jail overnight, women are not allowed to drive and shouldn't be alone in the car with a man who isn't a family member of her husband, because they make him lose his head and do crazy things on the road – it's the woman's fault, of course). But the Saudis would like to hand over the sand and the berths to Jordanians on paper, move the ramps a little more to the south and then build on the sand in front of the docks... Hotels, massage parlours, brothels, casinos... Aqaba's growth is amazingly fast, it's being modernized and is spreading its tourist offer. In one year since I was last here a lot of new bars have been opened, there's a Polish trio singing and playing in Mövenpick (the lead singer is actually from Ukraine, but she got a Polish citizenship because of the keyboards player and the back vocal is singing her “shoop shoo wahs” in the microphone in wintertime – wow, the girl would like to buy... a BIKE! Besides the “shoop shoo wahs” she occasionally also puts a saxophone mouthpiece in her mouth with an actual saxophone attached to it, so she'll probably be able to put an Akrapovič exhaust – Slovenian brand, by the way – on the bike as well). In the basement of Aquamarina 3 apparently there's even a... well, how can I put it politely... well, you know... okay, just don't tell anybody! There's a girl dancing down there. And they have a pole. They have the new Dubai in their minds, which took advantage of the Lebanese civil war. About three years ago the Aqaba area became a “special economic area” with customs andtax relief. There are about 20 diving locations along the southern coast, with everything from coral reefs to shipwrecks. There are two-star as well as five-star hotels, the camps are not too bad and life isn't too expensive at present time. In the hinterland there's a desert with excellent cross-country possibilities, horse-riding, trekking and free-climbing, and I probably left something else out. On the other side of the border there's a country with motorbike service centres, which they don't have here. In Syria and Jordan it's not even possible to register a one-track vehicle. They had too many cases of public law and order disturbance and “gangs” (bad bikers, causing nothing but troubles!), so in late 70s they chose the middle-east way and banned the whole thing.
I went to Wadi Rum with the group on Saturday. We drove to the checkpoint when my eyeballs nearly popped out. There were about 15 muddy KTMs with their fully-equipped riders!!! I step off the bus, but nothing makes sense to me. There were Jordanian licence plates on all the vehicles (the group thought I was lying for a while, since I told them there were no bikes in the country), but the facial features made it clear the drivers weren't locals. It was soon obvious: the group was from the other side of the western border. But I still couldn’t figure out the licence plates. They illuminated me: All the vehicles from their country get Jordanian licence plates on the border. Apparently for security reasons, so somebody wouldn't recognize them and throw rocks at them. Well, great, now nobody knows the group of KTMs is Isr..li. What a nonsense! But! I got the business card of the leader of the group and was invited to come and test the terrain there. They have service centres (Yesss!!!), he can bring me spare parts (he comes to Jordan every week), in short, the horizons are expanding. I'm generally not interested in their country and even have an aversion to it (don't get me wrong, not the country itself), but I started considering and deliberating it. Especially after I heard there was a roll-on roll-off connection between their biggest city and Monfalcone!!! And they'd only charge about a third of the price I was offered by our forwarder Intereuropa (after weeks of begging) for the whole composition to ship it from Koper to the Syrian Tartus (1400 €!!!). Maybe I won't have to drive across the entire Turkey and the Balkans on the way back after all! And, boys and girls, it only costs 145€ for them to transport your single-track machine to the Promised Land. I have to check the mail I just received for extra charges. And then I'll head straight to the sand from the harbour. Hurrah! And I have to admit, when we finished our discussion in front of Rum, my heart was singingat the sound of 525s, 625s, 640s and an orange LC8. And what did the leader of the group sit on? An LC4 Adventure '01.
Two more weeks!
Translation from Slovenian:
Maja Simeonov