Alone in the desert mountains

Petra, Jordan

17th November 2009

Today was the first day in three years that it rained in this part of Jordan. I bundled up and caught a cab to the gates of Petra. The driver told me he had two small deliveries to make and asked if we could stop along the way. I agreed and after the second drop-off, he came out with some doughy bread for us to share. He said it was a Jordanian tradition. It was really tasty and I saved some that was left over for later.

Walking around in Jordan for two days is long enough for me to decide that this country is a much more laid back than Egypt. People are really friendly, don't seem to hold a lot of extremist views that I came across in Giza and the sales pitches are generally shorter and straightforward. It could be that having 4 and 5 year olds trying to sell you stuff makes negotiating and declining that much easier but none the less, if you want to escape the resorts, see the real country and still stand a hope of relaxing at one stage, this is a good country to do it in.

Egypt got so bad that I had to resort to extreme tactics. Some Americans will pretend to be Canadian while abroad to avoid getting flack for their countries foreign policies. The problem with being Canadian is that it's a rich country so people still think you have no right to fair prices or to decline any offers. I got the feeling that the sales people thought all white people are American, rich and speak English.

For this reason I pretended to be from Estonia. It was fun using a fake accent and seeing how little the Arabs knew of this Nordic state. A lot of people out there spoke broken English so it was fun to pretend to only understand every tenth word. Sales pitches became a lot shorter as they tended to just show me a photo of what they were trying to sell. Usually I'd look at it, look confused and then shake my head and say no and that's it. When you're Canadian, they'll follow you for 15 minutes in desperation of closing any sort of deal. Once again, Estonia's GDP comes to the rescue.

If you want to try this, pick a country that has a population that looks like you, has a GDP close to the country you are traveling in and make sure there aren't loads of those people you're trying to imitate around. If anything, it gives you a day of comedy speaking like Borat while running around Pyramids and Tombs.

If you're not up for that, you could disguise yourself as an Arab woman in a burka and hire a poor Arab to walk in front of you all day. Men there can have four wives so it works if you're in a group as well.

The only down side is that this is a small country and everyone seems to know everything and everyone. In my previous posting, I learnt that people knew who I was and what I was doing before I knew that they even existed. There was a saying I heard in an interview with an Israeli intelligence officer: "One plus one does not equal two, it equals eleven. When you tell someone something, it spreads like wildfire". Remembering that, I was thinking about what my new Jordanian friends would think when they heard I had two or three different identities. My friends I made knew my real identity but they'd probably have taxi driver cousins and whatnot.

In Petra, I bought a red and white Jordanian head dress which did a good job of keeping my head warm as I climbed through the mountains. Up there it was really quiet, peaceful, devoid of mankind and the views were amazing. I explored abandoned tombs and caves with a flashlight and marvelled at the mountain tops as they were wrapped in white clouds.

The only downside was that some areas which originally had climbing aids and man-made steps from the second century before Christ had been covered over to stop people from using them. I scouted a few of them out and was a bit upset that, without climbing equipment, would miss out on some unique photos.

By the end of the day, Jordan was feeling like my version of Disneyland. There's tasty food, camels, sheshas and my interest level hasn't dropped off at all.