Aqaba

Saturday, April 30, 2016
Aqaba, Jordan
What an excellent night I had. Without the noise of even an airplane high up, I slept marvelous.

The morrning appears over the desert landscape and the stars disappear .The Martian rock formations become visible in the silent prehistoric landscape.

Tracks in the sand show that we have been visited by several animals during the night. Rats, according to Atallah. 

He prepares a breakfast with a stack of flatpieces of bread many small dishes of humus, local cheese and other items. As during last night's dinner, we squat on pillows and talk about beduin customs.

Then the time arrives that we have to break camp, because he wil bring us back to the welcome center this morning.

The trip is not far, and reluctantly we say goodbye to this peculiar landscape as we drive the last stretch over the sand while we pass the iant rock formations. I imagine we will be back here some day. The desert draws us.

Then we are back at the car and modern life. We use the bathroom, and depart for Aqaba . The road is almost straight, and decends to the coast. We collect to arab hitch hikers dressed in sparkling white zalabia. Unfortunately we can really not communicate, because I am curious what the occasion is.

It is hardly an hour before we drop them off in the blasting heat of downtown Aqaba. 

To find our hotel is a challenge. Google maps is not aware of one-way streets here, the street names are in arabic and not listed on the map, and repeated questions to the local population result in very friendly reactions and helpful suggestions ("Call them!" but nobody picks up). But nobody knows where the address is, and some people point us all over.

We get a thorough knowledge of downtown Aqaba. The temperature is 38 C, and after not showering for 2 days we would be really happy if we find our hotel.

Finally we stop at Ali Baba's retaurant and there an extremely helpful man keep calling the hotel until somebody picks up. In rapid guttural arabic and slow hesitant english the exact location is conveyed. We receive a tourist map, and ten minutes later we hoist our luggage to the third floor of the hotel. (The elevator is broken).

An hour and two showers later we appear reborn into the furnace of the inner city and find our friends who are also staying here in another hotel. The rest of the afternoon we spend eating, talking, swimming in the pool and the sea, and later having dinner outside overlooking the red sea. After dark the heat abates and Richard walks us back to our hotel in the pleasant evening air. The town is very much alive now, with the temperature back to 'bearable.'

For the first time we sleep with the airco running. We definitely miss sleeping in the desert.

 

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