A series of (mildly) unfortunate events

It would be easy for me to let the world think all our days go smoothly and that we are both competent and lucky travellers. Indeed, that's how things mostly are, give or take a bit of bumbling around. But some days ...

On our recent trip to the south of Jordan, we spent a few days in the seaside city of Aqaba, where we stayed in one of the ugliest hotels I have ever seen (this is not even one of the unfortunate events, but just like the TV news you are getting this part of the story because I have a picture).

The hotel did have its charms - well, one charm, which was a balcony with this view. 

That's Israel in the background, and maybe a touch of Egypt on the far left. One of the cool things to do in Aqaba is to take a boat trip to Pharaoh Island, an Egyptian island with a ruined castle and generally dramatic scenery. Unfortunately it turns out to be a cool thing to do in summer and decidedly not on offer in the off-season, so there went my plans for one of our days in Aqaba.

After we'd seen Aqaba's historical sights and had a morning in Wadi Rum, we decided to take a walk through a couple of new waterfront residential developments. On the map they looked a bit like the waterways at Pauanui or Whitianga, so we thought it would be interesting to see where the local rich people live. Unfortunately, guards with semi-automatic guns said no, that wasn't an option, and since it generally seems to be a good idea to believe people holding weapons we had to trudge back to the hotel without getting to see anything more than a long stretch of 5-metre-high wall.

The next day we took a taxi along to Aqaba's South Beach, a stretch of coast between Aqaba's industrial port and the Saudi border which has been prettied up with sun shelters and paths. There's good snorkelling and diving just off the coast, and we had hopes of taking a semi-submersible boat trip to admire the coral and pretty fish without getting wet. But because it was the off-season, the beach was largely deserted, with no sign of any boat trips, just a few independent snorkellers and some stray dogs. Yes, we went to Aqaba and it was closed.

While we were standing by the entrance to a public resort (a part of the beach with flash facilities that anyone can use if they want to pay the NZD 20 entry fee) discussing what we could do instead of admiring fish or giving in and taking one of the small boat rides from the main beach, a taxi materialised out of the busy traffic and pulled in next to us. Out popped Akhmed with his bushy grey beard and crocheted skullcap, a very cheerful chap who was tremendously keen to drive us back to town, so in we hopped.

The way he'd miraculously appeared next to us should have warned us. He drove slowly but erratically, hunched over the steering wheel, and turning around to talk to us constantly. It was almost okay when he was talking to Mark in the front seat, but when he turned to talk to me the car drifted across the road and other cars were lucky to avoid him. Even when he faced forward he struggled to keep the car in its lane. The only consolation was that because he was driving so slowly any collision would probably have been quite low impact.

Akhmed was very keen to take us back to the centre of Aqaba. When we said we'd rather go to the bird observatory he claimed never to have heard of it. We showed him on a map - look, it's there next to the border crossing - and he spluttered. "Eilat? Isra-el?? You want to go to Isra-el?! I take you to information centre. No border crossing. You need passport."

"No," we explained. "It's near the border crossing, but still in Aqaba. And anyway, we have our passports."

For a couple of minutes that seemed to have sunk in, and then he was off again. "Isra-el??? Border??" Eilat?!" It was a long drive to the bird observatory, and seemed even longer with a taxi driver with the attention span of a goldfish.

Then things got worse. The bird observatory is indeed still in Aqaba, but it's between the Jordanian police checkpoint and the Israeli customs crossing. Akhmed talked very animatedly to the Jordanian police, and then told us we would have to leave our passports with them and collect them on the way back. (Even if we had wanted to cross the border, it's not actually illegal - regardless of what the Jordanians and Israelis think of each other, people cross the border all the time, and they had no reason to think we were fleeing Jordan for criminal reasons.) To make things worser again, Akhmed told us we would have to pay for him to wait for us while we went to the bird observatory; walking along that road was not allowed, and neither would we be allowed to catch a different taxi back. Most of this struck us as total garbage, but the police were nodding (and holding onto our passports), and with ten or so words of Arabic between us we were hardly in a position to argue.

Then of course we had to negotiate a price .... which turned out to be somewhere between daylight robbery and limb amputation, but left Akhmed happily chuntering on about what good people New Zealanders are and calling us "friend".

The bird observatory itself was underwhelming. It's a nice idea - a re-established wetland to encourage migrating birds to rest for a while - but the wetland is largely watered by the sewage treatment ponds next door, and the smell was pervasive. Maybe the smell had scared the birds away, or maybe, armed as we were with a pamphlet of bird photos but no map, we were just looking in the wrong places, but we saw very few birds (to liven things up, we did see dung beetles and huge ants, and butterflies and dragonflies), and what I had assumed was a bird-watching tower turned out to be a military observation post complete with soldiers.

On the drive back to the hotel Akhmed asked where we were off to next. At the mention of Petra he became hugely excited, telling us not to take the bus because it is dangerous and that he would drive us to Petra and then back to Aqaba. "Oh," we said, "we're not coming back. We might head to Karak, and then we're going back to Amman." No problem for our new friend - he was available to drive us all over Jordan at a very special price.

Mark wanted to take a photo of Akhmed when we got back to the hotel so we could remember him forever. But I had visions of finding Akhmed waiting for us in front of the hotel when we wanted to leave the next day, so didn't want him knowing where we were staying. (We had told him, but I figured it probably wouldn't have sunk in.) So we persuaded him to let us out at busy traffic lights instead, and scarpered without the photo op. It was worth it to be free.