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.

Getting around

I've been enjoying walking around and exploring our neighbourhood, even with the lack of footpaths and the traffic and the dusty air. But it turns out not all of Amman is within walking distance of home (odd, in a city of 4 million), even by my New-Zealander-on-holiday definition of walking distance.

On Friday we decided to visit the Citadel, a fortified hilltop site first occupied in the Neolithic period and featuring ruins from Bronze Age through to about the 7th Century. Basically it's the place for tourists to go in Amman. But how to get there? It's 8 km from home, so a bit out of reach for a walk followed by sightseeing and then getting home again. Rich and middle class locals drive (or have their drivers drive them), or take taxis. Poor people take buses. I would happily take buses, except that I have no idea where any of them go; there doesn't seem to be an official route map, and for some weird reason the destination labels on the front of the buses are all in Arabic. Also, the buses look sufficiently crowded that I would feel guilty about taking space that someone who actually needs to be somewhere might use.

(Friday mornings are the best time to be out and about because the roads are quiet until lunchtime while most people are at home getting ready for Friday prayers. Mark's teaching week runs Sunday to Thursday, and yes, it is taking a bit of getting used to.)

Boldly going where millions of earlier adopters have been before us, we summoned an Uber. Within minutes our driver had pulled up outside our front door and we were off, secure in the knowledge that he actually knew where we wanted to go, which might not have been the case if we'd had to talk to a taxi driver. And best of all, in a city where taxi drivers have a reputation for trying to fleece tourists, we knew the price in advance. In some countries Uber is cheaper than taxis; here it costs a bit more but being able to pinpoint your destination on the map and know the price makes it all worthwhile.

 Some photos from around the Citadel and our walk down into town as an interlude:

(Yeah, I should probably start putting captions on my photos.)

Now, back to transport. Having dipped our toes in the Uber pool, we followed up by Ubering home from town, and then, a day later, braved an actual taxi, since there was a whole line of them outside the shopping mall and we would have had to wait for an Uber. Mark sat in the front and kept an eagle eye on the meter, but somewhat disappointingly the driver made no attempt at all to overcharge us. (As a woman, I'm expected to sit in the back - darn.)

All the private schools, and there are plenty of them, have school buses for their staff and students. Every day Mark gets picked up at 6.30 by his school bus, which takes about 40 minutes to wind its way to the school just outside Amman. This morning I went with him, as we were meant to be taken to the police station for fingerprinting. It was foggy (I am baffled as to how such a dry city can turn on such thick fogs in the morning), so I saw nothing of the scenery. In fact, I have new respect for those movie heroes who can tell where the vehicle they're in is going even when they're beaten up and blindfolded: I was looking out the window and I had no idea at all.

The fingerprinting didn't happen, but that's a story for another day. I still had to make my way home from school, and there were no Ubers to be had out there. Luckily there's an alternative: a Middle Eastern outfit called Careem that works in a similar way but also offers the chance of cheaper rides if you agree to ride-share with other passengers going your way.

Nothing so far has made me want to drive in Amman. It's not super scary being a passenger, and I've seen fewer nose-to-tails here so far than in a week walking home from the university, but driving just looks exhausting. We might yet hire a car to head out of town for a weekend ... or we might see how far Uber will take us.