Daytrip outside Amman

As promised, here are a few words and pictures from my day trip yesterday. It was a good reminder of how easy it is for your day *not* to go as planned when you're traveling. As troopers, my two newfound traveling partners and I, looking to get a good headstart on the day, leave the apartment at 8 on Friday morning, to go rent a car. The streets are nice and quiet (reminder: weekends are Friday and Saturday here), which relieves Ryan, who agreed to do the driving. Of course, that should probably have been a cue for us to take, but we didn't, and so we arrived at the car-rental's an hour and a half before it opens. No biggie. Fast forward a couple hours, we're on the road with a car from another (cheaper) car-rental office, on our way to Madaba. We've just put in 10 JDs-worth of gas since the cars here come empty, not full, and we're ready for the day. No glitches for the first step (beyond the slow start), we make it, find a great parking spot and go walk around Madaba. It's a cute little town, with a cute little church. We have a great lunch of roasted chicken, toasted pita with a red sauce on it, hummus, salad, water. Add to that the apricots I bought in a little grocery store - delicious!

And now we're on the road to Wadi Mujib Natural Reserves, for a hike in a gorge off the Dead Sea. And now we're lost. And now we realize that we need to keep our eye on the gas pump when they're putting in gas, because that we definitely didn't get 10 JDs-worth of gas that morning. No biggie, we find a gas station in the nick of time (back in Madaba, after a drive out on the wrong road), and proper directions to get to Wadi Mujib. So we drive along the Dead Sea Highway (and all I'm thinking is I'm at the Dead Sea, I can't wipe this huge grin off my face) for a while, and finally find it, around 3:15pm. That leaves us about an hour and a half for the hike, since we've got to have the car back by 6:30pm. Get to the counter - oh, you close at 3pm. Ok.



So we drive back along the Dead Sea Highway, stop alongside the road so the boys can take a dip in the Dead Sea - I didn't bring my full bathing suit, and it's not an official beach anyways, so I just stand in the water. And no, it's not that salty, and I'm not that small - I don't float. My feet ARE nice and soft now though, it's quite the exfoliating experience!

Anyways, bottom line, a great day of driving in the sun in the hilly Jordanian countryside, and along the Dead Sea. Not quite as planned, but plans are boring anyways, aren't they?


And now, as I am writing this, I am sitting on my balcony, in a skirt and tank top. It's 10:15 and probably pretty close to 35 degrees Celsius. This is what I see (the bottom picture). The balcony is on the same side of the building as my room, so I get loads of sun every morning, from the time I wake up to when I eat breakfast out here. I would love to stay here all day, with the steady sound of traffic in the background, just numbingly looking out into the sky, but I probably won't for much longer. I think I will go the grocery store again today, maybe pick up some bread and cheese, olives and cucumbers, tomatoes.. I have a co-worker whose wife has just started a sandwhich business, and we've ordered from there a couple times this week. The sandwich I love to order is a breakfast one (but I could eat it any time of day) - bread, lebneh (a creamy cheese), zitoun (olives), tomatoes, cucumbers, zaatar. It's wonderful, and I could really go for one of those right now. So I'm off, in the scorching sun. Love it.