Place: Akaba/Petra
Tunes: Camels protesting whatever 8 year old kids were asking them to do for the amusement of tourists.
Tourism! Not adventuring today. We took a minibus/taxi thing to Petra and went to have a stroll in the pleasant heat and sunshine. One of the seven wonders of the world looked like it does in the pictures and is sufficiently impressive. The whole city takes forever to see and we did not do all of it as this would not be in the spirit of this adventure.
In the city there apparently is a monastery of some sort but you need to climb like 800 steps of stairs if you want to get there. The closer you got to the monastery the bigger the number got. "Mister mister, better take a donkey, 1000 steps."
We were dissapointed for not being able to ride through it and stopping just to take some pictures with the engine running. One interesting feature about the statues in Petra was that they were damaged badly by 2000 years of erosion, not by man, which is a change. The eroded canyon that you walk through to get in was almost as impressive as the treasury (the thing cut into the cliff wall that you see in all of the pictures).
There was riding available though, horse, donkey or camel with little kids pestering you constantly. Go to school! They should know that we only ride motorbikes designed by German motorcycle engineers. Except Teijo, but as the Honda has no mechanical prolems and you cannot even drop it, he deserves some nagging about it. No lame ass donkey's for us. Pun intended.
The path to the ancient city.
You can almost see the treasury.
This is the main thing to see, but there is much much more. Guess why my regard to the police here has not improved.
More spectacular canyons.
Me on the way to Petra.
After having to do all of that tourism without riding the bike a reward is in order. Mango ice-cream juice thing and a cold beer. Bliss.
Other crazy overlanders! We met Elizabeth and Jason briefly at a bus stop thing. See http://birthfromthebackseat.blogspot.com/ for their story. Good luck!
The bedroom origami is getting more and more impressive.
The place was pretty busy with tourists and it is the main tourist resort of the country and there are of course a lot of people trying to sell you something. If you are old enough to walk or talk, you will try to sell something to a tourist. This is quite shocking to see and does not feel good. It is clear that the parents of these toddlers are hoping that the kids will make money purely because of pity.
We finished off the Petra tour with some coolers and beer at the Mövempick hotel ice-cream bar. Very tasty and not as expensive as one would expect.
Later we met a western woman who has worked here for some time told us something of the reality of the pricing in here and apparently we have been ripped off pretty much everywhere paying about double or more of what the locals do. Nothing has a price tag, so the price is determined by how much the merchant thinks he can get away with. This is the case everywhere we have been to so far. It's not a huge surprise I suppose.
I can also mention the exception that makes the rule. I got some eyedrops from a pharmacy and the pharmacist charged me precisely what was in the price-tag of the box. And we saw for the first time an actual Jordanian cash register reciept (in a restaurant where the expat told us to go). I have a feeling that this is just the beginning.
Tunes: Camels protesting whatever 8 year old kids were asking them to do for the amusement of tourists.
Tourism! Not adventuring today. We took a minibus/taxi thing to Petra and went to have a stroll in the pleasant heat and sunshine. One of the seven wonders of the world looked like it does in the pictures and is sufficiently impressive. The whole city takes forever to see and we did not do all of it as this would not be in the spirit of this adventure.
In the city there apparently is a monastery of some sort but you need to climb like 800 steps of stairs if you want to get there. The closer you got to the monastery the bigger the number got. "Mister mister, better take a donkey, 1000 steps."
We were dissapointed for not being able to ride through it and stopping just to take some pictures with the engine running. One interesting feature about the statues in Petra was that they were damaged badly by 2000 years of erosion, not by man, which is a change. The eroded canyon that you walk through to get in was almost as impressive as the treasury (the thing cut into the cliff wall that you see in all of the pictures).
There was riding available though, horse, donkey or camel with little kids pestering you constantly. Go to school! They should know that we only ride motorbikes designed by German motorcycle engineers. Except Teijo, but as the Honda has no mechanical prolems and you cannot even drop it, he deserves some nagging about it. No lame ass donkey's for us. Pun intended.
The path to the ancient city.
You can almost see the treasury.
This is the main thing to see, but there is much much more. Guess why my regard to the police here has not improved. 
More spectacular canyons.
Me on the way to Petra.
After having to do all of that tourism without riding the bike a reward is in order. Mango ice-cream juice thing and a cold beer. Bliss.
Other crazy overlanders! We met Elizabeth and Jason briefly at a bus stop thing. See http://birthfromthebackseat.blogspot.com/ for their story. Good luck!
The bedroom origami is getting more and more impressive.The place was pretty busy with tourists and it is the main tourist resort of the country and there are of course a lot of people trying to sell you something. If you are old enough to walk or talk, you will try to sell something to a tourist. This is quite shocking to see and does not feel good. It is clear that the parents of these toddlers are hoping that the kids will make money purely because of pity.
We finished off the Petra tour with some coolers and beer at the Mövempick hotel ice-cream bar. Very tasty and not as expensive as one would expect.
Later we met a western woman who has worked here for some time told us something of the reality of the pricing in here and apparently we have been ripped off pretty much everywhere paying about double or more of what the locals do. Nothing has a price tag, so the price is determined by how much the merchant thinks he can get away with. This is the case everywhere we have been to so far. It's not a huge surprise I suppose.
I can also mention the exception that makes the rule. I got some eyedrops from a pharmacy and the pharmacist charged me precisely what was in the price-tag of the box. And we saw for the first time an actual Jordanian cash register reciept (in a restaurant where the expat told us to go). I have a feeling that this is just the beginning.
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