"Adventure", or Day 2 of the Epic May Trip

Can't say we weren't warned. Yesterday, when we talked about how we were going to try to get to Wadi Mujib and the Dead Sea via bus, they said it was possible, but we were going to have to be adventurous.

It's a tale of despair and hope, rushing and waiting, truth and lies, frustration and success.

It was a roller coaster of a day. I mean, we're back in Amman, so it couldn't have gone too badly, right?
Now, I'm writing this offline, to upload later, and I don't have a map on me, so you are going to have to look these places up.

Let's start with Amman. We have been keeping track of expenses, so today we decided to keep track of times as well. Here is what is written down before... well, just before.

7:20 - Bus to bus station: .5 dinar

7:30 - Bus to Madaba: 1.3 dinar

8:45 - Bus to Wadi Mujib Karak - 6 dinar

Sustenance: .5 dinar

11:15 - Bus to another bus: .5 dinar

11:30 - Bus up the hill: .2 dinar

And that is when I stopped writing. Because that is when we just started going by the seat of our pants in a less than gracefully manner. In fact, the "seat of the pants" started during the Karak trip.

We got on a bus in Madaba that was supposed to take us to the Visitors' Center of Wadi Mujib. At least, that's what the punk kid collecting money told us.

Now, we are driving through some amazing countryside, then a plunging "wadi" (these canyon-like washouts carved down by water). With some goats, herding dogs, and tents in the mix.

We cross this dam, and all of a sudden, there is commotion between Abdalla and the driver and his attendant and the punk kid. Abdalla jumps out of the bus, consults with some police who are apparently guarding this giant dam, then jumps back in.

Well, what I gather from Abdalla, after a few, "Umm, what's going on?" and "Anything wrong?"s, is that Wadi Mujib is both the name of this dam thing and the name of the preserve as well that we were trying to get to.

(This whole next part is going to sound like I don't trust Abdalla, and don't worry, we've already talked about how frustrated we both were today. But it just because we react differently to situations. He gets frustrated and tries to fix it immediately, with whatever the first action that presents itself is; I get frustrated, and I stop, think, wait, examine, think, wait, and then make a tentative decision. So you will see how those opposing forces get us both frustrated.)

So the bus says that they will go to the end of the line, then swing back and drop us off. This is the first of many, many times today that I get the feeling something is wrong and that we should stop and think for a second before acting. However, Abdalla goes along with it, so I don't question it (out loud) and we sit. And nap. And sit. (And I got a wheel-well seat, so legs were a bit cramped).

And you can see that, instead of the Wadi Mujib Nature Preserve, we got to Karak.

Now, on a regular day, I wouldn't mind Karak. One, it is named after a beverage I love. Two, there are supposedly a pretty castle there.

Today, however, Karak is simply just another waypoint in our "adventurous" quest to reach Wadi Mujib (the preserve, not the dam thing). So the bus attendant walks us over to another minibus, which drives us to another minibus that is going the right way, along the Dead Sea.

I'm super critical at this point, wondering why we didn't just get off the first bus when it told us we had already passed it, getting snappy with Abdalla because he has these long conversations (with much emotion and noise) and then tells me something simple, and getting hot and cramped from so many buses.

The real candle on the cake is when the creepy-looking dude next to Abdalla convinced him to get off the bus at some random little wayside restaurant. So we jump off, and... yeah, I get stared at by creepy guys, and we end up "hitch-hiking."

Now, I've heard this is a common way to travel in Jordan and other places. You are waiting for a bus that might or might not come, and while you wait, you see if anyone else is going in the same direction.

A car ready-to-please quickly pulled over, and, after an Arabic conversation, we got in. The conversation continued when we got in the car, and then a bit when we got out. It was only later Abdalla told me that this guy was actually a taxi driver in disguise, preying on people for their money and ripping us off to get to where we wanted to go.

But. We got to where we wanted to go. Seventeen dinars later, and we were at Wadi Mujib. (I feel sad now that I calculated that.)

But I just keep telling myself that it was worth it. And Wadi Mujib (the preserve) was worth it. We paid another too-much to get in, collected our life jackets, and began the unguided trail up to the waterfall.

This canyon, which is gorgeous and immense, carved smooth by the water, has a strong stream running through it. We walked up stream; however, our flipflops were in danger the entire time. We eventually took them off, and I know I was regretting the lack of strap-on sandals. The rocks were a bit hard, but we decided that we were stronger than the pain.

The real truth hit when there was a giant rock with water gushing over it in our way. We could see footholds on the exposed face, and there was a rope that was straight up into a gushing part of the mini-waterfall, so we had no idea how to scale this thing.

We deliberated, then saw some boys scrambling along above the rock. Then, there was an entire family herd. They kindly demonstrated the hand-over-hand while balancing yourself up the rock, standing, that we then used to get over the first obstacle. The next little scramble they explained to us as well.

And then, after a final climb over rushing water, we got to the swirling pool at the base of a 30-foot (that's about 10 meter) waterfall. We sat in the water and admired it, saw others dunk their heads under and did similarly, then started our trek back. (And, thank God, the sandals didn't feel like they were going to rip off our feet going downstream. My tender feet couldn't take anymore. Seriously, needed some better footwear.)

We got out of the canyon and walked down a gravel path to the Wadi Mujib Chalets (a bit too expensive for our poor student budgets) where we paid another too-much to float in the Dead Sea.

I was a little freaked out at swimming in it since I read about people drowning when they try to float face down. And it's true, when you go stomach-down, the only way to right yourself without a faceful of salty, oily water, is to turn onto your back and go from there.

Abdalla had a bit of a "swimming" (steering and moving) lesson while floating, and we found the warm spots right about the black rocks to soak in. I had a few cuts that made my legs sting, but we sat/floated for quite some time in the Dead Sea. I did chicken out before Abdalla and rinsed off all the stinging salt.

Now, the next worrying part was how to get back to either Madaba (which has some cool things to see, as well as a neat place to watch the sunset) or Amman and the hotel. We get to the main road, another over-eager driver pulls over, and we hop in, thinking that it was just a hitch.

We end up in some town along the road to Amman and are forced to pay 2 dinars for the ride. Some nice chap he was. (When, in the middle of the ride, Abdalla told me he was getting annoyed with the guy, I was scared that he was going to be a jerk.)

We took my decision-making route after that, telling off some guy who wanted to drive us in to Amman for 7 dinars ($11) and instead hopping in another car with another group and getting (finally) a free ride to the outskirts of Amman where we took a simple bus just blocks from our hotel and walked back.

Now, this sounds less frustrating on here than it was in real life. Every single time one of the legs of our journey ended, we had no idea what was coming next. Only now, in retrospect, do I see how truly adventurous our day was. I mean, we basically went south-east of the Dead Sea into the southern part of Jordan before coming back west, then north, and now back in Amman, one of the northern cities. I just wish it hadn't taken us... 6 hours to get from Amman to Wadi Mujib.

After a quick re-coop from the harrowing journeys of the day, Abdalla and I took a taxi (for the first time today) to a pedestrian avenue in West Amman. There we had ice cream, walked, and got one too many glasses of delicious fruit cocktail.