Quickly in and out of Jordan
While the border of Syria was a bunch of unorganized cabins with a lot of Arabs, the border of Jordan contains some organized offices with even more Arabs. Borders consists of two basic things, payments and stamps. Unfortunately the digital age also came to Jordan, so bargaining with T-shirts didn’t help. When you want to pay less, you actually get less, resulting in a car insurance of only three days. After we filled our passport and emptied our pockets the plan was to go straight to Israel, but Indiana Jones blew up a famous place called Petra, that we had to check out. Driving like three madmen we didn’t gave our van Doutzen some rest until we arrived at this old city…
Update: The media is getting the hang of the ThreeLeftHands, check out the movies created by ‘Friesland Cast‘ and the article on the website MotoCar.co.il (if your Hebrew is a little bit rusty: translation)
In return for this advertisement the Silk Road Hotel was kind enough to provide us some good breakfast and we were ready to see this famous city in the rocks. Somehow they made a touristic place out of it, wanted to charge 75 euros for the three of us and a call with the minister of Antiquities didn’t help, but hiking is much better for your health. 
After all it’s only a bunch of rocks between more rocks so taking a walk around the touristic area seems the most logical thing to do. Unfortunately, we couldn’t ignore the screaming of a following policeman for 20 minutes and his question to come to the local police-office was quickly followed by a simultaneously ‘No!’ Although the man started pretty pissed off, after some quality discussion and other convincing methods he showed a better hiking route, which let us through some beautiful scenery and dropped us high in the center of the temple of Petra. Strangely they rebuild the temple after the final scene of ‘Indiana Jones and the last Crusade’, which is quite amazing when you realize this impressive building is completely carved out of the rocks.
This old city was founded by the Horites unknown years ago, being a trading spot in the center of Asia, Europe and Africa. After used by a dozen cultures nowadays it’s mainly an excavation place, a way of earning money for the local Bedouins and an amazing site to visit!
Driving up our next border-crossing gave us a nice slow route through the Jordan mountains, where Bedouins are living for a long time. To dig deeper in to their culture we set up a meeting with some tents and sheep in the middle of nowhere, but being white and not speaking their language only resulted in a short interview with one respond: ‘money?!’
Parking to sleep over at yet another old castle resulted in a nice view in the morning with another money-wolf which totally blew away our trust in the so called Arabic hospitality. We were actually offended by the fact that they first welcome us to Jordan, give us valuable water for free and than try to charge for it. In the next city with another strange name we tried out some local eastern snack called ‘falafel’. Although it lacks some good meat, this vegetarian bite is very tasteful and fills the belly, so we can recommend it. With a free cup of coffee and some extra falafel the local Jordanian people regain our trust. When we entered Doutzen our hands got even filled with a big bag of toffee’s with a loud and clear ‘Welcome to Jordan!’ So it was time to leave Jordan and go to the land of milk and honey.
Jordan and Israel are divided by the Dead Sea, which we would call the Dead Lake. Completely cut of from fresh water it vaporizes one meter a year, becoming a little bit salty. A lot of salt ain’t a natural habitat for living creatures besides humans that think it’s healthy. This sea is with 420 meters below sea level even lower than our beautiful country and the lowest place on earth. With a lot of mud, no sand and only some brown thick water waving on the coast it totally doesn’t look inviting. Of course this didn’t stop our crash-test-dummy Minne, who found out it ain’t recommended to take a dive into this disgusting saltwater. Until the next border the other guys had a lot of fun looking at Minne struggling with some burning salty crap in his hair.
While we’re driving out of Jordan, the officers looked way to serious and Doutzen was inspected rough, but not very thoroughly. Somehow they were quite amazed by our big kitchen knives and our binoculars were even worth a phone-call to the head of the serious-mustache-uniforms. Strange, but somehow part of the military culture in an area that’s constantly under a lot of political stress…
December 3rd, 2008 at 5:57
Hi guys,
Your site (about which someone posted on a vanagon listserv) is most amusing.
But I’m sorry to see you snuck into Petra without paying, and even sorrier to see you announce it to the world as if it proved your daring and spirit. It costs money to protect places like Petra from destruction, and even more to open them to the public. You three aren’t the only ones who want to see Petra - we all do, especially now that it has been designated one of the seven new wonders of the world. For that to be possible, the Jordanian government has to manage it as a tourist site. And they have to pay for that. Which is why it costs a lot to visit.
You guys can clearly afford to not work for a long time on your jaunt to South Africa. You should be paying for your pleasures yourselves, not taking them from others.
What’s more, you give a bad name to young travelers, to Europeans, and to vanagonauts the world over.
So quit it, guys!
Joy
and Matilda, ‘89 vanagon, who prefers that I pay my entry fees so she’ll feel safe in the parking lot