Canyoning

Well, had my first taste of the Dead Sea hills and it was fabulous, wild, beautiful and so tiring that I can barely walk today - but loved it!

So, rather than just going for a nice walk, my first foray into the wilds was a canyoning trip in Wadi Assal - one of the many rivers flowing into the Dead Sea from the hills to the east of it, on this map the valley starts somewhere near Rabba and heads towards Al Mazraa ...


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For those who don't know about canyoning, it is all about following a river downhill through its canyons and gorges, so usually includes things like hiking, scrambling, abseiling, jumping into river pools, rockclimbing, rock water slides, waterfalls, jungle bashing and stunning gorges. Well, this one had all of these things, with my only real complaint being that it was way too long - 10 hours with only half an hour break for lunch! Lord knows how many kilometres we covered, but the last hour and a half was in darkness, and this despite leaving Amman at 5.30am!

But on the other hand, boy was it exciting, have a look at this ....



This is the first part of the trip, after a scramble down a barren hillside from the road we started a fairly easy walk into the top of the canyon ...















Then the gorges started getting narrower and steeper, and the proper abseiling began - 7 long abseils in all, with the first five in the dry part of the day before lunch ...















And down she goes ...









After that the whole valley got wetter and lusher ... In fact, we decided that while we have 'damp' and 'wet' and 'soaked', we don't really have a word that describes having been in water, and then half drying, and then getting wet, and then half drying again and again, for hours on end - sort of like Glastonbury but without the water from above ... and yet we still managed to be filthy at the end of it! All good fun ...

Food, pt. I (of many I'm sure!)

One of the things I'm loving about the Middle East is the food ... so here's a little taster for you.

So here is the lunch that I eat pretty much every day in the little felafel house opposite school - round flat bread (like pitta bread), houmous with chick peas and olive oil on top (sometimes pine nuts too), then front left is what they call 'Arabic salad', which is basically tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce with loads of coriander and tahini sauce, and then of course the freshly cooked felafels themselves. This is the expensive option at about £2.50 - the cheaper way to do it is just get a felafel and houmous sandwich at 50p ...



And of course, the inevitable cakes and cookies - as well as the most humungous trays of baclava you've ever seen, I have made it one of my priorities to test all the available sweet offerings that I can find so as best to advise my visitors n the future ... taking one for the team ...

Really old stuff

Just for the history buffs out there, a couple of photos of the truely old stuff that Jordan has thrown up which I came across in the Citadel in town. The Citadel itself is a mish mash of different styles, having been variously inhabited for the last 6,000 years or so - bronze age cave, roman temple, byzantium church and Umiyyad mosque all next to each other. And then there's all the great stuff in the teeny tiny museum ...



The temple of Hercules at the Citadel, built by Marcus Aurelius. Great views over Amman, you can see whay so many civilisations chose this site ...








Byzantium church (6th century) in the foreground, top of the Umayyid audience hall behind (8th century but built over another byzantium church)







Well, this is apparently the oldest statue in the world, dated at somewhere between 6,000 to 8,000BC - they dug up this and a whole collection of similar statues in Ain Ghazal in Jordan. Amazing how it looks like something you'd see in a modern art gallery in New York ...












And this one's for that special girl who I know likes anything suitably gruesome - an 6,000 year old child' skeleton in its burial pot ...

Downtown girl ...

So let me explain ... Amman seems to be pretty much split in two - there is the western half that I live in, I guess you could call it the richer half, which is a seemingly endless sprawl of very large houses on soulless streets, interspersed with modern shopping malls (pizza, Mango, La Senza, Nike etc) - sometimes I wonder if I'm in the Middle East or some wierd area of Birmingham.

And then there is downtown - the eastern half of the city is very different, I'm told it's the poorer area and certainly the houses are much smaller and closer together. The main shopping area is in the bit they call "Wast El Balad" or "centre of the country", what we might call "downtown", and it is by far my favourite bit of Amman so far! As well as being where the old ruins are (citadel, roman amphitheatre etc), it's where the little shops and markets are, so I can finally escape the horrible sterility of my local Carrefour and Safeways (I kid you not).
I really like the higgledy-piggledy houses downtown, and even though its not ye olde city like Damascus or Jerusalem (apart from the ruins, Amman is a 20th century town), downtown has the lively loud feel to it that you find in other bigs cities - the bad driving (but nothing near as bad as, say, India), the noise, the open-fronted shops, the people carrying sacks of stuff ... but all amazingly clean if a bit rundown, puts large parts of London to shame ...


I haven't really taken many pictures of downtown at street level, mainly because there are women around and people seem to be pretty conservative about that kind of thing here - although some women are more liberal, and there are plenty of non-Muslims too who don't cover up, at least a headscarf seems to be pretty normal and I don't want to offend anyone ... having said that, maybe I'm being oversensitive, but I'll suss it out and maybe get braver! Just look at these photos though, and imagine the soundtrack - cars revving and beeping, guys shouting, Arabic music from tinny stereos ...


And one last photo especially for you Mike - one of the many spice shops in town with a typically surly-looking owner (what does it take to get someone to smile around here!)

How much??!!

OK, it's official - Amman is not a cheap place to be. Well,I suppose it probably depends on what you're buying, and where you're buying it, so I think it's time to put some serious effort into finding reasonable places to shop, but since I haven't actually found anything other than supermarkets yet ...

A cross-section of my spending in the last 24 hours ...

taxi to school (really, the bus would take years ...) - £1.80 one way
notebook for school (sort of A4 but not quite for some reason ...) - 80p
slightly salted butter (Marmite on toast is rubbish without it) - £1.90
felafel and houmous sandwich and mint tea for lunch (in a little place opposite school) - 60p
Nivea hand cream (very very dry here) - £3.20
shower scrunchy thing - 25p
Pint of beer (readily available in range of bars, apparently even during Ramandan) - £4.50
Arabic coffee - 25p

So, it'll be clean but dry skin, caffeine rather than alcohol and felafel rather than toast for now ... could be worse!

Home sweet home ...

Thought you might like to see a couple of pics of chez moi ...


This is the main living room (there is more than one, can you believe). To be honest, I've only really been using the table for homework and general dumping of stuff.

In the far corner is my ironing space, guess I should start doing some ironing!





The kitchen ... the potential for fine suppers is enormous (gas cooker! with 5 rings!), but am kind of kicking around in it at the moment ...







I just love the fact that I have such a huge wardrobe in my room, as if I'll ever have enough clothes to fill it! Although I can think of a couple of girlfriends who would give it a good go ;-)




And good news for visitors - there are two spares bedrooms (with their own bathrooms!), and of course plenty of room in the living rooms if you all turn up at once ... all welcome chez La Tarzane!

Not in Kansas any more ...

Well, day one was a w ierd kind of limbo, left home but not really arrived – staying in a hotel is always neither here not there, the Sheraton is the Sheraton wherever you go. But in this one at least I was able to have my first go at talking in Arabic to an Arabic person (with the backup of them speaking English when I can't remember even the SIMPLEST words ...). And the swimming pool and sauna always helps on the chilling front ...

But that feels like an age ago already, and now here I am in my flat, with Peter Broderick on the MP3 helping me welcome in my first day of the new life. Unfortunately, someone seems to have misinformed the powers that be here that I would be bringing a small tribe of people along with me, and I have been allocated a frankly absurdly large flat for just me, which I am kicking around in a bit – it is a 32m walk from my bed to the kettle, for crying out loud. So, you know what to do guys, come and help me fill it!

So, first impressions of Amman ... calm traffic, no motorbikes and animals mixing in with old bangers, lots of space and light as all the buildings in the bits I've seen at least are lowrise and pale-coloured – it's called 'The White City' apparently, and I can see why. No sign yet of the hustle and bustle of those souks you see in places like Cairo, I don't think Amman is going to be the kind of town, but the people are mainly polite, the sky has sometimes been blue and the houmous is usually yummy ....

In fact, I did go downtown on my first day with a couple of fellow students, my one little foray out of the Sheraton, but even that wasn't exactly heaving, although to be fair it was the weekend. It was enough to make me start feeling that I am now in the Middle East though (I'm in the Middle East! Aaagh!) - plenty of jelabahs, Arabic music on tinny stereos, pirate DVDs, and gorgeous smells of flat bread and barbecue ...

And then there are the people – Amman seems to cater for every shade of Muslim and Arab, the guys in mainly western dress but the women ranging from tight tops and makeup to the head-to-toe black and face covered with a niqab. All have been politely friendly so far though, not exactly rushing up to befriend you in the street but certainly happy to help when spoken to, and even the male leching is pretty restrained. So far I have been driven around Amman until I get orientated, as no-one seems to know street names in Amman (in fact, I currently don't really know where I live, except it's sort of near a chemists), so most of my contact has been with expats and local staff employed to help me out, but that support runs out today and I'm looking forward to finally braving taxis and day to day life on my own.

While the locals have been a little distant, the expats have welcomed me with open arms, and I am looking forward to getting to know them better. I've already been warned about how incestuous it can be though, with everyone knowing everyone else's business, and I can already feel a little pull away from that to keep my sanity ... I'm hoping to try and keep a balance, and can see that there is plenty of other stuff for me to get stuck into – Wild Jordan is going to be an early stop I think, where the RSCN (local environmental agency) runs an info centre and organic cafe. They do activities and events as well, and can organise all those fabulous trekking and camping trips I am GAGGING to do (although not sure the weather is right for it, what with rain heading in and all ...)

But for the next few days, it's going to be sorting residency paperwork, getting some supplies in and starting school, head down and all that ... and trying not to miss my friends quite as much as I already do. Damn you all!