JORDAN: INTO JORDAN

Posted October 27, 2005 by David McGuinness

After a brief overnight in Damascus it was time to head south to Jordan. I took a shared taxi from Damascus and apparently my fellow passenger was in a hurry as after 25 minutes waiting for the car to fill up (to 4 passengers) he decided he would pay for the 2 spare seats and we were off (and I had the whole back seat to myself!). After about an hour we stopped for coffee and a snack, and we sat unhurriedly and drank our coffee together and all chatted, myself, my supposedly hurried co-passenger and the driver. There was something very civilised in this unhurried coffee and getting to know each other that really struck a chord with me.

The formalities were fairly straightforward at the border though the car was very thoroughly searched on the Jordanian side. And on to Amman. The town itself is rather ugly but it bustles and its people are friendly. I climbed up to the citadel which is still under excavation and doesn’t look like it will be finished anytime soon.

The views however are excellent and the “ugly city” has a certain beauty from above. In almost every photo appears the world’s tallest free-standing flagpole at 127m high!*

*This is now the seventh tallest free-standing flagpole, being beaten by Aqaba, also in Jordan, and several others. The tallest is now in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Nonetheless, the Amman flagpole still remains a very impressive sight.

After the citadel I wandered down to the Roman theatre and then around the noisy but interesting fruit markets where vendors scream endlessly of the fantastic offers they have.

I then organised to get to Petra, Jordan’s premier tourist attraction, for the following day to see the ruins there. Interestingly, this is also where Indiana Jones was filmed. Next stop Petra!

This blog is part of an Off-The-Beaten-Track Travel Diary. Click on the links below to navigate through this journey.