Mmmhmm, the 3 pm Ferry, eh?

I have been sorely remiss in writing.  Sorry.  I too regret it--because I forget what I've done and because I've never been a steady journal writer, I know the words to capture the magical moment, when, for example, the bedouin pulls the chicken and onions from the sand-covered firepit--will be lost completely--perhaps the memory shaping me subtlely but on the whole impossible to share or remember in details replete.

Travel to Jordan appeared easy--a ferry from Nueba, Egypt to Aqaba, Jordan.  My friend Mary-Ann by this time had decided to accompany me, and I was glad for the company, and so we took a bus from Dahab (so long, Red Sea, and the glorious weightless dives I am leaving behind for land adventures) and made our way up the coast to Nueba, where the so-called fast boat left at an alleged 2:30. Fine.  It cost us a solid $70 between exit taxes and fares, but it was tolerable considering we were traversing countries here.  We bought our tickets at eleven and killed time at a local cafe where Arab men watched an action movie at a volume far too loud in the over-hot midday sun, where you paid an egyptian pound (twenty cents) to pee in a bathroom cleaned by an eighty year old man, where we ordered fresh lemon juice (lemons and sugar and water and a hint of milk in a blender) and turkish coffee, and shisha, and tomato salads, and the bet kofta I've had yet (succulent lamb minced with herbs and fashioned into kebabs with flat bread arriving oven-scorched, the blackened bits crumbling off on our fingers) and water, and sat in the shade of a tree while the ambient noise of dominoes being shuffled on a nearby table filtered through the hookah bubbles, and we discussed all manner of things--her marriages and divorces and parents and growing up out back with a father who could divine water with a stick--and three hours came to but $8 in all costs, and a tan, and some dehydration.  It was when we bought our tickets that we were told that the ferry in fact left at 3 pm and so we made our way over to the port and filled out departure cards.  A queue (associating primarily with Australians and English tourists I now say lift, rubbish, mate, reckon, mathilda, bingle, billabong, and so on rather often) of but four were in front of me, then ten women heading to saudi arabia for a religious holiday--elbos in my ribs, then men, all pushing, then there were twenty and jostling and the guard yelling get back in arabic while encouraging the behavior by taking more passports, then more pushing, these clear green eyes through glasses and veils beautiful but the elbows still sharp--but I pushed forward and felt no remorse.

Jostling...in Burkahs

Then early on the question from a man--are you Jewish.  I replied no, from California.  A smile and a handshake.  Good for me.  Jews loading onto the ferry should go to the back thank you very much.  Then at long last we got in--we're talking after a solid forty minutes of pounding on the glass with our poor worn passports.  It was almost three--had we missed the ferry we asked the guard--where are you going, he asked me, to Syria.  Haha.  Nope, just Jordan. (He was serious.) The ferry for Jordan hadn't come in yet but it would come in an hour...so we heard for four hours.  By the time the ferry came it was seven pm and we were exhausted.

Jordan is far cleaner than Egypt, far richer, and far far more expensive.  The Jordanian Dinar is kept artificially high, and so when you get swindled by Jordanian Arabs, who look more honest than their Egyptian counterparts, it hurts a lot more.  My advice on Jordan: don't go.  It's expensive, the people are on the whole less friendly than in Egypt and it feels more Westernized.

We got some crazy-good falafel at a little stand--fried chickpeas and hummus and chili sauce and tomatoes inside a pita-like pocket, and all that for thirty cents--the one reasonable meal we managed.  We picked up some divine almonds--creamy and sweet naturally, and cheap enough to make you want to cry, and that was our brief stay in Aqaba.