“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller

Picture: Jordan desert

Research

This week, I spoke with Prof. Schroeder about my poor results. To me, it seemed hopeless: I couldn’t replicate the ATP synthesis experiment from the one ancient paper I'd read, I couldn’t find any other papers, or commercial leads to my experiment, and I felt unguided in my project. I saw all these things as negative, but Prof. Schroeder seemed optimistic. He told me about some related discoveries about the origin of life which suggested that we were on the right track, and seemed convinced that I should stick with this project. I think he meant that, if I figure it out, then it will be a really big discovery. I think to be a professor, you need to have a knack for pulling people up; I felt much better after I spoke with him - much more driven to really understand this system for artificial mitochondria. Because if it works, it'll be pretty neat.

Petra, the Old City

Petra is one of the most beautiful places I’ve been, and that includes Mt. Fuji. The melding of architecture and nature is so astounding. When I was younger I used to Google images of the desert, and imagine what it would be like to live in the heat, with the brightly colored sand dunes all around. It really fueled my sense of adventure growing up, and to experience it in person was surreal. The best part of the trip was arriving at the Ad-Deir Monastery, since Marie and I had to hike up the mountain nearly 2 hours to get there. It was a rough climb, but I had some great conversations with Marie and it was so nice to be surrounded by nature – powerful, enormous, colorful nature. At the top Marie and I just sat, exhausted, and ate these poppy seed cookies she brought from Haifa. It was nice.

I also really enjoyed when we arrived at the Treasury, since there were camels and dogs and cats and a souvenir shop. There, Marie and I spent nearly 30 minutes choosing earrings for Gloria as a good-bye gift, and she ended up loving them. I tried this tasty strawberry drink with basil seeds in it. It was very touristy, but the architecture is so stunning that it can’t be overpowered by Bedouins constantly trying to guilt-trip you into buying their goods.

The Bedouins had this “I help you, you help me” motto where they would give you a pack of postcards or tie your scarf “for free,” and then ask for a gift in return. It made me feel bad when I said no, but I guess that was the point. But it wasn’t all that bad; we passed these men watching the France v Uruguay soccer match on the way up the mountain, and as we were climbing down one passed us on a donkey and told us the score. It seems even the Bedouins watch the World Cup.

When we arrived back at the hotel, we sat down to a Jordanian dinner that the hotel manager had arranged, a dish called mansaf. A very simple way to describe it would be chicken and rice, but it was so much more than that: yellow rice with parsley and peanuts, perfectly cooked chicken, draped with Arabic bread (thin, reminded me of dosa) with Arabic yogurt (very liquid-like) poured on top. It was probably the best dinner I’ve had since I came to Israel, ironically.

Traveling to Petra

This weekend I went to Petra, Jordan with my roommate, Marie. We took a six-hour night bus from Haifa to Eilat from Thursday night to Friday morning, and then crossed the Yitzhak Rabin Border into Aqaba, Jordan. We arrived in Eilat at like 6 am, so we had to wait 2 hours to cross the border. It opens early for Jordanian workers crossing into Israel for the day, but it opens at 8 am for tourists. After arriving in Jordan, we rode a taxi from 2 hours from Aqaba to the Sharah Mountains Hotel in Petra by Friday at noon. After arriving at the hotel, we had lunch and went to the old city of Petra, which contains the ancient Nabataean ruins. The next day, Saturday, we took another taxi back to Aqaba and took three buses back to Haifa, arriving at the dorms around 3am Sunday morning.

That’s a very objective summary of what happened, but the actual ordeal was more intense. Petra is extremely beautiful and definitely something any person should strive to experience. That said, I would do many things differently if I could plan the trip again.

The first thing I’d do differently is plan more. I kind of just tagged along with Marie; we booked the bus to Eilat, the hotel, and something called a Jordan Pass ahead of time, but for everything else we just winged it. The largest issue was the taxi we took from Aqaba to Petra.

When we arrived in Jordan, a number of green taxis were lined up just after the border crossing and just before the desert. One of the drivers, named Saleh, came up to us and offered a ride to Petra that would cost 65 Jordanian Dinar. We had heard from our flatmates and the Internet that the drive should be around 40 JD, so we were confused. SJ had told me that, since tourism is very big in Jordan, many people try to overcharge you. So I was wary of Saleh, but he insisted that the standard cost was 65 JD. Marie was also uneasy, but we couldn’t see any other options for transportation nearby besides other green taxis, so we agreed.

The drive was pretty nice; Marie asked Saleh to play Arabic music, so he put on some CDs as we drove through the desert and past a wind farm. We found out that Saleh used to be a chef in the U.S. specializing in Jordanian and Moroccan food. We stopped at a viewpoint near Petra and got some nice pictures, and then we arrived at the hotel. There, Saleh told us that tomorrow he could come pick us up and drive us to Wadi Rum, a desert with cool rock formations, as well as organize a lunch with traditional Jordanian food. That sounded great, so we agreed, but then Saleh charged is 20 JD so that he would return to the hotel tomorrow. We were also confused by this, but we didn’t know how else to get to Wadi Rum, so we paid the money and agreed to meet him at 10 am the next day.

On Saturday morning at exactly 10 am Marie and I came down to the lobby to find Saleh arguing with the Sharah Mountains Hotel manager. The manager was angry because Saleh was not allowed to pick us up from the hotel; he had told Saleh to go away but Saleh said, “I am your friend, why are you sending me away?” Which just made the manager even more angry. When he found out that Saleh had charged us 65 JD + 20 JD for the taxi drive to Petra, he had us get into his car and drove us first to the Petra Tourist Police, and then to the Petra Police Station.

At the Tourist Police, we entered a square room with a middle-aged police officer sitting at the back, with four chairs in front of him, all of which were occupied by men. The hotel manager related our story in English, and then in Arabic, with many hand gestures and embellishment in his voice. He seemed to be telling a story, and the men reacted as such, saying that it was unfair and agreeing with him. After about 20 minutes, we got back into the car again along with two policemen. One of them was fully uniformed, and was about to sit next to me in the passenger’s seat when the other officer, who was just wearing a polo, pushed him into the front.

I guess in Jordan, having a policeman in the car makes a difference. Marie told me later that while we were driving, hotel manager nearly ran into a little girl who was getting out of a car. The mother, in the driver’s seat, was about to honk her horn, but then she saw the police officer and stopped.

Anyway, we rode to the Petra Police Station, where the hotel manager and the policemen got out of the car and told us to wait inside. They disappeared into the station, and we waited for about 1.5 hrs, during which a truck driver was brought, handcuffed, into the station, an ambulance arrived to carry a man dressed like our hotel manager out, and the city bells rang to signify afternoon prayer. Finally, when Marie and I were dripping with sweat and I’d just about had it, Saleh walked passed our car and entered the station.

It was not a fun time for me. The previous day, when I had gone to get lunch near our hotel before we left for Petra, I went to this fast food joint 2 minutes away. As I walked through the streets, I saw no women at all. Marie had said that Jordan is primarily a Muslim country; maybe I should have covered my head. Was this why all the men I saw, grown and young, stared at me? Or maybe it was just because I was a tourist. Still, as an American, I felt uncomfortable. I know better, but I felt uncomfortable. So, sitting in the hotel manager’s car in the middle of Petra, watching men with scarves, uniforms, weapons, and handcuffs walk by for two hours was very stressful.

I pointed this out to Marie, but she didn’t seem to understand. In fact, she was amused by the situation, watching the Arab men arguing so enthusiastically without understanding what they were saying. I said, our lives are literally in their hands right now, how could she not be worried? How could she just trust these people whom we just met? I guess it was an “adventure,” but I wouldn’t wear it as a badge of pride, and that’s what it seemed like Marie was doing.

Marie said I sounded very American. I guess Americans are highly cautious of traveling to the Middle East for obvious reasons, and because the media in the U.S. exaggerates many things about what happens here. But still. I don’t understand; what if something bad had happened?

About 30 minutes after seeing Saleh, the hotel manager called us in and we received our money back. Then, the hotel manager called us another taxi to take us back to Aqaba for 40 JD.

The taxi driver on our way back was really nice. He was quiet but had a dad vibe around him. We stopped at a gas station along the way, and he got out to pay the gas server as I was looking out the window (I thought it was funny that the only places I’ve been where people load gas for you are Jordan and New Jersey). He caught me staring at their exchange, so I smiled at him and he smiled back. When he got back into the car, he gave Marie and me Soudan chocolate bars, and had one himself as we returned to the highway and continued our journey through the dessert. Along the way, he answered our questions about Wadi Rum and certain structures in the desert. I don’t know his name. But he seemed more like what I’d heard about Jordanians – kind, peaceful. I guess in comparison to what we’d experienced with Saleh and the Bedouins in Petra (see below), it made a huge difference to me.

Anyway, when we got to the border, we went to the police there, because the Petra police had told us to file a complaint in Aqaba about Saleh. The policeman told us in between cigarettes first to write a statement about our complaint, but then said that if he translated it into Arabic and made it official, we would have to stand before the judge the next day in Petra. This was not an option, so we had to write another statement saying that we cancelled the first statement. This took another hour.

After that, we went through the process of crossing the border. We didn’t realize it, but without a visa to visit Jordan, all forms of the Jordan Pass only work in your favor if you stay in Jordan for 3 nights or more. If you don’t, you need to pay a more expensive exit fee to leave Jordan. I wasn’t even aware of exit fees from countries until we had to pay 200 shekels to leave Israel. It was very frustrating, and took another hour.

Finally, we crossed the border, got a taxi, had dinner, and made our way to the Eilat Central Bus Station, where we started our journey back to Haifa. We had to switch buses twice. During the bus to Tel Aviv, the bus stopped abruptly in the middle of the desert and a young woman behind me fell out of her seat and slid down the middle of the aisle. The bus driver stopped and people rushed to help the woman, a mother of three kids travelling with her. She sat up crying and holding her mouth; her teeth had broken during the fall. The husband wasn’t there and she couldn’t get to an ambulance for another 1.5 hours. The bus driver stopped frequently after that for rest stops and to buy her painkillers. One of the men on the bus tried opening the first aid kit; there were these red hooks on the bus ceiling which he used to break the glass sealing the kit. I was so confused; why did opening the first aid kit involve breaking glass? Isn’t that even more dangerous? No one cleaned the glass up either, so every time the bus lurched a shower of glass shards rained down in front of the passengers in the first seat.

In summary, I was very tired and exasperated when we arrived back at the dorms. I guess this description sounds like I didn’t enjoy the experience. Truthfully, I think I learned a lot about Jordanian culture; it is so interesting to see how the process worked in the police station, and to observe how Jordanians handle daily affairs. I also learned my lesson about travelling, so I’ll be more prepared next time. It had to happen at some point. At least we got back safely.