Reluctantly leaving Dahab, we caught a minibus up the west coast of the Gulf of Aqaba.
The Red Sea is deep scar in the land that just happens to be filled with sea water, but it is only part of the Rift Valley that stretches two thousand miles or more across the Middle East. This, in turn is a continuation of the Great Rift Valley that scores the entire length of Africa. Its enormity is only concealed by the distances it covers and the confusion of local names that are attributed to it, somehow disguising its planet encompassing scale. Created by movement of the tectonic plates, a minor rupture could tear Africa and the Middle East apart and send any number of nations onto a different continent.
All the more disappointing then, when you reach Aqaba.
Groomed as Jordan’s second city of the south, it sits precisely on the northern tip of the gulf. But despite the superb geographical location it has little to recommend it apart from the Middle East’s tallest flag pole and a sorry reconstruction of a crusader castle using block work from a bargain pallet at B&Q.
The ferry from Nueba to Aqaba was $70 well spent when considering the 15 hour bus journey around the shoreline of the gulf as the alternative. Hurtling 3,000 tonnes of steel across the surface of the water at 40 knots, the engines of the Nefertiti fired a powerful wall of water from the stern, bettered only by the opening of the release valves on a respectably sized dam. The wind on the stern deck was almost strong enough to lean into and more than one hat made the break for freedom over the rail and into the blue. The ship left a white trail in the water and a black one in the sky as the twin smoke stacks belched into the salty air.
Docking in Aqaba, we bested the taxi mafia with a little research after passing through customs. How far was the journey? The temptation to justify an inflated fare by exaggerating the distance, was too strong to resist. Fifteen km came the reply, for only 12 Jordanian Dinar. It was actually six and he knew it. More to the point he knew we knew it and so the price came down in proportion to the distance.
The Alabaster pot raised a few eyebrows but thankfully no one asked me to open it as to do so would have taken some industrial wire cutters and an angle grinder, such was the effective packing that it had accumulated since we relieved Alabaster Ali of the prize in Luxor.
The sweet faced customs officer took us into his office to stamp our visas. The Jordanians seem, on the whole, a calmer lot than the Egyptians. They smile more readily and argue less freely. No surprise then that they were the last to inadvisably make war with Israel and the first to seal the peace. King Hussein has been dead for ten years now but his son Abdullah steers the same careful path his father did and Jordan prospers as a result. No other nation could double its population in a month as Jordan did with the influx of Palestinian refugees after the war in 1967, and maintain any semblance of order, particularly without the might of oil to throw at the problem.
After a circuitous 15km journey around downtown Aqaba we were eventually deposited at the Moon Beach hotel.
The foyer was the picture of sophistication, but beyond this, the walls were lined with corrugated plastic, recently prised from the roof of a garden shed, and the rooms were poor. It was only one night but it reinforced a probably undeserved impression that Aqaba is in a period of forced growth. As we arrived in the darkness, the flashing neon cried progress but in the morning the dusty streets whispered something different.
I didn't quite catch it but it might have been that appeararance is more important than substance.
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