Day 17 – Aqaba, Eilat, Jerusalem

Today is the day we intended to visit Wadi Rum, a spectacular desert and mountain landscape two hours’ drive inland from Aqaba. (In particular we had hoped to see USAID sponsored project recycling greywater for agricultural use, which apparently, after initial scepticism has been embraced by the locals.)

However access is strictly controlled, effectively limited to organised tours approved by visitor centre, which also regulates prices (67 JD (£ 57.35) per person for a half-day tour).  Since we cannot glean any information on public transport (there is rumoured to be one minibus per day from Aqaba) we would need to take a taxi, at 40 JD (£ 34.25), making the overall cost 87 JD (£ 74.45) per person for half a day.

This is symptomatic of our experience of Jordan, which is becoming increasingly tarnished by the tiresomely persistent hawkers, high prices and the extremely limited public transport. The standard greeting “Welcome to Jordan” is starting to ring hollow.

So we decide to leave Jordan a day earlier than planned. After taking a taxi from the hostel to the border we pass through the Jordanian procedures within 15 minutes and walk through the no man’s land to Israeli border control.

The first part is a security check, which involves emptying our backpacks and various x-rays. The second part is immigration. The flow of people across the border is a trickle, less than a dozen people an hour we reckon, and everyone but us and two amiable French guys is waved through. We sit for an hour and a half in a fly-infested (though air-conditioned) tent. Needless to say the common ground between us and our new Gallic friends is that we have all been to Syria, which makes this tedious “security check” routine treatment. The third part of the charade is a surprisingly rapid and disinterested customs check. We are then free to go the toilet and be ripped off at the bureau de change.

We share a taxi in to Eilat with the French chaps, buy tickets for the bus to Jerusalem at 1630 (the first of the day because it’s Shabbat) and wander in to Eilat in the searing heat. It has a very touristy and American vibe but on the upside we enjoy the best coffee for some time. (I quite enjoy the Turkish variety, especially with cardamom, but the ubiquitous Nescafe and desperate instant cappuccino have left me yearning for a Monmouth double espresso.)

We wait for the coach at the advertised bay, join the scrum to put our luggage in the hold and jostle to board, only to discover that our coach will be departing from another bay. (Our Hebrew is on a par with our Arabic.) We are just in time and soon we are heading north. There is little evidence of water scarcity here, with various plantations and polytunnels on our right for mile after mile. And at the service station we stop at the outside seating area is being evaporatively cooled.

Once we reach the shores of the Dead Sea agriculture gives way to salt mining and other industry. We are a little surprised that the bus route takes us through the West Bank. Darkness falls and we see the lights of Jericho, the lowest town in the world at 260 m below sea level, to our right as we head west on Route 1 towards Jerusalem.

Day 16 – Wadi Musa, Aqaba

The buses from Wadi Musa to Aqaba only run once there is a sufficient number of passengers. On Fridays there are a maximum of two buses. We arrive at the bus station at 0710 to find that we have missed the first bus by ten minutes.

Ninety minutes later the critical number, 15, is reached and we set off up in to the mountains, which offer long views back across Petra.

Midmorning we arrive in Aqaba, have a brief meander around the town centre and take a taxi to the hostel which, like most of the hotels, lies to the south of the town along the Dead Sea coast.

After some lunch we walk barefoot across the hostel’s scalding stone tiles, a gravelly road, the tarmac dual carriageway and the littered beach (glass and chicken drumsticks being particularly prevalent) for some snorkelling amongst the thankfully more pristine coral.

Later I check where the nearest ATM is on my iPhone and discover that Taba, Egypt lies is about 1 km closer than Aqaba, Jordan, which itself is about 2 km closer than Eilat, Israel. And it is only 10 km or so to the south to the border with Saudi Arabia.

In the evening we head in to Aqaba for something to eat. In the centre there seems to be little beyond juice bars and shawarma cafes. We find a mini American mall complete with McDonalds and an English pub (that obviously doesn’t actually sell any English beer) and endure a disappointing Chinese meal.

Day 15 – Amman, Petra, Wadi Musa

We set off from Amman on the 0630 JETT bus and arrive at Petra at 1030. After checking in to a hotel in Wadi Musa, the adjacent town, we return to explore Petra, the amazing Nabataean city built in the 3rd century BC by carving buildings in to the sandstone rock. It is approached through a 1.2 km long Siq that is not a canyon but rock pulled apart by tectonic forces.

   

There is plenty of evidence of the Nabataeans mastery of hydraulic engineering.

“Writing in the first century BC, the ancient geographer Strabo described Petra as "having springs in abundance, both for domestic purposes and for watering gardens." Indeed, the Nabataeans chose this location not only for its fortress of rock cliffs, but also for its available water supply: this part of the desert saw a mere 15 centimeters (six inches) of rain per year. Petra’s local springs flowed enough for some families to fetch water daily, but these alone streams could not support a population of around 20,000 in and around the city.

The Nabataeans developed a sophisticated public waterworks fed by three larger springs located several miles from Petra. Systems of strategically placed rock-cut gutters lined with watertight plaster, combined with terracotta pipelines, followed the natural landscape to feed nearly 200 cistern tanks, many reservoirs and a nymphaeum, or public fountain house. Water was also diverted for agricultural use to support crops and herds, and the Nabataeans developed rules for water allocation to govern its consumption. According to a recent calculation, Petra’s aqueduct system carried about 40 million liters (12 million gallons) of fresh spring water per day—enough to sustain a modern-day American population of more than 100,000.”

Excerpt from http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/petra/stone/water.php 

The technical expertise is described further in C. R. Ortloff’s Petra Water Systems:

“Analysis of Nabataean piping networks indicates that design criteria are employed that promote stable flows within piping, use sequential particle settling basins to purify potable water supplies, promote open channel flows within piping at near critical (maximum) flow rates that avoid leakage associated with pressurized systems and are designed to match the spring supply rate to the maximum carrying capacity of a pipeline…New discoveries related to maximizing water flow rates by internal piping wall surface roughness patterns appear to predate later discoveries in western science by some 20 centuries. This, and other demonstrations of engineering capability in hydraulic system design indicates a high degree of skill in solving complex hydraulics problems to ensure a stable water supply and may be posited as a key reason behind the many centuries of flourishing city life.”

 

Day 14 – Amman, Dead Sea

This morning we have two meetings with NGOs. The first is with Safa Al-Jayoussi of the Jordan Environment Society (JES), which runs various projects including two recently completed relating to water management: Awareness Project in Water (APW) and Water Efficiency and Public Information for Action (WEPIA).

APW is a five-year programme, part-funded by USAID and intended to raise public awareness of water management. “It is designed to implement sustainable “information, education, and communication” campaigns and activities throughout Jordan with the specific targets of decision makers, businesses, public and private organizations, community leaders, women, university students and children.”

WEPIA’s various sponsors include the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Part of the project is the promotion of an aerating device that can be easily retrofitted to taps and other appliances by a layperson. These were initially free, then subsidised, and are still available at 2-3 JD each (£ 1.70-2.55).

Funding is being sought for various other projects. Unlike in the UK where climate change dominates, water management is considered the top priority here.

Water is only supplied to each property in Jordan for one day per week, when the washing and cleaning is done, and the storage tank replenished. Typically a 4,000 litre tank is expected to supply a family for the remainder of the week, though some houses have surreptitiously installed a second tank. (Al-Taibah, a village in Al-Karak, has been cut-off from mains water for three months due to contamination of its water supply.)

Overall 70 % of water is used for agriculture, even though it represents a small proportion of Jordan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), well behind tourism and exporting potash. At Al Kherbeh al Samrah a French funded and operated waste water treatment plant incorporates centralised recycling of grey water for agricultural use.

The major infrastructure project under consideration is a canal connecting the Dead and Red Seas, which will replenish the receding Dead Sea with sea water and in doing so reduce the salinity, allowing less energy-intensive desalination closer to areas of high population density, such as Amman. The project is sponsored by the World Bank and also involves Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

We are also interested to learn that a Jordan Green Building Council is being established. The huge mixed-use scheme at Abdali, currently under construction, is expected to be the ‘greenest’ development in Jordan, meeting the new voluntary, good practice standards being established.

The second meeting is with Dr Fadi Sharaiha, Executive Director of The Royal Marine Conservation Society of Jordan (JREDS).

One of JREDS main roles is as Jordan’s national member organisation of the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE), “a non-governmental and non-profit organisation aiming to promote sustainable development through environmental education (formal school education, training of staff and general awareness raising).”

As the national member JREDS is responsible for implementing FEE’s five environmental education programmes in Jordan. These are: Blue Flag; Eco-Schools; Young Reporters for the Environment; Learning about Forests; and Green Key.

It is also running a public awareness campaign funded by HSBC, with activities including promoting “eco-diving” with Red Sea diving centres, running the Clean Up the World campaign in Jordan and organising an EcoClub in every school in Aqaba.

Like JES, JREDS has been consulted on the terms of reference for the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the proposed Dead Sea Red Sea channel. Dr Sharaiha explains that the energy source for the desalination plant has not yet been determined but could be a nuclear reactor at Aqaba (which would require 100 billion litres of water per annum for heat rejection). An alternative source is Jordan’s shale oil reserves, which could be exploited commercially in the future. We agree that Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) would probably be preferable.

Solar water heating is subsidised and has a 2-3 year simple payback but is not widely adopted in residential buildings; big corporations such as the hotel operators are more likely to recognise the value. In rural areas hot water is generally not used, except for cooking.

Jordan is the fourth most water stressed country in the world. Dr Sharaiha tells us that domestic use averages 15 litres per person per day, though it varies widely, being perhaps ten times higher in urban areas than rural. (Consequently in rural areas grey and black water recycling not viable because volumes are so low.) We find this a little hard to believe, particularly since in urban areas ‘Western’ flush toilets are apparently widespread, and dual-flush WCs are only just being introduced.

Despite the scarcity water is not expensive. Dr Sharaiha’s colleague tells us that the water bill is 7 JD (£ 6.00) per quarter for her two person household and 40 JD (£ 34.25) for her parents’ five person household. Dr Sharaiha, who is a strong advocate of practising what he preaches, spends 8 JD (£ 6.85) per quarter for “four people and a pet”. Apparently this is partly attributable to his following the 1970s Californian mantra, “if it’s yellow, let it mellow”, which seems to cause a little friction with his wife!

(Dr Sharaiha also demands high standards of his employees, refusing to travel in one colleague’s 2.7 litre engine car, and reprimanding his staff for not going to a widely advertised, HSBC sponsored promotion where collect water saving devices were being given away.)

Later in the afternoon we visited the Dead Sea itself, the lowest elevation on the earth’s surface on dry land, at Amman Beach, and briefly floated in its incredibly saline water.

In the evening we visited the westernised Sweifieh district of Amman, depressingly complete with four Coca-Cola branded Hummers.

Day 13 – Amman

After another morning trying to catch up on blogging and email we venture out for some street food and to explore the old city. Originally built on seven hills and now spanning nineteen, Amman has sprawled in to neighbouring Zarqa and the resultant conurbation is home to nearly 50 % of Jordan’s 6.2 million population.

The hilly terrain seems to have engendered a car dependency and the public realm is poorly ‘designed’ and maintained. We take refreshment at a place dubbing itself an Eco-Tourism Cafe for no apparent reason, other than perhaps its electrical metering strategy.

After refreshment we meander through downtown Amman…

…and up to the citadel.

This large water cistern was built during the Umayyad period used to store rainwater. A large column in the centre acted as a depth gauge (only a small disc at its base remains) and a staircase built in to the side provided access to the bottom for maintenance.

Day 12 – Damascus, Amman

We are leaving Syria today and our impressions of the country are neatly summed up by this quotation from Lonely Planet’s Middle East guide: “Syria could just be the friendliest, most hospitable rogue state on earth.”

After spending the morning trying to catch up with blogging and emails we visit the Umayyad Mosque, one of the holiest in the world for Muslims built in AD 705 and converted from a Byzantine Cathedral. Under Umayyad rule Damascus had become the capital of the Islamic world and the caliph, Khaled ibn al-Walid built what he called a “mosque the equal of which was never designed by anyone before me or anyone after me”.

Early afternoon we take a taxi to the bus station where we hope to catch a bus to Amman. Upon arrival it becomes apparent that only one of the dozen or so bus companies operate this route. There are only three buses per day and unfortunately the next three are all fully booked, so we decide to take a shared taxi.

We are pestered by various hawkers but opt for ‘Yankee Charlie’ on account of his good English, which he had acquired guiding British and American sailors around Beirut in years gone by. We are introduced to the driver and after some bartering (the request for an extra S£ 100 to use the car’s air conditioning was flatly refused), we agree the price at S£ 700 each (£ 9.00) and start the wait for two more passengers. Charlie keeps us company to ensure we are not poached by another driver.

Eventually two Arabs are signed up and at 1530 we get going. The driver is keen for us to use our “personal allowances” for the boxes of cigarettes he buys en route but all passengers decline, which he periodically bemoans in a jovial but nervous way. We pay Syria departure tax (S£ 500 (£ 6.50) each) and our driver buys some more anti-ageing products at the duty free shop, amateurishly stuffing them in to bin bags and a holdall. We pass through the customs ‘search’ uneventfully and then have the opportunity to queue for a visa and then passport stamp for half an hour.

After four hours or so we have travelled the 200 km or so to Amman and check in to our hotel. Much as we like Middle Eastern food we would like some variety and take advantage of Amman’s more cosmopolitan restaurant scene and have some rather pricy sushi for dinner.