The Holy Land.

Jerusalem, Israel

After landing at Amman airport from Beirut, the aim of the game was to get to the Israeli border with the minimum of fuss, and with any luck the minimum of cash.

I failed on both accounts. So begins the battle of the cab drivers.

At this point I’m traveling with Caroline from the US of A. So after I pump myself full of coffee, and we collect our bags we stick out thumbs out for a cab.

The first guy who pulls up quotes us 60 Jordanian Dinars (US$84) to get us to the border. No way. Too much.

The next guy tells us he can get us there for 20 JDs , but he’s not an official “Airport Taxi” so he’ll pick us up from a hotel down the road.

So we jump in an official cab, and direct the driver to the hotel. Our man is no fool. He knows exactly what is going on, strait away; he is on the phone yelling in Arabic.

The only words I can pick out are “Transit” “Hotel” and “Border”. There is some trouble ahead, we have bent the rules.

As it turns out, there are two kinds of taxi ; Airport and Amman. The Airport guys take you from the airport to where ever you need to go. The Amman guys, on the other hand, can only take you from the city.

We end up at the hotel, five minutes from the Airport with the two cab drivers yelling at each other. A cop arrives tries to calm them down. Great.

Eventually we offer the official cab 30Jd to take us to the border. All is well, but we should have just taken the bloody bus.

After a 40-minute drive, we are there.

The border is unassuming. There is the occasional guard tower with a .50 cal machine gun, some barbed wire but otherwise it’s noting too special.

Our bags are x-rayed to within an inch of their life, passports are stamped, forms are filled out and that’s it.

Welcome to Israel.

You wouldn’t know it, but you drive through the West Bank on your way to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is great; once you get past the tourist kitsch of the old city there is heaps to see. After getting lost in the maze of old narrow streets and alleys I stumbled upon the Jew’s holiest site, the Western Wall.

It’s a great place to people watch. Filled with soldiers, Hassidic Jews and crawling with tourists; it’s quite a site.

The Jaffa Gate to the Old City.

A soldier with his family.

The wall of the Old City.

Tourists at the Western Wall.

There is a pile of kippahs for tourists who want to approach the wall.

Tourists.

The Jewish quarter of the Old City.

The Islamic Quarter. 

Young Israeli soldiers pose for a photo by the Western Wall. 

Shalom Lebanon. Shalom Israel.

Beirut, Lebanon.

When I woke up on my first morning in Beirut, I noticed that my laptop had not charged over night. I checked the power point, tried several combinations of adaptors and chargers and still I had no luck.

So I asked the dude at the counter (the same guy with the gun, for more click here) and he said, “Oh yes, that is because we have black out every day because Israeli Air Force bombing in 2006. Now we use generator for lights only during the blackouts, the other power doesn’t work”.

For this dude, it was just a matter of fact; there was no anger in the statement. If anything, he seemed frustrated with the Lebanese government for not fixing it soon enough.

This was the first real mention of the war with Israel.  I didn’t think that the effects would still be so tangible.  

It was a strange feeling, because the next day, I checked out, flew to back to Jordan and crossed the border into Israel.

Here are some photos from my last day in Beirut. I was in the student quarter of Hamra for the most part. Like much of downtown, it’s full of bars and cafes.

Stay tuned for tales of Israel, the Western Wall, the King Hussein Bridge and the War of the Cab Drivers in the next post. 

Graffiti in the student quarter.

More graffiti

I wish I could translate this minni poster for you, but your guess is as good as mine.. 

As a University student I always wanted an old Datsun like this. I think it's a 120Y. A beautiful car.

The local beer is pretty damn good.

The 8mm Bar in Hamra. 

My travel dudes, Matt and Caroline in a restaurant in Hamra.

Smoking shisha and playing backgammon is bloody great. Thanks to Caroline for teaching us how.

A Gun in the Drawer.

Beirut, Lebanon.

The last time Lebanon saw open conflict was the 2006 war with Israel. The years before are checkered with civil war, more war with Israel and general awfulness.

The signs of the past can be seen everywhere. Buildings throughout the city are pocked with the distinctive scars of battle, there are bored teenage soldiers armed with M-16s dotted about the city and when the dude from our hotel reached into a drawer behind a counter to pass me a key, I could see the but of a semiautomatic pistol amongst the pens and stationary.

I got stopped at one checkpoint and had my bag searched by a baby-faced soldier with a huge rifle slung over his shoulder. He was fairly chilled out about the whole thing. I was probably a little more anxious.

Despite all this, there is a very positive vibe in the city. There are slick looking dudes with permed-haired girlfriends sitting in swanky cafes in the center of town, and there are hipsters and students drinking cocktails and smoking lucky strikes in the bars at night. I really love this place.

Beirut is armed, but it doesn't fell dangerous.

The city is pretty quiet on a Sunday. Most shops are closed so we decided to amble down to the corniche and watch the locals enjoy their weekend.

My two travel buddies were possibly the only tourists I saw all day. This makes us a real novelty.

While perched watching the sun set down by the water, a dude came up to me shook my hand put his arm around my shoulder, took a photo of the two of us, then offered me a smoke. He had no English, and I have no Arabic so that was the extent of our cultural exchange.

This happened to me two more times that afternoon. Beirutians, it seems, want to meet foreigners, or at least have their photo taken with them. 

There are sentry boxes like this all over the city. Some police told me off for taking this photo, but it wasn't too much of a big deal.

The abandoned Holiday Inn shows how fierce the fighting must have been. 

A wall on the ground level of the Holiday Inn. 

Traffic by the corniche.

There is a photo of the this guy and me on his phone.

This group of dudes asked me to take their photo.

Hezbollah Country.

Beirut, Lebanon

After a 4am start to get to the airport in time in Amman, two cab rides and a lot of coffee I landed in Beirut.

Two of the travelers I met at Petra, Matt and Caroline (both from the 'States) were planning on spending the weekend in Lebanon, and so I decided to join them.

I’m so glad I did. While I haven’t had a chance to really check out the city, the small parts of it that I have seen are great. The down town area has a much more European vibe than Amman, it’s filled with bars, bakeries and restaurants.

More on that in another post…

Our first stop in Lebanon, after a delicious breakfast at a local bakery of Lebanese pizzas, was the Roman ruins at Baalbek.

About two hours drive from the capital; this town has the air of a rural retreat. It also happens to be what one of my travel companions called, “Hezbollah Country”. Apart from the old dudes selling Hezbollah T-shirts at the bus stop and photos of Islamic leaders plastered all over the place, the average schmo would have no idea about the politics of this region.

There was the distinct sound of gunfire in the distance and we explored the ruins, but in this part of the world that could just mean there was a wedding party, or some other sort of thing.

We were there, for the most part, to see the ruins. The scale of this site is unbelievable. 

The flight in gave great views of the snow on the mountains of Lebanon 

Donwtown Baalbek

A cobbler in Baalbek works on a pair of Caroline's shoes.

This dude made a great felafel roll.

The ruins are huge.

A soldier holding a kalashnikov walking down the tunnel in the Roman city.

More Rum Fun.

Aqaba, Jordan
Day 10

The cold of the desert night has a deleterious effect on your camera batteries. It really sucks the life out of them.

Most of my shots from day two in Wadi Rum are on a roll or two of film in my backpack, so it'll be ages before I get them back.

I was the first of my group to wake up, so I decided to go for a walk. I schlepped about 1 km away from the camp site and watched the colours change on the rocks as the sun slowly crept up behind me. It is so peaceful out there.

The sand is streaked with the small tracks of lizards and other desert critters who have scurried about during the night, as well as the soft round tracks that camels make.

I sat on the cold sand with the sun on my back, reading my book for about an hour, the only living thing I saw was a dude riding a camel, slowly crossing the desert in front of me.

Eventually the rest of the crew were up and about and breakfast was served. Hummus, matabal, zarta, labneh, olive oil, pita bread and bean porridge type thing called fooule with sweet tea seasoned with sage.

The rest of the day was taken up by a four wheel drive trip around to some of the rock formations around Wadi Rum, some sand dune climbing, camel riding and a visit to what is left of T.E Lawrence's house.

Camels are really great creatures, the one I rode was called Roham, or something like that. He kept nuzzling into the back of one of the girls in front of me, smearing streaks of camel spit all over her T-shirt.

The camel behind me also tried to eat my camera.

When all our touristing was done the four of us jumped into a cab and headed south to Aqaba, a beach town on the Red Sea. From my hotel room you can see Egypt across the water, and down the street there is a sign saying 10km to Saudi. In the other direction is Israel.

We got stopped on our way to the beach in a cab by a M-16 wielding Jordanian military dude. After checking our passports he waved us on with a smile saying, "Welcome to Jordan". Thanks dude! It turns out the beach club we were going to go snorkelling from was right next to a naval base.

This siq in Wadi Rum leads to what smelt like a Bedouin urinal. We all agreed that the tour guides directed us to go down there as a joke.

This small pile of rocks sits on the remains of T.E Lawrence's desert home.

One of the last shots before my second camera battery died...