Day 5 - Heading up north (Amman)

Well, today was quite the day.

If you ever notice that my blog isn’t up by the end of the day, it pretty much means that there was so much to write about and I was tired at the end of a long day, so I put it off until the next day.

And, well, that was the case today.

In fact, I’m writing this blog the following afternoon but, no worries, I took notes.

Lots of notes…

Driving adventure

I woke up at 8am this morning to a dark room as most everyone was asleep still.

Well, not the Thai YouTuber I met the other night.

That dude was editing his video when I went to bed last night and was still at it when I got up this morning.

Gotta respect the work ethic to his craft.

After having breakfast at Wild Jordan Center again, I hopped in my car at 10am and I was off.

Here’s the thing with driving in Jordan.

I’m personally not worried about being in an accident.

I’m more worried about someone else hitting me.

People here drive so badly. They’ll merge into you even when they damn well feel like it and they’re constantly just drifting into other lanes for no apparent reason.

And while there are a handful of people who speed, the majority of them (including myself) aren’t going over the speed limit.

Problem is many of them are going below the speed limit so cars are constantly changing lanes to avoid the slower cars.

And then the speed bumps that are just there for no earthly reason.

So, you get up to 70km/h, then drop down to 40km/h for the speed bump, then speed back up again.

Oh, and I’m pretty sure the only people who use turn signals are foreigners.

The speed zones change constantly from 60 to 80 and then 90 to sometimes 100 but you’ll go quite awhile before you’ll see a sign so you kind of don’t know if the speed zone has changed.

If you’re coming off one highway and turning onto another you could drive miles before you know what the speed limit is.

Okay, enough talk about driving adventures, let’s get onto the real adventures.

Today I was visited Umm Qais, the Ajlun Castle, and the Jerash Ruins.

Tours are offered out of Amman to these three sites but I decided to do it on my own by rental car.

For one, it’s actually much cheaper doing it on your own, and also I can come and go as I please.

The tours usually start in Jerash and head north up to Ajlun and then finish in Umm Qais.

I had read, however, that it was better to do it in the reverse order so I was driving all the way up north to Umm Quays first and heading back south towards Amman.

Stop 1: Umm Qais

Umm Qais is a town located 125km north of Amman in the northwest corner of the country.

It’s only 20km away from the Israeli border and a scant 10km away from Syria.

Despite that, it’s perfectly safe to visit here, just don’t go any further north towards Syria, if ya know what I mean.

It took almost 2 hours to drive there and the last 10km was on a bumpy dirt road filled with potholes which I was not expecting.

As I exiting the car and walked towards the entry gate I was asked if I need some water, some coffee, a guide.

Are you sure you don’t want a guide?

C’mon, I’ll lower my price…

I said no to it all and just walked myself inside.

Either the tour groups had gone by now or I was in the middle of low tourism season, but, there were only a few of us on the grounds exploring.

Umm Qais is home to the ruins of the ancient Gadara and, no matter how many times I visit ruins around the world, I just can’t help but marvel at the stunning architecture and remnants of civilization from ages past.

As I walked around the grounds, my location services on my phone just randomly decided to pinpoint my location at the Amman airport over 170km away.

I had a brief moment of panic as I really needed the location services to guide me as I drove around northern Jordan today but, thankfully, the glitch just reset by itself and all was goo.

After wandering around for just over an hour, I popped back in my car at 1:30.

Stop 2: Ajlun Castle

The Ajlun Castle is a 12th century Muslim castle on a hilltop about 60km south from Umm Qais.

It took about 90 minutes to get there mostly because of that 10km stretch of dirt road I had to navigate back through to get to the main highways again.

By 3pm I had arrived and, after putting my bag through an xray machine, I was on the castle grounds.

Unlike the ruins I had just visited, this castle was still pretty much still intact.

Again, no matter how many castles I visit in the world (and there’s been lots), I’m just like a little kid exploring this grand structures from ages gone by.

It only took about a half hour to walk around the castle and I was back on the road at 3:30.

Stop 3: Jerash Ruins

The town of Jerash is only about 25km away and takes about 40 minutes to get there.

The ruins located there were inhabited in the Bronze Age and were the walled Greco-Roman settlement of Gerasa dating back to the 2nd century.

As I entered the grounds, I could see why this was touted as the highlight of the three stops.

The place was so vast and grand and while I marveled at the other two stops, this place made me smile from ear to ear.

And, yeah, doing the tour is the reverse order was definately the way to go as the sites just got progressively better and more impressive as the day went on.

To get from the ticket booth to the ruins, you have to walk past a vast area of souvenir stand after souvenir stand.

This was actually the first time this trip I’ve seen anything souvenir like so it took me a bit my surprise to see so many of them next to one another.

I just slowly made my way past all the shops saying “no thank you” to everyone trying to wave me into their place to buy something.

I also had 3 separate people try to put a scarf on me which, I presume they would want to charge me for after the fact.

The irony of it all is that I would willingly look around for something to buy but having everyone hound me just wanted me to get the hell outta there.

It was just after 4pm when I entered the ruins. Gone was my time of exploring on my own as I was finally around tourists.

Not so many though as I think they mostly visit in the morning time. Yet another reason to do the trek in the reverse direction.

I wandered the length of the grounds from one end to the other, about a 1.5km trek each way, for almost an hour and a half.

I can’t really describe what I saw, so here’s some photos…

By 5:30 I was being ushered out the gates as I guess the place closed at 5pm.

Again, I made my way past all the shops and into the parking lot.

I came out and saw my grey car but it had the lights on and it’s window open.

What the???

And then I saw someone sitting in it.

What the actual…

Oh wait, my grey car was right next to theirs…

Heading back to Amman

Amman was about an hour away and with the sun setting at 6pm, I knew I’d be driving in the twilight as I entered the city to get back to my hostel.

I won’t lie, I was trying not to put myself in the spot of driving at night, especially in city conditions but, hey, it is what it is.

I made it through unscathed though and ever let out a little tribal cheer and fist pump as I successfully navigated myself home.

Dinner at Hachem

A half hour later, I was back out the door walking down into the main part of the city to grab some dinner.

Hachem restaurant is a staple here in Amman being around for almost 100 years.

It’s smack dab in the middle of all the action and with the sun gone down, it seemed like all of Amman had come out onto the streets to eat and enjoy each other’s company.

I sat down at one of the tables and my server, who spoke no English, handed me a little piece of paper.