The last part ended with us getting on a bus. What I forgot to mention is that the bus was a double-decker, air-conditioned, with a stewardess making tea and coffee, and even a working toilet! For the first time in my life, I went to the toilet on a bus. Keep reading, this is far from the last time on this trip we saw or did something for the first time.
The bus hadn't even covered thirty kilometers before it stopped. But not just like that – we were asked to get out and take out our things. It turns out there are checkpoints inside the country, and there, albeit half-heartedly, they check travelers and their belongings. Israel is close, and for now, Jordanians want to maintain normal relations with it, so they fight terrorism as best they can.
Anyway, the break was short. Along the way, we stopped a few more times – for no particular reason, just for smoke breaks. This was the second time out of roughly a million that we encountered the fact that Jordanians smoke like chimneys. Always and everywhere – driving, on duty, at the checkout, around kids, at home, in the hotel lobby, at the reception, on the floors, and judging by the smoke-filled rooms – even in those, although sometimes there are prohibition signs hanging around.
[more[
The bus ride took around 4 hours, and since morning we'd gotten pretty hungry. Sasha brought along some bananas and Snickers, and kept wondering, how I wasn't eating anything at all. As for me, I couldn't swallow a bite at the prospect of pedaling 2.5 km of elevation gain and 102 km in distance in the mountains with a fever in a couple of days.
Nevertheless, no matter what happens to you (and it keeps happening constantly, even right at this very moment), you still need to keep your strength up, so we mixed some Joylent. You'll hear this name more than once, but I'll tell you more about it later.
Long story short, we arrived in Amman, a city with a population of over two million people and the capital of Jordan. The bus stations are set up like in Israel: a high fence around the perimeter, and you can only get inside through a boom barrier on a bus, or a door with a metal detector on foot. But here, too, the famous Jordanian carelessness showed itself: while we were once again assembling our bikes, all the guards bailed, and we calmly walked through the detector without a single soul around.
A taxi driver hanging around the entrance immediately offered a ride and asked what our plans were for tomorrow. Contrary to the advice that recommends travelers not to share the details of their future actions with strangers, I told the taxi driver we were heading to the Dead Sea. He immediately quoted a flat rate: 25 dinars. A straightforward approach, you can't deny. After barely managing to shake him off, we started up the navigator to get to the apartments. All our tracks, as I already mentioned, were prudently laid out all the way to the final destinations, i.e., all that was required was to ride to the end and take a good look around. It wasn't always easy to put these together, by the way: for instance, Jett bus stations aren't marked on online maps, and finding the coordinates isn't easy either. It's easier with hotels: Google glitched on a couple, but on booking.com, as it turns out, they are always provided.
For some mysterious reasons, my phone, which, having both GPS and GLONASS receivers, usually works as fast as can be, decided to throw a fit, so we spent some more time waiting for Sasha to fire up his Garmin. Around us at this time, the life of a big city was boiling: even though it was already around ten o'clock, the street was packed with people hurrying somewhere, the sidewalk was cluttered with trash, chairs, and boxes, nearby was a bunch of lit-up kiosks without price tags, cheap eateries, somewhere people were smoking hookahs, and everywhere — cigarettes.
As for the lack of price tags, that's also a characteristic Jordanian trait. While in restaurants you can still somehow find prices on the menu here and there, in shops — never. Apparently, the logic is that the locals already know them anyway, and you can rip off a sucker for a little extra. Not bothering to look for a currency exchange for now (as you remember, we're tight on local currency), we headed straight for the apartments. The neighborhood where they were located didn't look too welcoming: nobody around, some construction sites nearby, the buildings slightly shabby (even though right next to where we were walking was one of the city centers). Eventually, we found a door with a phone number; I peeked inside but found nothing there except a stool. We had to call the number, which said, without any embellishments: GUARD NADER.
Like many others, I'm not a fan of talking on the phone with strangers, especially in English, but for the umpteenth time, there was no other way out. Besides, out of modesty, I can't help but admit that I actually speak English quite decently, and most importantly — I usually understand accents and dialects thanks to my extensive Couchsurfing practice. True, this didn't help me much, because the guy on the other end (namely, Nader the Egyptian) completely lacked this skill.
Fortunately, he knew what to do; he came down to us from his little cubbyhole, called some third party, and handed his phone to me.
And so, here I am standing after two days without sleep, dazed, sick, and culturally shocked by a foreign environment, trying to understand why and who on the other end is interrogating me so thoroughly about my plans, both for today and tomorrow. Because of my innate modesty, I can't cut straight to the chase, i.e., the check-in, so I spill everything like in a confession. The mysterious stranger says he'd been waiting for us since noon, and I had promised to send him a text message. But it didn't go through because we hadn't written down Jordan's international dial code (one of our few planning slip-ups).
Be that as it may, the voice, speaking good and clear English, promises manna from heaven, namely:
1) We'll be put in the best, the absolute best room!
2) The bicycles will be hidden from prying eyes!
3) They'll exchange money for us!
4) He has a VW Golf and he'll drive us to the Dead Sea tomorrow!
5) They'll show us where we can get a tasty bite to eat for a reasonable price!
All this he accompanies with the highly questionable phrase, "We are not businessmen, you know".
"Time will tell," I decide, and Nader explains that this was the owner of the apartments, a certain Mr. Rajaj (pronounced Ragai).
Nader checks us into a large suite with two bedrooms, a living room, two bathrooms, with household appliances, decorated, a little shabby, but as we learn later, very decent by Jordanian standards. The hot water comes from a kitchen boiler, so I start panicking that there won't be any, and I'm shivering, my temperature is 37.1 and I really need a shower to relax at least a little. Fortunately, Rybakov, who isn't prone to panic, turns on the tap and suggests waiting two or three minutes, and everything sorts itself out.
I have to say, Jordanians have boilers everywhere, and this situation with waiting for water was exactly the same in absolutely all the hotels. In most of them, this water was only enough for exactly one and a half serious washes, so every day Sasha was forced to toughen up against his will, starting with twenty seconds of warm water, and ending with quite chilly water.
Nader exchanges as much money for us as he has in his wallet (we communicate with him via Google Translate on our phones), and he doesn't even expect us to give him the euros right away (like, you can settle up with Ragai tomorrow). We still decide to settle the financial matter right away so we don't have to frantically worry about it later. We give him the money according to Google (if anyone doesn't know, you can type 200 EUR in JOD there and it'll convert it). As it turns out later, Mr. Ragai checks the exchange rate the exact same way. Now that's what I call "We are not businessmen".
Nader takes us to a cafeteria-style restaurant, where we have a delicious and stuffing dinner of who knows what, because we can't understand the menu, for about 8 dinars for the two of us. (Feel free to substitute lats for dinars, if anything). Sasha can't eat it all, the bananas and Snickers took their toll, so he asks to pack it to go and finishes it in the morning. By the time all is said and done, it's already around 12 on the clock, and we urgently crash to sleep. Good thing at least we don't have to get up at seven tomorrow to catch a bus — good old Ragai, like the Wizard of Oz, solves all our problems, including this one.