Aqaba

Tales of feral cats are going to have to wait another week while I report on my weekend trip to Aqaba.

A four-hour bus trip through a desert bathed in late afternoon sun delivered me there last Thursday.  Aqaba is one of those places that has been on my   "to see" list since I got here.  There's a great sequence in the film Lawrence of Arabia where the Arab Legion takes the city from the Ottomans in a daring attack from the mountains.  The name has always stuck in my head as an exotic destination where heroes and brigands collide.  And it was now or never to go.  I couldn't wait any longer:  once July hits, that part of the country starts hitting temperatures in the 40s (I guess that would be 100s for you Fahrenheit readers), and as it was, June is getting late.  Stepping off the air-conditioned bus from Amman was like walking into a Russian steam bath in a fur coat.

Of course, as these things go, the town is nothing like the picture in my mind.  And as it turns out, David Lean filmed the whole "Lawrence of Arabia" sequence in Spain, because the real place didn't capture his imagination.  But it was nonetheless interesting.  This is true bedouin country, a real desert town, very conservative like its near neighbour Saudi Arabia and quite different in feel from the urban north.   Camels were tethered to trees or being led around town by people in from the desert.   The streets on Friday, the holy day, were utterly deserted.  The radiant heat of the sun was bone-shattering - no one was out walking or sitting outside for leisure - certainly no unaccompanied women.  It felt like whatever local life happens there, is confined to families, behind closed gates, in covered interior courtyards probably with lovely fountains and shady vines.  As a tourist you have no access to that.

And overlaid on top of this conservative desert town is a burgeoning tourism industry taking advantage of the stunningly beautiful Red Sea.  This involves many high-end European hotels, where bikinis are worn and alcoholic drinks are enjoyed (including by yours truly) and few people leave the confines of the private beach and pool.   On top of that there is a smattering of local desert excursion companies and boat and diving tours that make their living off the visitors who venture out of the hotels or are looking for an entirely different experience.

And this was the second reason I was in Aqaba:  to go snorkeling along the beautiful, unspoiled, incredibly intricate coral reefs that edge the coast south of town and all along Saudi coast.

Friends from Amman set me up with a local diving company - which was terrific.  The boat trip was a fantastic day-long adventure, with two stops for swimming, snorkeling or diving.  The water was teeming with sea life.  It was my first time snorkeling in such a rich marine environment (I think the last time was when I was 10 years old  in the Ottawa River where I saw mostly clams and mud).   Huge, long electric blue pipefish, a couple of small blue marlin with the distinctive pointy bills, bright orange jewelfish, lots of yellow and black "finding nemo" fish.  Intoxicating. At one point, I almost floated away into the endless blue drifting along behind a huge school of flashing silver sea bream.

On board the boat was another adventure altogether.  There was a large group that had come from Beirut, all members together of a diving club there.  It was their first time at the Red Sea, and their first time in Jordan.  They were terrifically good looking to a person - men and women alike - charming, warm, outgoing, and with a gracious social ease tinged with a sense of superiority. This, I am told, is a hallmark of wealthy Maronite Christian Beirutis.   It was interesting chatting with them - on the one hand, as native arabic speakers, they have direct access to the whole arab world - the Gulf, Egypt, wherever - but in some ways this conservative, bedouin Aqaba where the ladies on the public beach go swimming in full black hijab, was as foreign to them as it was to me - even more so.

From the boat we could see all the neighbouring countries - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and, at the head of the channel, one of Israel's most strategic ports, Eilat.  

And this was the other big observation sitting there on the hotel beach:  while local folks lead their lives and bring their camels into town, and tourists sunbathe and frolic on this sunshine coast, the big tankers also move up and down the Gulf of Aqaba moving goods from Asia into the Middle East.  Big commerce continues among these uneasy neighbours and the world goes on.