Yesterday morning I arrived in Aqaba, which is in the very South of Jordan on the Red Sea. It is Jordan's only real beach and I came here to relax for two days.. and that is what I did... In the end, I did not even make the effort of going snorkelling to see the amazing marine wildlife of the Red Sea. I slept until late, relaxed on the beach and walked around a bit.
In the diving/beach club I went to, I saw this girl that I thought I knew and I also thought I knew her voice: a friend of my friend Jon. Being in a diving club, I remembered that Jon had told me that she actually worked in a diving club somewhere in the Middle East, but I did not know whether it was in Jordan.. Since Jon did not immediately reply to my sms and just went up to her to ask her and when I walked up to her she also looked at me and realised that she knows me.. It was actually Renske, a dutch girl who was Jon's colleague when he still worked in Brussels. The world is just too small... Renske lives here in Aqaba since 2005. So we chatted quite a bit and went for dinner tonight, which was really nice !!
Yesterday, when I wanted to go to the beach club (all the nicer beaches are a bit south of Aqaba), the taxi driver misunderstood me and took me somewhere else, so I really got very close (until 4 km) to the border with Saudi Arabia, while Aqaba is around 20 km from the border. Just across the Red Sea is Israel (Eilat, where I will go tomorrow) and a little bit further South on the other shore is aleady the Egyptian border. So, during this trip, I not only travelled in two countries, but got very close to four others: Lebanon and Syria (where I was actually standing right at the borders), Saudi Arabia and Egypt and, when visiting the desert castles East of Amman, we got even as close as 280 km to the Iraqi border.. Now that we do not have borders anymore in Europe, borders really fascinate me... I cannot really describe this, but I was almost tempted to ask the taxi driver to go the other 4 km just to see how it looks like.. but I thought this would be a bit strange... ;-)
For the rest, nothing particular in Aqaba, except that I did not take a single photo here (remarkable, isn't it ??) and that I had major stomach problems, probably from the sausages I had eaten for lunch in Wadi Rum (we could chose our food ourselves in a little supermarket and I got some sausages, but did not look at the expiry date). After I had eaten half of it, I had a look at the date and saw that it already had expired two weeks ago.. Then I had a closer look at them, and I could see some little yellow dots on them... yikes !!!! I had horrible stomach cramps yesterday and did not eat anything the whole day. I went to bed at 7pm and slept all night through.. This morning it was much better, but I still had these stomach cramps from time to time... hope it will be over by tomorrow. At least I could eat again tonight... ;-)
1 comment:
hahaha, you see what happens if you follow the good German tradition of eating sausages in a foreign land: you get ill! i feel really sorry for you though, and must admit that i am a bit jealous too, since you are in a beautiful place, while i am in brutish belgium ; )
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