Archive for May, 2011
Just Jordan
After being baked in the sun, drenched by tropical showers, seeing her boat safely loaded onto a cargo ship (with all that that entails), Jaime continued her birthday celebrations by:
- Sweating around outside the Male International Airport waiting for a 9:30PM departure to Colombo (yes, Sri Lanka)
- Trying to sleep in Sri Lanka’s Bandaranaike International Airport while waiting for a 4:15AM departure to Abu Dhabi
- Being denied entry into Abu Dhabi due to a recent change to visa requirements
- Holed up in the warm luxurious embrace of an executive lounge in the Abu Dhabi International Airport hoping that the 12:50PM departure to Amman would be delayed
After all of this on April 15th we arrived in Amman by late afternoon. Our state of mind could be described as bewildered and numb, but we were still upright which should count for a great something after the 4 countries, 3 flights, 14 hours worth of layovers and at least 5 good quality airline/airport meals we survived. I’m sure it’s just how every girl dreams of spending their 33rd birthday.
Look at your atlas and find the Red Sea. If you squint at it hard enough it kind of looks like a big slug with two antennas at the northern end. If you follow that little deformed antennae on the right (also known as the Gulf of Aqaba) to the end you will find Jordan. About 6 million people call the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan home. Jordan’s interesting geographical position puts them right in the middle of a pretty tough neighborhood; they share borders with Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, the West Bank, and Israel.
Fred Flintstone probably came from Petra, Jordan. There are loads of Greco-Roman ruins, the lowest point on earth (Dead Sea), and the spectacular Wadi Rum desert. Jordan could also be like Graceland for Old Testament fans; Moses, Jesus, the Israelites, and John the Baptiser were all said to have holidayed here.
We rubbed our eyes in the bright sunshine outside the airport with one hand and fended off taxi drivers with the other. Cab drivers are like cold and flu viruses, they like you best when you are tired and run down. One of our overriding travel strategies has been to get away from cab scrums to catch our breath, refer to a map, chat around to locals, and generally gather intel. When we feel a little more equipped we go and find the least interested cab the furthest away from the scrum and try our best to look as bored and apathetic as they are. Using this method we found our guy and eventually made it downtown and easily found a room at a place deceptively called Palace Hotel. It was cheap, we were tired, it would do. We showered up, changed our clothes, and hit the town when we were reminded how completely disorienting conventional travel is. Being shuttled between generic airports by generic aircraft eating generic meals might be as close to being in a coma that you can get while still being bothered with queues, officials and spiky haired knobs at ticket counters. Then you wake up and you are in downtown Amman trying to figure out the word for Donair in Arabic (turns out it’s Doner).
Amman has been continuously occupied since 3500 BC. Absorbing this level of time and history is something that growing up in North America doesn’t really prepare you for. Canada’s oldest continuous settlement only goes back about 400 years. Walking on, around, and through this kind of extreme antiquity would be one of the most memorable things about our first visit to the middle east. That’s what we were talking about over our mensaf that first night; the delicious local (Bedouin) dish which consists of rice, yoghurt and chicken. Somehow loads of hummus, olives, and pickled peppers made their way to our table and after all of that we were introduced to baklava (layers of phyllo pastry with butter, honey and almonds) accompanied quite nicely by tiny little cups of super hot and super strong Arabic coffee. The whole bill came in under 6 Dinars (less than 10 bucks) and remains one of the best meals we’ve had on the whole trip.
 16-Apr-2011 05:24, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.25 sec, ISO 320 |
Amman was called Philadelphia when the Roman’s came to town. After a boiled egg, cheese and bread for breakfast we set off to see what they left behind. There’s the second century theatre cut into the side of a hill that held 6000, the forum once one of the largest public squares in Rome, the Citadel and the pillars of the temple of Hercules which was constructed during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. What impressed us the most about these ruins is that they were built in, on, and around ruins that would have already been considered ancient back in the days when Marcus ruled the roost.
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I wondered; when the Romans first wandered up here did they wonder at the same stones and statues that I was wondering at?
16-Apr-2011 20:45, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
Romans used the then ancient ruins as building rubble for their now ancient structures. Like histories’ leftover casserole; layers of civilization built, knocked down, and built up again. There’s a few 8500 year old statues there that a road crew dug up now widely considered the world’s oldest sculptures. Other several thousand year old carvings can be seen in the stonework on walls that date back a mere millennium.
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All this traipsing around gawking at really old things led us to several cafes to top up on our new favorite pick-me-up’s; Arabic coffee and an assortment of baklava. Sessions that called for a more thoughtful contemplation of things were often accompanied by a nargileh (aka: shisha, hookah, water pipe, fancy bong) topped with some nice apple flavored tobacco. During one of these sessions we attempted reconciling ourselves to an organized tour for simplicities sake, we had a lot of ground to cover, a lot of things to see and not a lot of time. At one point we even put a deposit down somewhere but came to our senses soon afterward. It wasn’t too late to get our deposit back and we used it to rent a little white car and buy a cheap map. Sure, the engine stalled when you turned the air con up past 2, but so what? We were about to go on a road trip down the Kings Highway.
20-Apr-2011 03:13, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
The Trans-Canada highway was formally opened in 1962. The Kings Highway we were looking for was being used back in Numbers 20 verse 22. That’s old, Moses old. We picked it up south of Amman and enjoyed the crusader castles, biblical sites and Roman ruins at our own speed, which was slow. Our tiny French Citroen did a good job of keeping us from whizzing past the scenery too quickly, especially when the dust forced the windows up and we needed the air con.
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Occasionally we would get lost and end up parked beside some ancient untold ruins and, besides the herds of goats, have the place entirely to ourselves. I bought a half chicken smothered with fries, olives, garlic yogurt and a coffee for 2 bucks. Jaime posed for pictures with the locals when they asked, which was at least 50 times. We stopped at every Arabic coffee shack we saw, and almost ended up in Iraq at one point. We passed countless Bedouin camps, stopped the car for their goat herds, took a picture of the sign beside the place they say Jesus was baptized, and pointed at a hill near the place they buried Moses (maybe). We followed the Jordan River to its destination which also happens to be the lowest point on earth.
17-Apr-2011 20:44, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
The shores of the Dead Sea are over 400 meters below sea level. It’s very salty, more than 8 times saltier than the average ocean (over 30%). Salt builds up along the shore and encrusts the rocks. Cleopatra thought the mud did wonders for her skin, an enduring idea. Apparently people come today for all the typical spa services to things like psoriasis to cystic fibrosis. There are a few of these spas and resorts that are happy to let you swim in front of their little patch of beach for some absurd price, but if you drive along a few kilometers further you can avoid it all and have total privacy for free, which is what we did.
17-Apr-2011 00:52, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 8.89mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
All of that salt makes the water very floaty. You can feel the effect just wading in up to your waist, and by the time your feet come off the ground it’s obvious that things are a little weird. You can actually walk through the water, completely upright with feet cycling around beneath you – like swimming in a standing position. Once you have mastered the swim walk you can get on with really important matters like taking a bunch of stupid pictures of each other reading books and stuff.
17-Apr-2011 02:24, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
17-Apr-2011 02:10, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
17-Apr-2011 02:28, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
We rinsed off with some bottled water that we brought along for the occasion, and hiked back up to the car. There were a two ambulance drivers there cooking up coffee with a little propane burner. They waved us over and rinsed out a couple of cups for us. They didn’t speak a single word of English but seemed to enjoy the company anyway. Before we left they were digging around in the back of the ambulance for some parting gifts. We tried to refuse, but they wouldn’t let us leave without taking a few packs of sterile surgical gauze and a box of latex gloves.
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Our route took us through a shallow valley, through some beautiful canyon walls, and onto a plateau where we finally caught a glimpse of the massive 12th century Crusader fortress at Karak. After a night at the Castle Hotel next door we went for breakfast (the invariable boiled egg, cheese and bread) and explored the castle. It’s built out on a big precipice and totally dominates the small town below. Christian crusaders and Muslim armies like to duke it out here. Like every place we’ve stopped in Jordan there’s an incredible amount of history and if I went on describing it this post would never end. We did get to explore the whole thing for a dollar and once again were the only ones there.
17-Apr-2011 18:54, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.125 sec, ISO 200 |
That day we made our way to Petra (which means ‘stone’ in Greek). Petra was a 6th century Nabataean capital and unknown to the western world after it was accidentally ‘discovered’ by a Swiss explorer in 1812.
“…But rose-red as if the blush of dawn,
that first beheld them were not yet withdrawn;
The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,
which Man deemed old two thousand years ago,
match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
a rose-red city half as old as time.”
-John William Burgon
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You enter the ‘rose-red city’ through a dark narrow gorge called a ‘siq’ that winds through the sandstone for over a kilometre. Red rock walls tower above, and at some point the path between them is only a few meters wide. Irrigation channels carved right into the rock are visible, as are the occasional carving and small Fred Flintstone style building. This is all just build up, at the end of the siq you can see out through the gap and catch a glimpse of the most famous and most-photographed building in Petra, the Treasury.
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A little further in where the valley opens up there is a massive amphitheatre carved right out of the hillside. We spent most of the day wandering around exploring the city. There’s a lot to see and as you can see from the pictures, it really is incredible.
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We kept moving south and through the vast landscape of Wadi Rum (see: TE Lawrence, and Lawrence of Arabia). The desert was really beautiful, but I didn’t really feel any need to go camp out in the sand with the Bedouins. We carried on to our last stop in Jordan, the seaside town of Aqaba located at the edge of the Gulf of Aqaba. We dropped the car off, rested up here for a day or two while planning our next move; getting into Egypt by ferry.
20-Apr-2011 01:34, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.1, 18.2mm, 0.006 sec, ISO 80 |
Uplifting
Warning: This post contains scenes that may not be suitable for some viewers
When you sell most everything you own and decide that it would be good sporting fun to invest it all into a sailing trip around the world, the last thing you want to see is the sum total of its parts dangling precariously from a crane 40 feet off the water beside a giant ship.
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On April 13th that’s exactly what we saw. We were like the chain smoking dads off those old sitcoms who paced back and forth in front of a delivery room imagining the worst and hoping for the best. The load masters first comment as we boarded the BBC Everest did nothing to help our state of mind.
“I’ve got a really good spot picked out for the Slapdash” he said with a wink and a crooked smile.
A glance around the deck revealed a bunch of perfectly normal looking spots unworthy of such a cryptic comment. A glance skyward revealed some activity and a landing pad more suitable for a helicopter than a catamaran.
“You’re shitting me” I said.
Load master Ian just shot that same crooked smile at us and then walked away saying something into his shoulder mic about prepping the ballast tanks.
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Seventeen boats were waiting in the harbour to be loaded onto this ship. Rumour flew around the anchorage about them running out of room. The many loading delays, taken while the crew shuffled boats around like jigsaw pieces, seemed to lend some credibility to the gossip. Boat owners began to worry that they wouldn’t fit all who had paid.
All that time we applied to creative solutions for a passage past Somalia meant that, of the seventeen boats, we were seventeenth to confirm a spot. If anyone would be dropped from the roster it should be us. We had mixed feelings about that. We were still well positioned for a passage to South Africa, and a refund on the money we had transferred to the shipping line would end feelings of buyer’s remorse. On the other hand we were sick and tired of the ever changing plans and had felt a sense of relief when we finally committed to one. The two sides of that coin did a good job of balancing each other out and we felt lucky to not have it bother us too much one way or the other. We had also rocked up to Male virtually the same day that the ship did, so we didn’t have as much time invested as the other boats, some of which had been waiting here while we were still in Thailand.
Yes, in the end we decided to ship. It went like this; A boat (Capricorn) showed up in Galle full of bullet holes despite having security forces. I started getting a bit nervous about our attempts to buy AK-47’s in Sri Lanka and decided at that point that it wouldn’t be a good idea to arm ourselves and make the passage. We were both still very comfortable with making the passage with some hired guns aboard. We had already made these arrangements in fact. A team was on its way east. We would pick them up offshore (avoiding Sri Lankan weapons restrictions) and take them back to their point of origin at a cut rate, kind of like a rental car return special. Then 48 hours out we received an email which informed us that the ship our Yemeni mercenaries were on had decided to bypass Sri Lanka all together. By this point we had virtually waited out the season and so began planning the Cape route in earnest. We would love to visit Madagascar and Mozambique, but spending months on our boat there wasn’t something we could muster up any excitement for. Maybe it would have been different if we had planned the passage months ago and timed the trip accordingly. Around the same time we learned that the transport ship we assumed had left weeks ago had encountered substantial delays, they still hadn’t left Singapore. Everything began to point in one direction for us; sell the farm, (the other farm) and ship the boat.
We were surprised by the amount of shipping as we left for the Maldives (Male) on April 3rd, motoring into uncomfortable seas and an annoying headwind. It was a rough night out. There must be a convergence of shipping lanes East of Sri Lanka because we seemed to be bombarded by traffic from different directions all night. On two occasions drastic course changes were required to keep us from becoming road kill. I was sickly tired and Jaime was sickly well, sick. Puking sick. This is a rare and special level of seasickness not ordinarily achieved. I came out at one point to see her leaning over the side retching, and in these conditions worried about her flipping right over the lifelines. I found a bucket for her so that she could puke from the comfort of the cockpit, then I passed out on the settee. A little while later Jaime woke me up to have a look at some odd looking lights on the horizon.
We talk about this a lot but it’s one of those things that you just have to experience to understand. After being so sleep deprived you could literally fall asleep in the rain, you are jolted awake at some point and find yourself outside in an uncomfortable and noisy sea blinking away at red and green lights on the horizon. You wait as your brain slowly extracts meaning from the images it’s been sent from your puffy eyes. Red and green, or were they green and red?
In this case it was easy to see why Jaime had invited me to this middle of the night stare fest. We were looking at a white light and red and greens which meant that this boat was both coming and going. I speculated that it was a tug and tow, white lights in front and a red and green somewhere behind. We watched it for a while and as it loomed closer watched the one white light separate into three vertical which confirmed the early suspicions, this was indeed a tug and tow.
He was approaching off our starboard bow. We decided that we would clear his course in time and he would pass safely behind us. Apparently he didn’t think so. Suddenly our VHF began shrieking at us in a panicked Dutch accent. We both jumped a foot off the ground and before we landed, a bazillion watt search light exploded from the tugboat and obliterated our dim world with a blinding white light. Our eyes had been adjusted to hours of night watch by this point and huge pupils were now in complete overload. We were blind. The VHF was still blaring away at us but we were both too shocked to hear it. To make matters substantially worse the search light acted as a signal for a school of nearby flying fish that it was time to charge. “Death to the Slapdash! It’s now or never boys, we’ll attack them while they’re panicked and blind!” They began slamming into the side of the boat with kamikaze ferocity. “Thup!-thup!-thup!-thup!” against the hull, finally a loud wet THWACK as one found its target. I grabbed at my chest and yelled AARG! My brain was still reeling to cope with this explosion of madness, 11 seconds earlier I had been fast asleep. Jaime thought that I had been shot. She of course didn’t see the fish; because of this asshole and his spotlight she couldn’t SEE anything!
I pointed at the floor and yelled “FISH!” which must have seemed like a very strange thing to do for someone who had just been shot. She looked at the fish and screamed. Apparently flying fish are one of the things that Jaime finds scarier than me being shot.
When she finished screaming I politely asked her if she would ask the tugboat to please turn his spotlight off, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble of course. At least that`s what I meant to say. I think it came out more like:
“PLEASE TELL THAT STUPID MUTHER****ER TO SHUT THE F**K UP AND TURN THAT MUTHER F***NG LIGHT OFF!!!”.
Jaime knew what I meant though because a moment later she was on the radio asking for him to kindly shut his spotlight off. Which he did. The fish stopped raining down on us and we began trying to rub the big floaty spots out of our eyes with our fists. We altered course a little to starboard and passed port to port. Nothing more was said.
By this time it was my watch. Jaime went to bed and I sat there wondering if any of that had actually just happened. The next morning fish scales covered the boat, especially on my jacket just below the left shoulder. Kill shot.
After the first night the shipping gave us a break. Now we just had this beastly weather to deal with. Still right on the nose, still motoring. That’s when the engine started to overheat. Actually it wasn’t overheating, but the needle was creeping up on us. We were well within the safe operating temperature, we were working it hard, and the sea temperature was over 30 degrees. That’s how the denial stage works. Despite being in the safe zone I did notice that stupid needles gradual assent each time I started a watch. It was just a matter of time. We thought we would be able to hold out for a change in the weather. We were headed straight West and would soon be able to drop several degrees to the South to point towards Male, the capital of the Maldives. The wind was meant to click up to the north a little, and when it did we would steer downhill, flop out the sails and enjoy a close reach straight towards our target. We were obviously still in the denial stage.
When the time for our course change arrived and passed there wasn’t a hint of north in the wind at all, in fact it had dropped a few degrees to the south. I gave up and shut the engine down and, as soon as it had cooled off, began trouble shooting. I had dove into the super nasty Galle harbour water to check our raw water intake before we left (I can’t even muster up the level of disgust required to give that story justice), and changed the impeller so didn’t expect what we saw when I pulled the cover off the water pump. Only two of the blades remained. Not only was he struggling with only two of his usual six blades, the four deserters had each wedged themselves into various parts of the cooling system. It was amazing that the engine didn’t overheat. With a combination of tools we managed to locate and extract all the missing blades. Then I popped in my last impeller and buttoned everything back up. The relief and satisfaction we felt as a healthy gush of water once again spewed out of our exhaust left us cheering and high fiving.
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Humility is being on a little boat hundreds of miles from land with a beast that could end your world with a flick of its tail. It wasn’t long after the engine drill that an immense leviathan breached a couple hundred yards off to starboard. Just the small section of its back that broke the surface was over 40 feet long. A Blue whale, bigger than dinosaurs and buses. The largest living thing ever known to have lived on earth.
I called Jaime up and we both gawked as it slowly arched it`s back eventually exposing a tail as wide as our boat is long. A thousand unnoticed gallons of water poured off as it continued up into the air. Soon all that was visible was this giant tail, now totally vertical, and the long shadow cast beneath it. It paused there as if for our benefit, then slipped below the surface. Then there was nothing, just the same old sea we had been staring at for days. We are so effected by everything going on with the surface of the ocean that it`s easy to forget how much is beneath us. Then by luck and timing we happen to share the same little bit of sea with a creature like this. We were awestruck.
It took the better part of 5 days to complete this passage of less than 500 miles. What struck when we arrived was Male city. We expected tiny deserted little atolls, but Male rose up like a bustling cheery looking seaside city which, as it turns out, is exactly what it is. We were happy to find a protected anchorage in 25 feet and some friends we had met back in Galle. We dropped the hook and relaxed.
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Before long we had caught up with all of the news about the ship. The boats waiting for shipment had organized a daily radio meeting every morning at 7:30AM. This was an opportunity for any boats to share information they had with the rest of the fleet. Like us most boats had been expecting to sail up through the Red Sea and were well provisioned. Shipping your boat is like closing down your cottage or summer home. You won’t be there for a while so you need to empty it all out and shut down the systems. We were fresh off passage so didn’t have a bunch of surplus food, but our cheap Sri Lankan booze was a warmly welcomed trade item for the boats who had been hanging out in this dry Muslim country. There were a lot of freezers being cleaned out so this was a good time to be invited for dinner. Perfect! One night on the big red crewed sailboat I assumed that the weighty dish handed to me was the serving plate for the whole table of 5, heaps of mashed potatoes and veal right out to the rim. Turns out that it was just mine, and 4 more just like it were on the way! A certain German bet that I couldn’t finish it. Captain Chris took the same challenge. Not bad, a hundred dollars worth of meat and 20 dollars for eating it all? Good night out.
The loading process was a bit like being hauled off to the principal’s office. A bunch of us hanging around not really knowing what was going on, then suddenly somebody’s name being is announced over the radio. They would trundle off and never be heard from again. This was especially true since after loading many went straight to the airport. They really would disappear from the anchorage, then the country while the rest of us sat on our boats wondering who would be plucked up next.
Another analogy (especially given the limited space on the ship) was like being lined up against a fence while captains select players for the softball team. Hanging around in the anchorage while one by one boats disappear. Everyone hoping they’re not going to be picked last.
Eventually we were called to report to the BBC Everest for loading, we wouldn’t be left behind after all. It was about an hour from the anchorage to the loading area, and once we arrived we had time to finish stowing away a few things, lashing the dinghy etc. We bobbed around for an hour before we were signalled to come along side. There hadn’t been rain or wind for weeks, and the 30 lousy minutes of clear weather we need for this critical piece of our trip was interrupted by a squall that ripped through. Seriously, what is it with our stinking bad luck this season? It was a bit dicey as Jaime and I both stood on deck holding Slapdash off from bashing itself to pieces against a big commercial ship in the pouring tropical rain. At one point we were advised that loading may be called off for the day, we would need to return to the anchorage. That would really have sucked but alas we caught a break in the weather. The captain gave the okay for loading to resume and before we knew it two divers were in the water securing straps beneath our hulls. Four crew hopped on deck and started guiding the crane in. We had the boat prepped (removed topping lift and back stays) so there wasn’t much to do besides fret, and fret we did. Eventually after the boat was six feet above water they exited and kicked me off too.
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With knots in our stomach we watched them pull Slapdash from the water and balance her up on a pedestal (okay ballast tank, but it might as well have been). It took about an hour to get things sorted and maybe another 40 minutes after that to get her all strapped down. In the meantime we were allowed to run around on the ship and act like asses which was pretty cool. We climbed the ladder to our boat and tried to get aboard to gather our things and reattach the backstay. Easier said than done. We had a good view from up there and another cloud burst kept us trapped inside once we finally figured out a way in. We threw some clothes in our backpacks, shut off all the breakers, emptied the garbage can and wondered what the hell it was that we had gotten ourselves into this time. When the rain eased off we scrambled down the side and into a launch that zipped us off to the airport. In a few hours we would be on our way to Abu Dhabi.
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