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Day 418: Loomer

27 Sep View Exif Data Filed under 31. Jordan. Tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Wadi Rum – Wadi Musa, Jordan

Strange day today…

The plan was to:

  • Commute from Wadi Rum to Petra with the five Americans
  • Meet up with my Amman CS host, Laura and her new CS guest, Chris
  • Cavesurf with Laura and Chris in a cave up inside Petra owned by this eccentric Bedouin CSer, Ghassab (Click on the link to see a CNN article about him)

Seemed straightforward enough. But what happened instead:

  • Arrived in town and called up Laura to find out that she’s in the middle witnessing this other CSer they’re travelling, Amit, about to make an unwise jump down the cliff in Petra
  • Laura called back soon after asking for ambulance. Amit fell off the cliff and was not moving
  • Notified a hotel receptionist to call for police and ambulance
  • Got a call from Laura confirming the arrival of the ambulance while hearing Amit howling in pain in the background
  • Ghassab walked in the hotel to pick me up at the hotel with his dreadlock looking more like Bob Marley than a Bedouin
  • Hopped into Ghassab’s bright pink jeep only to pull over moments later to the side of the street to switch to his friend Gabah’s car (Ghassab’s jeep didn’t have proper registration so we couldn’t go to the hospital with it)
  • Finally met up with Laura and Chris in the ER. Amit broke his verterbrae and couldn’t even sit up. He needed to be transported to Amman for possible surgery
  • When the whole Amit issue was sorted out and we were all ready to go with Ghasab to the cave, Laura started throwing up
  • Decided to accompany Laura to stay behind in town instead of out in the middle of the desert in a cave
  • Ended up hanging out with Gabah instead. He was kind enough to feed us, drive us around to a nice viewpoint for sunset and bring us to our hostel
  • This Gabah fella apparently owns the main film production company in Jordan where they had worked with The Hurt Locker, Transformer and other major Hollywood movies shot in Jordan
  • After everything, Laura and I did have a nice and cheap sleep on the rooftop of the hostel. It’s no cavesurfing but it was pretty cool to have the rooftop all to ourselves