Goodbye Jordan…

As some of you may have noticed I have not been very active on the blog lately; well there is a good explanation…I HAVE LEFT INT. ARAB DIVERS VILLAGE IN AQABA, JORDAN J.

This will be my last post on Jordan or at least until I return, so here goes.

Between the 3 of us (Graham, Pedro and I) there is nothing good we can say about the resort, this is my opinion as I can not speak for all of them. You all know that Pedro left and about a week later I had enough of their BULLSHIT as well, Graham lasted another 3 weeks until he also packed it in. With a bit of investigation I found out that most people that go to work at Int. Arab Divers Village last only an average of 5 weeks. Now let me tell you that the problem lies with nothing other than management, yes I said it.

The diving in general is just ok, very easy for all skill levels and all is shore entries. There is a lot of rubbish in the water although it is a marine park; this is due to the fact that locals go to the beach every Friday and Saturday for their family outings and picnic on the beach with everything but the kitchen sink and their bottles and bags ends up in the water. Even the glass bottom boat operators don’t prohibit people from throwing their trash in the water; this was witnessed by us whiles diving under them. We used to carry net bags to pick up trash during dives but I just gave up because it is a battle that will never be won, Pedro carried on until the end. There used to be a lot of turtles in the water of Aqaba and people wonder why you do not find them so often anymore; let me tell you IT IS THE LITTER YOU DUMB ASSES! I always say that education starts at home. If you want to travel to Aqaba to go diving only do so if you are already travelling in the country and want to dive, do not come here especially for the diving.

After I left the village I had time to travel around Jordan and discovered, to my surprise, that is not such a bad place after all. The people are generally very friendly and there are lots of tourist attractions around. The one thing that I did not find in Jordan is customer service, I do not think they have a word for it in Arabic, sorry if I stepped on anybody’s toes. The most people I came in contact with is very highly qualified but then you find the people that work in retail do not seem to know what they are doing there, I must admit that I have come across the exceptions to the rule as well.

Be advised that if you ask someone for directions it would be wise to ask more than one person as they will show you in a direction even if they do not know where it is or even give you only half of the directions, yes even the police did that.

Now enough bitching, Amman the capital is a very modern city with a lot of western influence. There are so many restaurants and coffee shops to choose from and they have great food and décor, almost all of them. They have plenty of shopping malls from boutique to budget shops so you can find almost anything you are looking for. Although the city is very modern it is divided into old and new, rich and poor, this is no different to any other city it the world, the only real difference I saw was the diversity between old and modern culture.

Now let me show you some of my best picture in Jordan…

There are much more to see in Jordan this is just some of the pictures as i can not post them all.

To sum up my time in Jordan...It was good just a bit cold in the middle of winter, I had an excellent tour guide J that made much better.

I you plan to tour in Jordan I would say that 7 to 10 days max is enough to see all there is to see.

Will I be back in Jordan…hell yeh!

CHAO!