Tweaking the Plan

The Monastery (not the Treasury) at Petra

Back in August, in “Evolution of a Trip”, I wrote that I hoped that I wouldn’t need a Plan D. Since Plan C just said “Roughly four weeks going overland through Syria, Lebanon and Jordan”, I suppose that technically I did follow Plan C, but not quite the way I originally intended.

I like to travel independently. Sure, I’ve taken tours. I’ve even enjoyed them, and enjoyed the people I’ve met on them. In fact, on a long trip, mixing things up with a tour in the middle can be a welcome break from solo travel. But in general I prefer to go it alone: no-one but me to blame when things go wrong, no reason to stay in a boring museum, no-one to distract me from the view out the train window, and no hanging around waiting for the shoppers. So, I saw no reason to take a tour for Jordan.

Until I ran into even more difficulty with hotel resrvations than I had in Syria. I wanted to spend a couple of nights in northern Jordan, visiting Jerash, Ajloun, and Umm Qais (aka Gadara). Then I’d bypass Amman for Madaba and its mosaics, with either a day trip to the Dead Sea, or maybe an overnight in one of the expensive spa hotels, before two full days visiting the rose city at Petra, a night in the desert at Wadi Rum, and a quick look at Aqaba before finishing in Amman. But nothing I tried got me a hotel reservation in the north, and a night in the desert for one person proved exceedingly expensive.

The surprisingly beautiful Dead Sea

Realizing that I was running out of time, I started checking into tours. Since my dates were pretty well fixed by my flight from Amman to Istanbul, and the itinerary by my desire to spend three nights at Petra and one in the desert, perhaps it’s surprising that I found even one that worked. But Explore! had an itinerary and dates that seemed almost perfect. (See http://tinyurl.com/y9qark9 for the 2010 version.) I hadn’t traveled with Explore!, a UK company, before, but it seemed similar to Intrepid, the Australian outfit I had used five times. I expected a small group of moderately adventurous travelers, budget-level but acceptable hotels, and local transport.

After I signed up for the tour, I took the two days I had intended to spend in north Jordan and added one to Beirut and one to Damascus. I kept two of the three nights I had booked in Madaba – I would travel direct to Madaba from Damasucs, and then meet up with the group in Amman, and I would have three days in Amman after the tour ended. Although Jordan’s capital did not sound like a particularly enticing destination, my ex-stepdaughter’s not-quite-ex in-laws lived in Amman, maybe I would see them.