Ad Aqaba all'ora del tramonto c'e' tutto il Medioriente. There 's the hot and humid, suffocating and appicicoso. There 's the Red Sea, Eilat and distance is ridiculous, already' Israel. There are neon-lit the mosque, the Egyptian oriental pop, the ailerons on the cars that pass in the fourth roaring on the highway.
only thing missing is the plastic fish on the tables of the premises, but that it is enough just immersed in the warm waters of the Red Sea, a rainbow of corals, sponges and animals from the most 'different.
Aqaba at sunset are already 'ten days in Jordan, yet.
yet seem so close to the first impressions from the indecipherable Amman, an expanse of cluttered beige houses lying story from tetris on the seven hills among which the remains of a temple and a Roman theater.
yet can still touch the dusty mosaics of Madaba, maps in plugs for use by pilgrims to the Holy Land since the fifth century AD. It seems it is still a strange feeling on the skin left by the viscous water from the Dead Sea, the lowest point 'down to Earth: the high salinity' brings the seaside to lift you up and cradled in the liquid jelly, unaware of the gravity '.
yet are still vivid images of the Umayyads desert castles, fortresses and abandoned Turkish bath in the flat rock that connects to Iraq, where the eye of Allah did not condemn the pleasures of the flesh of the caliphs of early Islam as far from Damascus.
yet, and yet and yet.
Jordan and 'a biblical land of milk and honey (definition probably due to the color of its mountains, which varies during the day), chillout introduction to the Middle East, real bridge between West and East. Proud of her jewels, there has without ostentation, and you offer them jealous, but without force.
not even know it existed, this country, when not even a decade on the back I decided that I had to cross the threshold of that temple of rock, such as Indiana Jones was doing on the screen at that time.
discovered years later that it was called Petra, the city 'scenario of the Nabataean final adventure of my favorite movies of all time. It was just that, until three days ago and 'got a little' Me too.
difficult to describe a dream, dangerous encounter outside of the film, but Petra and 'so wonderful that it can not disappoint any expectation crowned by a landscape of rocks that are colored with ocher, rose twice a day, the closest the' lost Merchants without empire-of-the Nabataeans unfolds with the unimaginable power, and all in the eye is not involved.
E 'very extensive, a whole endless temples, palaces, houses and tombs carved into the stone of grandiose proportions, enough to make even the mountains which surround it less imposing.
should be visited in the company (with Vanni, my mother and my brother to follow in the tourist zone), but lived in solitude with good old Vanni we introduced the first light of day for a private Petra, after having explored and there we re running well beyond the closing time, enjoying a stunning sunset from the top of the Monastery in front of the Negev desert, and then return to the Bedouin village where we were hosted by the city 'desert lit by the full moon.
Still somatization, but already 'stamped in my memory more' beautiful.
sun and the Aqaba 'now fell over the mountains around the bay. Tomorrow we move to the majestic landscapes of Wadi Rum, the red desert of Lawrence of Arabia.
do not know if I already have 'absorbed the Middle East, but certainly something is being born.
Big hugs all'hommus
Tommy
