What the ?
"Does it sound like I'm joking? The &%$@ing aircraft has crashed!" Matt shouts down the phone.I am dragged back to the immediacy of the situation; I grab Carole and one of the Technicians: "The aircraft has crashed and we are going on to the runway right now!'It takes us a record two minutes to get two miles back into the airport, through security, onto the runway and up to the wreckage of our Piper Seneca II. Matt is standing by the aircraft, camera in hand, looking amazingly composed given that the aircraft crashed and slid down the runway with him in it! He and the pilot are both OK, with no injuries whatsoever. It is a miracle, really.
How did we get here? Where is here? How about we rewind a few days back to the start of this story...
Amman
Arrival
After a long flight from New Zealand, via Dubai, we arrive at Queen Alia airport in Amman, Jordan only to have our gear held up by customs.
Again.
No problem, this always seems to happen, no matter how we prepare, things will work themselves out.
I'm feeling pretty good after over 24 hours flying because we had a free stopover in Dubai to get a night's sleep – if you fly Emirates, and have a stopover of more than eight hours in Dubai, they will put you up their transit hotel for the night. Excellent.
A Comfortable Hotel
I've booked us in at the Comfort Hotel and Suites, again. The Comfort Hotel is a really good hotel, in the mid-price range, in a really good location – the suburb of Sweifieh. The cost is reasonable and the staff are great.
Eating for Beginners
Dinner is always tricky there are so many easy choices:
- Shawarma – "meat or chicken"
- Falafel
- Roast Chicken, bread, mayonnaise, chips and pickles
We settle on half a roast chicken each. It is delicious, as per usual and we just vacuum it up, sitting at a table, right beside the footpath.
It's actually a little chilly in Amman, it's winter here and Amman is built on several mountains. We're told that there hasn't been any rain for over a year and often it rains and snows though winter. Brrrr, I don’t like the sound of snow, cold is bad enough.
Back to Wor
We head in to the airport the next day to recover our equipment from customs and to start preparing for our work; it is always so much fun catching up with friends from our previous jobs here. We have a real rapport with most of the Technicians and Engineers at the airport, for example, 'Amer, Abu Moustafa, Ghalib and Amena looked after us well when I was here a year ago with Carole and again, a couple of months ago when I was here with Matt. We have some laughs catching up again.
The Pitfalls of Speaking English
We met a man who Abu Moustafa said had told everybody that he could speak English very well. When I was speaking to him, it was in Arabic, with Abu Moustafa translating the tricky bits. Abu Moustafa was teasing him about not speaking English and he said:
"I have two problems when speaking English:
1. When they speak, I don't understand;
2. When I try to speak English, I can't find the words to say, but apart from that I am very clever speaking English"
Needless to say we all just about wet ourselves laughing so much.
The Pitfalls of Speaking Arabic
I find that with several trips to the Middle East in quick succession, my spoken Arabic is improving quite rapidly; I'm also finding that I really need to hit the books and get my grammar up to speed.
I am very proud of myself though, I have found, with non-English speaking taxi drivers that I have been able to keep up a 20 minute conversation in Arabic. I take their laughing as a complement! I managed to discuss the situation in Gaza with one driver; It was lucky that I had spent time in Iraq, years ago, assisting the teams monitoring the weapons of mass destruction, that I knew the Arabic word for rocket, for example. --A handy word that you really don't use too often. It's "sarookh" if you are wondering.
While we're on the subject of language; I talk to Abu Moustafa about the origins of various words. I find a beauty: The old magic word, Alakazam!
It turns out that Al Akzam means "dwarf" and Al Kazam is the plural, "dwarves", what a hilarious magic word! – I make a mental note to use this magic word more often for my own amusement. I can see it now; the wizard fixes the frog in his steely gaze, makes some arcane gestures and without the slightest giggle or smirk, utters the sacred magic words: "The Dwarves".
Dead Sea Scrolls
It's Friday, the Muslim weekend, so with no work on, Matt and I grab our cameras and head to Jebel Qala'a - the Citadel Mountain, in Amman. We spend a relaxed couple of hours wandering around the ruined citadel before entering the nearby museum. I've been here before, so I know exactly what I want to see: The Dead Sea Scrolls. It is amazing that these are on display with so little fanfare and that if you can read ancient Hebrew then you could read one of the scrolls on display. The state of preservation is amazing. The scrolls are copies of biblical books, some of which are included in modern bibles in various forms and are written on leather, papyrus and one is on copper sheet. I just can't believe that such famous artefacts have so little security and so little attention.
Luck of the Irish
Last time I stayed at the Comfort Hotel, I noticed there was a bar underneath it, but it was closed for repairs. Dubliners Bar is now open for business, I grab Matt and Carole and we sneak downstairs and into the bar. Wow! We are immediately in a different world! We might as well be home (– as home as a bar can be, really), the bar is full of smoke and boozing people, some local, some expats. We grab a seat, some drinks and order Cesar salads and Buffalo chicken wings. Beer, wings and salad turn out to be our regular order throughout our stay. Awesome! Beer, spicy chicken and salad, we feel like we're at home, though the cigarette smoke is a bit off-putting.
A Step in My Spring
We've been working really hard and get a day off. Our friends arrive to take us to Hammamat Ma'in – Ma'in Hot Springs. We all pile into one car and head off, stopping only to buy roast chickens, bread, falafel sandwiches and soft drinks. The road from the city of Madaba (famous for Christian churches and Byzantine mosaics) takes us into the barren, middle of nowhere and then descends 264 metres below sea level (!!) into a wadi (valley), where the geothermal hot springs have been diverted to become waterfalls! Holy Trousers! Can you believe it!
There are several options open to us:
- The Roman baths, consisting of separate mens and womens pools, adjacent to the public changing rooms,
- The "family" waterfall,
- The public waterfall, and,
- The hot, but non-geothermal, swimming pool.
We decide that our best option is the family waterfall. The "family" part of the name means that women can use this pool/waterfall without too much leering etc, whereas the public waterfall may not be too the sort of place women would want to be.
The family waterfall is pretty spectacular, if you want, you can try to imagine super-hot water cascading 20 metres over a rugged cliff, into a pool, where it is still something like 50-odd degrees C. Alternatively, you can look at the pictures ?. There is also a cave at the foot of the cliff, above the pool, where some of the superheated water is gushing out of a crack in the rock - the small cave is used as a very small sauna. Not really my cup of tea.
I find a spot under the cascade where the hot water hammers onto my back and scalp and have a very relaxing, extended "zen" moment. It is like a very firm, hot, massage – sort of like having a small Thai masseuse jumping up and down on my shoulders and neck wearing heels. Aaaaaahhhhh. I can just feel my cares and concerns drift away as I relax into pure contentment for about 20 minutes. Until I get hungry and venture out of the waterfall to hunt down a portion of the roast chicken and soft drink.
Aqaba
The Slow Boat to Aqaba
OK, so we drove down in a car, but it was slow. It seemed to take forever to drive the 360 – odd kilometres from Amman to Aqaba, after a days work. Luckily, I had stashed a few beers in my bag, so Matt and I could at least pour back a few (nearly) cold ones while Abu Moustafa drove.
We check into the Golden Tulip Hotel - a nice, upper mid-range hotel – hot water clean sheets, mini-bar, private bathrooms, all the mod con's. It's also in the centre of Aqaba which makes it convenient for finding good places for breakfast and tea.
Aqaba is a nice place to be a foreigner:
- The climate in winter is similar to that of New Zealand in the summer,
- It is a very small city, so there's not too much traffic,
- The Red Sea is right here, so there are plenty of activities such as diving and snorkelling,
- Other Red sea towns are so close – Sharm As Sheikh(Egypt), Eilat(Israel), Saudi Arabia is only 15 km down the coast!
- Aqaba is a port and as such, it has a special tax free status...
Translated: "Beer is cheap at JD1.000 (US$1.40 or NZ$2.75) and there are well stocked bottle shops everywhere"
Work Just Works
There is something magical about Aqaba when we start working at the airport. We catch up with old friends, from last flight check here and manage to get passes arranged, negotiate use of the airspace and get flying with ease and more importantly, speed. It a sign of a good day; In a record day of flying in uninterrupted airspace, we manage to get a days work done with no delays and we get to go home early - while it's still light!
Matt, Carole and I head back to the hotel and shower and change and head out onto the streets to explore downtown Aqaba in daylight. It's a funny town, it's nice, but seems desperately in need of tourists. Aqaba feels as if it's the place people pass through, enroute to somewhere else, rather than stop at. I can see why, though: The corniche, a walkway above the shore, should be a fantastic place to walk, but it is grubby and has drifts of rubbish blown into piles, as well as chainlink fences with plastic bags snagged in the wires. The interesting thing is that there are a lot of vegetable gardens right beside the corniche; Small plots of salad vegetables, radishes and carrots. There are several cafes right on the shore (waves are breaking though some of them as we walk past) serving coffee, tea and the ubiquitous "argilehs" or "Hubbly Bubbly" pipes with their fruit/tobacco scented smoke.
What The ? (The Prequel)
The local technicians make the final adjustments to the VOR (VHF Ominidirectional Ranging system) and we have finished our checks – all done in record time, again dues to the lack of air traffic in the area. I watch our aircraft fly over on approach to land - we're about 1 nautical mile off the end of the runway – we're in line with the runway, but can't quite see it.
I give Matt a call on the cell phone, to see if he needs us to pick him up – no answer. Odd, but sometimes we can be busy after a flight. I give it a minute and call again:
Me: "Did you land?"
Matt: "No, we crashed"
Me: "Yeah, right!"
"Does it sound like I'm joking? The &%$@ing aircraft has crashed!" Matt shouts down the phone.
Me: "We are coming down R.F.N!"
We are on that runway in record time, dreading what we're going to see. Are they hurt? Is this going to end our mission? Is our equipment damaged? Will our equipment be held up in the investigation, delaying our work?
Luckily Matt and our Pilot are completely fine, if not badly shaken up. The relief washes over me. The aircraft is a different matter: It is sitting in the middle of the runway – nose ground into the asphalt, tail sticking up in the air and propellers looking like something out of a World War II movie – curved backwards by the repeated impacts with the runway. Wow! It is such a relief that they are fine.
Matt and I walk up the runway, following the scrapes; It's easy to see that the aircraft had landed, right at the touch down point and then the nose gear collapsed and the propellers managed to rotate 5 times before being stopped and then the nose impacted with several hundred metres of sliding on the nose before the aircraft came to a stop. To our pilot's credit, he had managed to steer the aircraft during the slide (!) and kept the aircraft right in the middle of the runway.
Once clear of the runway, I dig around in one of my bags and hand Matt a still-cold beer. He certainly deserves one!
NOTE: The investigation finds the cause of the crash to be due to the mechanical failure of a critical spring in the nose landing gear.
The Dead Sea Highway
We decide to head back to Amman to start the job of setting up a replacement aircraft and working through all of the requirements for certification. The quickest way north, for us, is to hire a 7 seat, people mover taxi and hit the road. The road the driver chooses is the Dead Sea highway, one of the three highways heading to Amman (The other two are the Desert and the Kings Highways). I plug into my mp3 player and effectively turn the trip into a surreal, extended music video. The trip takes more than four hours, but the mostly barren landscape is spectacular; from rocky plains to rugged, broken mountains and canyons, small sandy dunes, kilometres of roadside tomato gardens and finally the glittering Dead Sea.
Approaching the Dead Sea from the southern end, we drive past the Lot's cave – Lot being the Old Testament man who escaped from Sodom and Gomorrah with his family when they were destroyed. We can't see the cave from the road, but we can see the pillar of salt that is said to be the remains of his (nameless) wife, who against God's instructions, looked back at the destruction of the two cities and was turned into a pillar of salt. Note: I am resisting the urge to make some sort of sexist comment at this point.
Making Tracks Home
The setup of the replacement aircraft and completion of our flying in Amman flows well and seems to fly by and only too soon, it's time to go home. I have enjoyed my time in Jordan again. It is one of the easiest places to get around in the Middle East, it may be a little more expensive than neighbouring countries but Jordan has a real charm to its people and even though I have spent quite a lot of time here, I keep adding to my list of new sights and towns I want to visit next time. Thank you to all my friends in Jordan; you are fantastic ambassadors for your amazing country.
Take care,
Dale/BoriS
