(notes from my journal)
Our day started pretty early. I was up at 4 AM and Heena at 5. We left the hotel at 5:45 to head to the JETT office. The only cab driver around charged us a princely sum of 5 JD for a 3 minute ride.
JETT is a company in Jordan that runs “luxury” buses across the country, mostly originating in Amman. For Petra, they have a daily bus that leaves Amman at 6:30 AM and returns at 4:00 PM. That way, travelers can get 4-5 hours to see Petra and then return to Amman the same day. It’s a long day, but probably worth it if you don’t have time. The cost for the ride one way was 7 JD per person. The bus was an older Mercedes minivan. It was not bad, but definitely not new.
At the JETT office we met some Japanese guys and one of them was traveling to Jerusalem the same day. They had arrived from Damascus and said that when they entered Syria they were thoroughly checked (including every single CF card they had with photos and also their laptops) for evidence that they had been to Israel, or planned to do so. Wow!
The ride was along the Desert highway and is fairly boring. I tried to unsuccessfully get some nods. There was a middle aged couple behind us that thought it was important to announce every single thing they saw on the road to each other. If one would stop talking the other would start. It was entertaining at first, but I soon got bored of it. “There are a few camels”. Of course, they’re camels. What did I think they look like? Buffaloes??
The rest-stop
We arrived at 10:30 ish. The bus dropped us at the visitors center and we took a cab to our motel/guesthouse.
Our room was not ready so we waited in the lobby. The guys there were constantly watching Al-Jazeera in Arabic which was constantly showing the latest updated on the Gaza War. This got me all worked up and when I went to our room, I just decided to scrap the entire trip and head home. After a couple of hours of sleep, I calmed down a bit. We went out in to the town and I called our Israeli family friend who assured me that the situation is not as bad as shown on TV and most major cities are functioning normally. This did give me a lot of confidence and calmed me more.
The main drag in Wadi Musa
We had a fairly lackluster dinner at a place called Al-Arabi. The pita and the felafel were cold (like from the refrigerator). The tea was standard.
We went back to the hotel to wait for the Petra by night tour! Would be the perfect way to end 2008 and welcome 2009!
This post is a part of the Israel and Jordan 2008-2009 itinerary
