Heading to Petra (Wadi Musa)

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After a decent breakfast at the hotel, Evy and I went off in search of INTERNET. We found a place and tried to make a skype call to the hotel in Petra to book, but the connection was horrible and they could not hear us. We returned to the hotel and made a very expensive call to the hotel in Wadi Musa. We then rushed to pack and head to the minibus station before the final bus of the day.

Once again, we were the only Westerners on the small mini bus as it headed out of Aqaba. The roads here are far better than Egypt and most of the ride was on divided four lane highway. Shortly after leaving Aqaba, the highway takes a pass through a very steep set of coastal mountains, like those we had seen looking from Dahab across the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia.

Contrasting this modern highway, we passed numerous camels at the side of the road and I manage to get a photo of the “Caution: Camels” sign to go with our collections of world signs (penguin crossing in New Zealand, Elephant crossing in Thailand etc).

Eventually we left the four lane divided highway and took a smaller paved road going East. Here the terrain was very hilly an the road wound up and down hills. If not for the desert scenery, it would have been like the roads in New Zealand. Finally we began a long descent to the town of Wadi Musa, with many stops along the way to let off passengers.

The bus depot in Wadi Musa is a parking lot on the side of the hill, but the town is so compact that everything is within a few hundred meters. We opted against a taxi for such a short distance and instead walked short distance to our hotel, Al Anbat Hotel II.

The hotel right away looked like a disappointment. The first room that they showed us did not have enough beds. Then they gave us two rooms instead but it was clearly not a great place, as one toilet did not work and in the other room the shower door had fallen off and merely been propped up against the shower. With nothing else in mind though, we agreed and carried our luggage up there three flights of stairs.

We went out to lunch and explored a bit. There was another hotel (The El Gee) that looked better a short distance away. We went and had a look and it seemed much better and was some $20 cheaper per night. We told them we would likely make the move there tomorrow morning.

After an afternoon of school work, we found a small restaurant and ordered dinner just before a massive tour group showed up and packed the place.

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