Well, here we go again. Even by our standards we have excelled ourselves this year, embarking today on our second overseas trip for 2013! With Auroral activity at its peak for this Auroral cycle we just had to fit in another trip this year to try once again to experience the elusive Aurora Borealis. The Aurora eluded us in 2007 when we travelled to Iceland. We only leant afterwards that we had visited at the lowest point of the Auroral cycle ... and a bit too late in the season! In early April 2007 I was quite frustrated when I was repeatedly told by the locals that we had missed what activity there had been by about three weeks. We have high expectations this time ... and everything crossed for some big solar flares between the ... read more

Damn, it turns out that our optimism was woefully misplaced!!! As we neared Indonesia the Captain announced that the plane had a technical problem and we would be diverting to Singapore to have it investigated. So we pretty much made a 90° turn to the left to start heading north to Singapore. We had to dump fuel to lighten the plane for our unscheduled landing. That was sort of interesting seeing thousands of litres of fuel purged from a spout in the wing. What a waste though and does it all vapourise in the upper atmosphere or does it have an environmental impact? We landed at Changi just before noon, but because our landing was unscheduled we had to remain on board while the ground staff checked the plane. Thank goodness we were allowed to turn ... read more

No snow overnight, but it was still cold and gloomy with the threat of more rain. Ahmad talked with the Tourist Police and was advised that while the Petra site had opened this morning it was likely to be closed down again if (when?) it rained. Not really wanting to go through the whole evacuation exercise again we agreed with Ahmed that the best course of action would be to proceed to Karak. After a quick stop at Moussa (Moses') Spring we started climbing back into the Petra Mountains. Before long we were above the cloud line and visibility was almost zero again and the road was lined with snow that had been ploughed from the road after yesterday's bad weather. When we reached the other side of the mountains the sky was blue and there ... read more

The dogs went off just before 7.30am this morning. Obviously Ahmad exaggerated when he told us that we would be woken at 5.30am when all the dogs start running around playing and barking. I guess the dogs are on winter time too?? Absolutely too cold to think about using the basic showering facilities (didn't even check to see if there is hot water, but I think not) so we made do with a bit of a wash at the hand basin. If you get hat hair from wearing a hat and bed hair from sleeping what do you get when you wear a hat to bed?? A really bad hair day!! Thank goodness I'm not trying to impress anyone with my personal grooming. We had a quick bit of breakfast and then we headed off on ... read more

Grrrr, Bernie collected an internet password from the reception desk last night, but we haven't been able to connect to the internet. On our way to breakfast we let them know at the reception desk that we couldn't access the internet. They said they would look into it and asked us to call back at the desk on our way back from breakfast. On the way back to the room we picked up an IT guy at the reception desk and he came upstairs to check our connection. He couldn't connect our laptop either and left saying that he would ask the head of IT to come to our room. However, the head of IT hadn't arrived by the time we had agreed to meet Ahmed in the foyer so we had to leave without checking ... read more