breath taking

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Hello Hello,

So after my arrival in Jordan I took the bus the next day to Petra. Normally I was going to stay at someone's place I found through couchsurfing but everything went wrong. I couldn't reach him at all but still I took off to Petra.
When I arrived in Wadi Musa, which is the village next to Petra a lot of people asked for a hotel and stuff, but I had my travel guide with me and so I wanted to find a nice hotel by myself. One of the local guides knew the owner and would make a nice price for me. While I was waiting at the entrence gate at Petra, someone asked me if I was ok and if they were going to get me from the Hotel. I told him my story that I was going to meet someone through couchsurfing but that I couldn't reach him.
This person at the gate's name was Ghassab and he was on couchsurfing too. He gave me his number and told me to call him when I got to the orient gate hotel. The information in my guide turned out to be not correct. The owner of the hotel was not friendly and when he knew I had to call Ghasseb his mood changed because Ghasseb is a bedouin, a real inhabitant of Jordan :-) and a lot of locals here don't like Bedouins.
I called Ghasseb and he came to get me. He took me to his village, just outside Wadi Musa and took me to little Petra. Unbelievable, I'm having waauw moments since the day I arrived.
Ghassab is a tourguide and organises busses and arrangements. He has his own company, used to live in Germany as a nurse for 17 years but returned to his roots. He had to accompany a bus of juish people to the border with Jordan and Israel and he took me along. The border with Israel is next to Aqaba (Eilat) and so we said goodbye to the bus and went back to Aqaba.
When we returned to Aqaba we bought some beers in a local night store and went to sit at the beach. Even at night it was 16 degrees. You could see the lights of Egypt, Eilat (israel), Soudi-Arabia.
After that we drove back to Wadi Musa, got my luggage from the hotel,where I couldn't find anybody at the reception so I just took my bag and took off, without paying. The room at the hotel was very cold and they were going to charge me 8din a night without breakfast. Since they were not friendly, I was glad I didn't have to stay there after all.
Ghassab gave me a nive place to stay and today we went to see Petra. Again all waauw!!
We entered Petra from the exit, took a donkey to walk up the 800 stairs and walked down through the desert back to the Beduin village.
After the walk we had a nice sandwich and a drink in the cave bar and tonight we are going to sleep in a cave not far away from here.
Tomorrow we'll go back to Petra and see more of its amazing nature.

So you see when something bad can turn into something good very quickly. This is something you can only dream off, travelling around with local people is all you need :-)

Write to you soon,

Ann

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Photos

Wadi Musa
The village

Petra
before you enter Petra you find stores everywhere

Bedouin Village
Ghassab's father

Bedouin Village
Ghassab's mother and Ghassab

Little Petra
now mainly used for ceremonial festivities

Little Petra
People offering us tea

Little Petra
hole in the rocks to supply birds with water. Nabethean invention.

Bedouin Village
Donkeys everywhere

Aqaba
Aqaba by night

Comments

[Leentje]

Oléé
Hey Ann! Goe bezig!! Tis waar, rondtrekken met locals is veel interessanter! Ze kennen de taal en de gewoonten en gebruiken en als het hen niet aanstaat, kunnen ze zich kwaad maken en waar krijgen voor hun geld!! Kben benieuwd naar meer foto's!! duim nekeer eee, ik moet morgenavond spelen!!! dikke bees!! XXX

[wim]

Some story !
Never been to that part of the world, so it's very nice to follow your story through, and get a glimps of it ..

[Rita Troch]

be carefull
Geniet van je reis , maar ik denk dat je toch wel veel risico's neemt. Vergeet niet dat je een westerling bent, en ze daar vrouwen anders bekijken dan bij ons.Ik denk aan je ,liefs mama