Blogs from Petra, South, Jordan, Middle East - page 25

Tuesday, June 12, 2007 We leave Dahab, on the East side of the Sinai peninsula early this morning for a short drive to Nuwiba where the ferry departs for Aquaba at the Northern Tip of the Red Sea. This is a typical ferry trip, except that it starts in one country and ends in another, so we have to go through exit customs and immigration; and then we have to have all of our bags x-rayed by an x-ray machine that doesn’t work…..And we don’t take all of our bags, just a bag each so we can meet whatever formality the Egyptian gvt has decided they want to enforce. Usually the Egyptian gvt requires an exit payment of 50 gyppies per person. For some reason they don’t charge us, so we get to leave for ... read more

In addition to Wadi Rum, already covered, Jordan has one other unmissable attraction-the countrys number one attraction-let me present to you Petra! There are two ways of describing what this place is.The short one: a ruinated nabatean city known only by beduins for centuries. The more correct one: a nabatean cityarea in a spectacular landscape of canyons, valleys and mountains still inhabited by bedouins. You can visit the place in one day and tell you have been there, but in order to be able to say you have explored Petra you need at least two days-witch was what i spend-but unless you are a fast walker able to cover big distances on your legs, 3 days are what you need. I walked more than 40 kilometers, and still have covered only the highlights of the area. ... read more

Today we visited the fabulous abandonded city of Petra. It's set in a large canyon accessible only through a long, tiny crack, about 1.2kms long and between 2 and 5 meters wide, with many twists and turns. Petra started off as a Necropolis for burying the dead - the Nabateans carved holes in the solid rock of the cliff for the corpse, and decorate the entrance with carvings. In some cases, these are fabulously ornate, the most spectacular of which is Al Khazneh, known more commonly as The Treasury. If you've seen Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, you'll recall the scene where Indy and co pass through the Canyon of the Crescent Moon to discover the Temple holding the Holy Grail - that's the treasury. It's pretty special from the outside, but there was ... read more

Well after enduring the overnight bus ride from Cairo to Nuweiba (i nearly froze due to the over-enthusiastic aircon). I then spent all day waiting for a 1 hour ferry to Jordan. Was taken care of by a lovely Jordanian Girl who kept me entertained with pics of her family. The fact that neither of us could understand anything of that the other was saying still made for good conversation. On the boat over i got talking to Chris, an American who was teaching English at a Uni in Jordan, after spending over an hour and a half waiting for our Visa's we ended up catching a taxi into town with 2 ozzies Chris had meet in Dahab. We all felt that a beer was in order after such a long day and after settling in ... read more

Spanish Beer-Pong For my last night in Egypt Tuesday night, I met up with Rosa and Juan Carlos on the Dahab beachfront promenade for a night of drinking, pool, drinking, crazy ping-pong games, and some more drinking. Our night of fun drifted on until the wee hours, me trying to understand their English, and them trying to understand my feeble attempts at Spanish. By the end of the night, we were all speaking that third international language which you can only understand if you have had six or seven beers. I bid them a fond farewell, exchanged emails and we parted ways at about four in the morning. (Rewind 12 hours) Good travel karma shined down upon me earlier that morning when I met a fellow American from Phoenix, Arizona at the hotel breakfast buffet named ... read more