Guest House By Crowne Plaza Wadi Musa

... a Sakara beer :)

we are heading back to Cairo tonight on a late bus, we should arrive in Cairo at 8am tomorrow morning, we have all day in Cairo (meh) and then we board a plane at 9:30pm for Kenya! Yay!
Cant wait to go see the elephant orphanage!

Ok I dont feel like writing anymore! We're off to go swimming, I'm gonna have a beer and Cody's gonna have a fresh Mango shake! :)

Shukran for reading!

... introduced to local tour guide who speak the Eglish good not so well. We are then dulled to near death with Amman local sites, however boredom is broken with visit to Museum that contains dead sea scrolls, wow, unexpected. Jump on bus the next day, local guide points out local places of interest like the Meridian hotel, the Four Seasons hotel, a roundabout, a school (not yet built), school children, a bus station. Kat, Nat, Emma, Caroline and I quickly bond ...

... Nou, oke dan! Cououououch 11..?

Vandaag (zondag) nam Ghassab ons mee naar de woestijn in de buurt van klein Petra, waar we een enge berg opklommen en zo opeens naast de Monastary stonden. En al die Hollaender daar maar hijgen van die hoge trappen! Hihi! Daar hebben we lekker lang gezeten met een koud drankje, en toen gingen we nog even naar Israel kijken vanaf een uitzichtpunt.. Boeiend...

De trappen naar beneden zijn helemaal niet zo erg! Hihi ...

... around the time of Christ by traders who controlled this part of the famous caravan trade route with the east where spices and other goods were bought and sold here. The town was well hidden in the mountains with just the narrow souq to enter by. The buildings were carved into the cliffs and became astonishing monuments and tombs for the rulers here. The souq carried water along it in carved channels into the sandstone and limestone cliffs. Water was life here and the ...

... we were sharing. The intensity of it was unlike anything we had ever experienced, and the rewards were beyond words. Thus was the day on our desert safari. A sunset approached, the sky was ablaze with red and amber, and the sands mirrored its reflection. The sun quickly set, and we were soon at our desert camp where we would spend the night and the next morning.

When we arrived, a blazing fire was underway, as our Bedouin hosts were busy preparing the evening meal ...

... side of the twisting, winding road, each turn yielding another breathtaking view in contrasting colors, the rocks often striated by time or weather. (The Siq is lined on either side by channels to deliver floodwaters to the city hidden below.) And then, in an instant, the Treasury appears through the giant vertical crack ahead. Its scale, like that of the Siq, is hard to describe. It's alive with activity: tourists, of course, and souvenir stands, and donkey and ...

... that I had tried the first time, unfortunately partway through the following night he became very sick with food poisoning and didn't get much sleep. Speaking of sleep, the hotel we stayed in was very close to a mosque, in fact at 4:45 in the morning it sounded like the speaker for the muezzin (call to prayer for Muslims) was right outside of our room. Not only that but there were 4 mosques in the area, all with a muezzin ...

... mountains where the ruins are located. Gorgeous. The next day I got a 6am start since it can get really hot in the ruins during the middle of the day and there's a lot of walking to do. Definitely more than I anticipated and I have no idea how all the older people getting bussed in on group tours do it. The ruins at Petra are mostly carved directly out of the rockface and the amount of detail is just mindblowing. They carved facades of ...

... the main road of Petra which is the Siq towards the Treasury which is where they filmed Indianan Jones. The Siq is 3 to 6 meters wide in some parts and provides you with some great photos and views it really is awsome. After walking for 1 km we saw the Treasury for the first time and I think I said wow to myself quite a few times! It really is an amazing sight and defiantly worths its palace as a wonder of the world. It is carved out of rock and really amazing ...

... decided I'd get a taxi. Waited for half an hour to see if any other travelers were going to Wadi Musa but nobody turned up so I flagged down a taxi.

35 dinars to get to Wadi Musa. Aghh. Very expensive. 2 hours. 2 hour taxi back home would cost way more than £35 but still. Had to transfer into a jeep with two Bedouin guys who were heading that way. Bit odd but I think the taxi driver got paid some money to save him a trip and these guys were heading that way anyway so they ...