Marina Plaza Hotel Aqaba

Nach einigen Tagen der virtuellen Abwesenheit erst heute wieder ein neuer Eintrag, schließlich musste ich erst noch einige Fotos bearbeiten. Text ohne Bilder ist ja dann nicht so interessant...<br><br>Hier nun der Text (mit Fotos):<br><br>Unseren Abschied von Petra nehmen wir in "Little Petra", dass etwas außerhalb des "geschlossenen Petragebiets" liegt. Auch dort gibt es einige Höhlen und aus dem Fels gehauene Eingangsportale. "Little Petra" kostet keinen Eintritt und gibt einen ...

... will go down. When we got to the immigration office we were waiting in line for the person to get back.. they must have been on a break or away. After waiting about 15 minutes, and almost making it to the office, our guide, Riad, showed up and called us away. It took about 30 seconds of him flashing paper work and immigration forms and we were off. While we were waiting some guy began yelling at the girls, presumably because they were wearing ...

... helping us to navigate the ferry etc using their Arabic language skills. Nice girls we wish them well. After breakfast of the usual flat bread, cheese, jam and tea I hung around the pool and read a novel the hotel had on its bookshelf, a dean Koontz mystery thriller which was great as I liked his other novels I had read. It was hot and the view around the hotel was stark; 2 other places to stay and the beach down the road and not much else. The main ...

... really deep enough or structured enough to call it a fire pit). Instead we got the Bait Ali. While we did sleep in a tent, it was tent #30 and had two iron-frame beds in it. The encampment even had a swimming pool and shower facilities. We had a really great meal of several types of kebab and other things, but it was by far more comfortable than we had imagined it would be. The most difficult challenge we faced was how we were supposed to knot our tent flap ...

... being in Jordan its very popular and the locals love it. From there we headed to Bureau canyon which was really beautiful and defiantly a highlight. We then headed to Lawrence's house which was a bit of a joke just a stone wall that use to be a house not worth seeing at all. The next stop was the red sand dunes which were pretty awsome not that massive but beautiful we ran down them at quite a speed and all good fun. From there our last stop was sunset although ...

... and more like Lawrence's Arabia the closer we got to our desert camp. Just before sunset we arrived and were put in the hands of our very comical Bedouin camel driver for a camel safari. After getting us onto the camels and heading off, he commenced to yell at the top of his voice into his mobile phone! He was quite elderly and didn't have much English but we communicated well with signs and gestures and he told us that he had been in the army by ...

... reading and attempted to scale the rock face behind, but with much of the route being of a porous and crumbly nature, was forced to concede defeat halfway up and returned to join the others for a light lunch and afternoon nap. Some more sand dune jumping followed before we made the long, exhausting tramp back to camp. We packed our bags on the morning of the third day, loaded them onto a jeep and waved them goodbye before going to meet our hosts for ...

... a seat on this dirty ass ferry and actually tried to breathe for once... I saw Elat looking for a seat but of course there were no more. He convinced the upholstry guys in the front who were making the seat cushions to let him sit down, he motioned to me that he not only had an extra, but two! We played some chess on his laptop and he gave me tips for Damascus, Syria for when I go. Then I bumped into the Palestinians in all the mayhem and the 4 of us ...

... At sunset everything became the color of burnt sienna. In the late afternoon, Mohammad, another son, took us to see some ancient rock carvings. In a dark tunic with a brown and white scarf framing his handsome face, Mohammed used my husband's hiking pole to point out stick figures of men and camels with large humps etched on the red sandstone. As we bumped along in the back of a pickup, we passed a small group of real camels. Two were nuzzling ...

... Sunni Muslim and 40% of which live in its modern capital, Amman (we'll be there in a few days). <br><br>Because of it's geographical location it's no surprise to learn that its history is one of occupation. Never the seat of an empire, the country has always been a Europe-Asia-Africa crossroads for the Middle East's great civilisations: the Nabataeans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Christian Crusaders and the Ottoman Turks, to name but a few, have all left their ...