Jordan?!

Trip Start May 07, 2005

117

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of Jordan Petra, Jordan
Wednesday, November 30, 2005

2005-11-30 Petra
(Dave)

We woke up at the awful hour of 6:00 to go to Petra. We had a vague idea of how to get there but were a little concerned that it might be difficult. A year ago we never would have expected to wake up and plan a trip to the middle of Jordan without a plan.

We almost gave up when we couldn't find the Jordanian border. How hard could that be? Just go east, right? The map showed some border but it wasn't accessible by car. Kim went to a travel agent to ask for directions and she got yelled at. "How could you think of going to Jordan by yourself?! How will you find anything?!? What if something happens?!" Sheesh. Doesn't this lady know we had been in Egypt for three weeks? But at least she gave us a clue how to find the border. We didn't have much trouble crossing the border once we found it.

The Jordanian security seemed to love Americans. Nearly every time we were asked for our passport when the guard saw it he would say, "American?" and would hand it back without even checking. At one checkpoint our taxi driver told the guard we were American

1. Welcome to Jordan

. The guard asked us and when we confirmed he waved us through with a smile. At passport control they loved that Kim was born in Morocco. They got all excited and asked if she spoke Arabic. They couldn't seem to understand that she left when she was two years old and has no memory of it. It was quite different from Isreali guards who were less than thrilled with her birth place and used it to start lots of questions.

I can't say if Jordan is cheap or expensive. I want to call it expensive but I feel like the tourists that Lonely Planet makes fun of. They go to the most expensive resort in a third world country and don't haggle in their brief sojourn outside of the resort borders. We paid 45 dinars (about $75) for the round trip cab ride to Petra and then 42 dinars to enter. We bought a pound of pistachios for a bit less than what they would cost in America, but my experience is that nuts are just about the same price everywhere. Those prices are all pretty high, but we didn't haggle enough with the cab driver (the border posted that the price should be 40 dinars and yet we still paid 45) and tourist admission is always expensive. My advice to anyone visiting Egypt is to get a student card. That gets half price admissions to everything which will save hundreds of dollars, much more than the $3 we save when we haggle with a cab driver.

But on to Petra. We agreed to return to the cab after three hours and it takes more than half an hour to get to the city from the ticket office so we felt some urgency

Bedouin Security Guard

. We had horses take us down to the siq which save us a few minutes and saved our feet quite a bit. There is quite an Indiana Jones theme to Petra (it was featured in The Last Crusade) and the boy leading the horses urged me to gallop to be like Indiana Jones but I'm a bit of a wuss on horseback so I kept to a trot.

Our first impression was the amazing chasm that leads to the city. It is about 10 feet wide and goes for about a mile. Then it opens to what I think of as Petra. The Khazneh or Treasury is a huge tomb carved into the mountainside. Beyond that lie a Roman theater, many many many tombs, and a large temple all carved into the mountain. It is all quite incredible.

On the way out of Jordan we got the usual problems in Isreal with Kim being born in Morocco. It is especially bad because her passport has gone through the washing machine. One lady started asking "Mother's maiden name" sorts of questions and seemed reluctant to let us through until we showed her our plane tickets leaving Cairo in a few weeks. We went back to our nice hostel and fried up some veggies. I wouldn't say Israel is the best place in the world for vegetables but after Egypt it has been a welcome treat.