DAY 16
Yeah!!! A
bit of a sleep in this morning, we didn’t get up til 6.45am!!
Breakfast
was actually included, so no further hassling with the sleazy, shifty
restaurant owner.
We only had
to drive 2 hours to our beach huts so that was good. I was even considering
snorkelling until our tour leader scared the living daylights out of us with
warnings of dangerous poison things in the water (cheery soul??)
We all
decided that even if these dangerous
creatures of the deep were on their way to some other country, they would put
themselves out to come back for me.
The food at
this place called Sawa camp on the Red Sea has been terrific, the weather warm
and you can look across the sea to the lights of Saudi Arabia.
The group
are starting to click a bit more now, but still not as good as the previous
tour.
DAY 17
Another
beautiful day in paradise. Nothing to do but walk along the beach until lunch
is served.
We have to
catch a ferry at 2pm to take us to Jordan. The last group to do our
tour waited 9 hours for the ferry to arrive! And we complain about our
transport system???
Luckily we
only waited 2 hours before boarding. Mind you the ferry sat there until 5.30pm
before actually taking off.
We all had
our tickets and passports checked by 1,000 different people on our way to our
seats. Many local people were pushed to the back of the queue behind us
tourists. They were naturally no happy about this and certainly voiced this to the people in charge.
The ferry
finally took off after a seemingly endless queue of Arabic men wandered passed
by us to get their passports stamped.
They came
around selling hamburgers and chicken which did not appear very tasty or
healthy.
So as to
avoid the long queue getting off the ferry, our leader encouraged us to go to
the front of the boat and queue prior to docking. The officials at the front of
the ferry obviously did not approve of this practice and herded us into another
area while they allowed several other passengers to disembark first. There were
plenty of officials and there was a lot of yelling and argueing from them and
other passengers in Arabic. They seemed to treat the passengers like they were
prisoners. We all sat quietly and moved when we were told.
We
eventually got off the ferry, went through customs, had our bags checked again
and showed our passports to another 35 people (slight exaggeration !!)
Hooray! A
nice hotel even with ensuite and dinner at 11pm??
DAY 18
A nice lazy
morning, a proper shower, even internet plus pita bread with jam for breakfast.
Aquaba is a
seaside town for Jordanians and you can look across the water to Israel. It
seems very close.
The streets
of Aqaba were much, much cleaner than Egypt but the actual beach was
littered with Jordanian holiday makers and their RUBBISH!
We left
Aqaba at 12 by bus for Wadi Rum where we transferred to 4WD’s for our dessert
safari.
3 hours of
dessert rocks etc and we arrived at our camp, literally in the middle of
nowhere!
Dinner was
already cooking underground for us oh! And just for good measure they brought
their cat along to kill any small critters which might be lurking. I don’t know
which concerned me more, the thought that critters might be lurking or the fact
that we had a cat at camp which I am allergic to??
We all
slept outside on mats under the stars with the cat and the critters until some
of us got cold or sick or diarrohea. A fun night was had by all!
DAY 19
Tony was
one of the unfortunate victims with food poisoning , and one of the group had
to actually stop to get injections from hospital.
Our next
stop was Petra
where there is an ancient city carved out of stone.
Our rooms
in Petra were
not ready so we had to get straight back on the bus minus showers etc. for a 4
hour walking tour.
Thank god
the weather has been kind to us along he way, oh and by the way I am so over
public toilets in the middle east.
