04-01-2014, 02:06 PM
The idea for this leg of the trip was stupid. Basically we are in one country, full of history and we are leaving it for another country. My idea was to skip this side trip entirely when I looked into the particulars of actually getting to Petra. There would be borders to cross, visas to get and a lot of transportation transfers.
But Cindi seemed to have her heart set on the trip, no matter the roadblocks. Eventually, I found a trip that did it in one day, one very long day. And then I found the same trip for even cheaper, still expensive but not sell a kidney to afford it expensive. I gave in and made the arrangements.
And the arrangements I made were sketchy. I received from Fun Travel Israel an email that said it was my voucher good for two trips to Petra. It was almost a cryptic handed note passed in a darkened alley to meet your guide on this date to be taken to your destination. Tell no one.
The one thing I did know for sure was that I was getting up again at the crack of dawn to start the trip. We checked out of the hotel at 3am, again summoning the guard to get our Schlomo Sixt rental car out of the lot. We drove an hour to Tel Aviv to drop our bags off at the Embassy Hotel before finding the Airport.
Naturally our hotel was hidden off a side street from where the actual address said it would be. The clerk at the Hotel was not happy to have the loud American asking to put his bag in storage at that ungodly hour. I thought later she might just be cranky with everyone.
We found the Sde Dov airport quite easily. We arrived twenty minutes before it opened. We took that time to drive around Tel Aviv and get lost finding our way back to the airport. Curse you one way streets and conflicting signs pointing their way to the airport. Some signs pointed to Sde Dov, others pointed to Ben Gurion with no indication to which one they pointed.
I’ve been in living rooms larger than the Sde Dov airport. At this point, I had nothing that resembled a ticket on a flight, just a voucher saying report to this airport. With a sigh of relief, there was a reservation in our name for a flight to Eilat.
Imagine my surprise when they bussed us out to the tarmac and loaded us on a plane that had propellers. It took a lot of head scratching for me to remember the last time, I had been on a propeller plane. One of the nice features of the plane, were all the ads on the overhead storage compartments.
The Eilat airport was marginally bigger than the Sde Dov airport. But you would think our guide to Petra would stand right out. But no. No sign of a Fun Time Israel guide awaited us. Christian, a swiss traveler, was in a similar predicament.
Eventually, after our worries levels increased, a small van with Fun Time on the side pulled to the curb. Our guide offered apologies. The stop before ours was tragically slow as people kept going back into their hotel for forgotten items.
Our next stop was the Yitzhak Rabin border crossing where we got to spend a delightful hour hanging around in no-man’s land. Right before heading into no man’s land, our airport driver handed me a folded envelope. I was told to hang on to it until somebody at the border crossing asked me for it. When the time came, I was supposed to know what that meant. Didn’t I mention this was sketchy? Now, they have me carrying the bribes for the border crossing. It all just seemed a bit off.
I handed the envelope to Ramse and he took that into the security room with our passports. And we waited and we waited.
On the other side of the border from Eilat is Aqaba, Jordan. Every time I hear that name I get an echo of Peter O’Toole saying the same name during ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Our bus did not live up to the hype again. Our beautifully appointed coach was probably just that about 5 years and thousands of tourists ago. My seat wouldn’t remain in it’s full and upright position, gradually creeping back to fully prone every ten minutes.
We made two stops on our way to Petra; once at a gift shop to get snacks and once for lunch. I wonder why we stopped at a gift shop? The lunch was a passable buffet that had some really good rice. Thankfully, we stopped for lunch before going to Petra although this now put us nine hours into our trip without having seen any building carved out of red rock.
We finally made it to our destination at 1:30. This had better be good or I was going to be a wee bit cranky. Again, our tour description lied and we were not give our free horse ride down to the Siq. Many of the horse wranglers implored us to take rides as we followed Ramse the guide.
Ramse told us to stay with him for the first hour and a half of the tour. After that we would be free to explore on our own. I quickly grew tired of Ramse’s spiel as we walked through the narrow canyon to Petra proper. Plus, the lure of ever greater photo opportunities caused me to listen to him less and less until finally I abandoned the group entirely to head to the treasury. Plus, the sun was setting. If you are in a steep walled canyon, there is only a limited time to catch the light in the canyon. Off I went.
As I gazed at all the magnificent rock carved buildings around, I forgot about the difficulties in actually getting to this spot. Bedouins with camels were everywhere. I kept flashing on the final scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as I at last stood before the Treasury Building.
I was right to hurry but I missed the sun overhead just the same. Still, I was glad I was there.
Ramse admonished us to be back at the bus by 4:30 because by 4:31, there wouldn’t be a bus and we could get a cab to Aqaba.
Petra is huge and you should takes days to explore it fully. We did the best we could in the few hours we were there. As we took pictures, we were constantly approached to take camel or donkey rides. I snapped pictures of a bedouin woman in exchange for buying trinkets at her shop. I use the term shop loosely to describe her blankets and low shelves spread under a tent.
The sun illuminated other rock carved building towards the end of town. Cindi paid five bucks to sit on a camel for me to take her picture. I’m going to say it was entirely her idea. We would have been there well into the night if not for the pressure to get back to our coach wasn’t upon us.
We left the far end of town with plenty of time to get back to the bus, but the dramatic sights along the way caused us to constantly stop and take more photos. We arrived back at the bus with only enough time to blow five bucks on a stale candy bar for sustenance.
On the trip back, we were supposed to stop at the Wadi Mussa and a trip through Aqaba. Neither of these things happened as it was pitch black and every one of us was exhausted. Again my bus seat reclined into the passenger’s lap behind us. I switched seats with Cindi.
The border crossing on the way back only took us long enough to walk through and show our passports to the guards. I don’t know why it took so long going the other way.
We boarded our propeller plane and flew back to Tel Aviv. After several wrong turns, I again located our hotel. Thankfully, our bags had been placed in our not very big room at the Embassy Hotel. Because of wonderful scheduling, we would only be in the room for about five hours before our next journey.
But Cindi seemed to have her heart set on the trip, no matter the roadblocks. Eventually, I found a trip that did it in one day, one very long day. And then I found the same trip for even cheaper, still expensive but not sell a kidney to afford it expensive. I gave in and made the arrangements.
And the arrangements I made were sketchy. I received from Fun Travel Israel an email that said it was my voucher good for two trips to Petra. It was almost a cryptic handed note passed in a darkened alley to meet your guide on this date to be taken to your destination. Tell no one.
The one thing I did know for sure was that I was getting up again at the crack of dawn to start the trip. We checked out of the hotel at 3am, again summoning the guard to get our Schlomo Sixt rental car out of the lot. We drove an hour to Tel Aviv to drop our bags off at the Embassy Hotel before finding the Airport.
Naturally our hotel was hidden off a side street from where the actual address said it would be. The clerk at the Hotel was not happy to have the loud American asking to put his bag in storage at that ungodly hour. I thought later she might just be cranky with everyone.
We found the Sde Dov airport quite easily. We arrived twenty minutes before it opened. We took that time to drive around Tel Aviv and get lost finding our way back to the airport. Curse you one way streets and conflicting signs pointing their way to the airport. Some signs pointed to Sde Dov, others pointed to Ben Gurion with no indication to which one they pointed.
I’ve been in living rooms larger than the Sde Dov airport. At this point, I had nothing that resembled a ticket on a flight, just a voucher saying report to this airport. With a sigh of relief, there was a reservation in our name for a flight to Eilat.
Imagine my surprise when they bussed us out to the tarmac and loaded us on a plane that had propellers. It took a lot of head scratching for me to remember the last time, I had been on a propeller plane. One of the nice features of the plane, were all the ads on the overhead storage compartments.
The Eilat airport was marginally bigger than the Sde Dov airport. But you would think our guide to Petra would stand right out. But no. No sign of a Fun Time Israel guide awaited us. Christian, a swiss traveler, was in a similar predicament.
Eventually, after our worries levels increased, a small van with Fun Time on the side pulled to the curb. Our guide offered apologies. The stop before ours was tragically slow as people kept going back into their hotel for forgotten items.
Our next stop was the Yitzhak Rabin border crossing where we got to spend a delightful hour hanging around in no-man’s land. Right before heading into no man’s land, our airport driver handed me a folded envelope. I was told to hang on to it until somebody at the border crossing asked me for it. When the time came, I was supposed to know what that meant. Didn’t I mention this was sketchy? Now, they have me carrying the bribes for the border crossing. It all just seemed a bit off.
I handed the envelope to Ramse and he took that into the security room with our passports. And we waited and we waited.
On the other side of the border from Eilat is Aqaba, Jordan. Every time I hear that name I get an echo of Peter O’Toole saying the same name during ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Our bus did not live up to the hype again. Our beautifully appointed coach was probably just that about 5 years and thousands of tourists ago. My seat wouldn’t remain in it’s full and upright position, gradually creeping back to fully prone every ten minutes.
We made two stops on our way to Petra; once at a gift shop to get snacks and once for lunch. I wonder why we stopped at a gift shop? The lunch was a passable buffet that had some really good rice. Thankfully, we stopped for lunch before going to Petra although this now put us nine hours into our trip without having seen any building carved out of red rock.
We finally made it to our destination at 1:30. This had better be good or I was going to be a wee bit cranky. Again, our tour description lied and we were not give our free horse ride down to the Siq. Many of the horse wranglers implored us to take rides as we followed Ramse the guide.
Ramse told us to stay with him for the first hour and a half of the tour. After that we would be free to explore on our own. I quickly grew tired of Ramse’s spiel as we walked through the narrow canyon to Petra proper. Plus, the lure of ever greater photo opportunities caused me to listen to him less and less until finally I abandoned the group entirely to head to the treasury. Plus, the sun was setting. If you are in a steep walled canyon, there is only a limited time to catch the light in the canyon. Off I went.
As I gazed at all the magnificent rock carved buildings around, I forgot about the difficulties in actually getting to this spot. Bedouins with camels were everywhere. I kept flashing on the final scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as I at last stood before the Treasury Building.
I was right to hurry but I missed the sun overhead just the same. Still, I was glad I was there.
Ramse admonished us to be back at the bus by 4:30 because by 4:31, there wouldn’t be a bus and we could get a cab to Aqaba.
Petra is huge and you should takes days to explore it fully. We did the best we could in the few hours we were there. As we took pictures, we were constantly approached to take camel or donkey rides. I snapped pictures of a bedouin woman in exchange for buying trinkets at her shop. I use the term shop loosely to describe her blankets and low shelves spread under a tent.
The sun illuminated other rock carved building towards the end of town. Cindi paid five bucks to sit on a camel for me to take her picture. I’m going to say it was entirely her idea. We would have been there well into the night if not for the pressure to get back to our coach wasn’t upon us.
We left the far end of town with plenty of time to get back to the bus, but the dramatic sights along the way caused us to constantly stop and take more photos. We arrived back at the bus with only enough time to blow five bucks on a stale candy bar for sustenance.
On the trip back, we were supposed to stop at the Wadi Mussa and a trip through Aqaba. Neither of these things happened as it was pitch black and every one of us was exhausted. Again my bus seat reclined into the passenger’s lap behind us. I switched seats with Cindi.
The border crossing on the way back only took us long enough to walk through and show our passports to the guards. I don’t know why it took so long going the other way.
We boarded our propeller plane and flew back to Tel Aviv. After several wrong turns, I again located our hotel. Thankfully, our bags had been placed in our not very big room at the Embassy Hotel. Because of wonderful scheduling, we would only be in the room for about five hours before our next journey.
So much for the flickr badge idea. Dammit