Tuesday Truths: The adventure continues with Petra

Its Tuesday Truths!

Are you ready?

I need a prompt, I am opting for the next tweet I read that mentions moi...
Ok, that failed...miserably..then I thought what about Hats...then I thought maybe not..then I thought what about...can you see a pattern?

Eventually, someone took pity on me and suggested...

'HOLLOW'

I'm hoping that it wasnt the first thought that came to mind when he thought of me! Especially as I am generally full of it!

So...I left my thinking cap at home but have this lovely santa hat!

Hollow...hollow...hollow...

Its quite tricky to think clearly whilst listening to 'I'm Sorry I havent a clue' (a very funny comedy radio panel show)...but I am going to give it a try, I am sat hear with my brow creased with concentration, every muscle in my face tensed and impenetrable, I can hear myself breathing and feel my pulse throbbing in my temple...

Yeah, I have nothing!

I am in such a perky mood today that the only thought echoing around my mind is;

Mud, mud, glo - ri - ous mud!
No - thing quite like it for cool - ing the blood.
So fol - low me, follow, ___ down to the hollow,
And there let us wal - low in glo ______ ri - ous mud.

Which does remind me...this was my favourite thing to do as a child, crouch down in the mud and make mud pies! I don't do this nearly as often these days ;)
Its odd, last week was one annoying thing after another and I was too annoyed to rant about it and this week, nothing has gone awry and yet I am now too happy to rant about it.

I am finding it hard to think of something mud related but how about rock related? Ok...lets do that!

Indiana Jones....and the temple of doom....?

So, after visiting Israel and with instructions in hand we headed to the border to cross over from Israel to Jordan. We opted to spend a night in Amman the capital of Jordan before heading to Petra. My friend was the one who wanted to go here, I was obliviously unaware that it even existed, and now it’s a memory that I will never forget.

I first need to tell you that my sister had returned home and that my travel insurance was not valid in Jordan, I spent those few days being extra careful…well aware that I couldn’t take unnecessary risks in a country that I had no insurance for….yeah, well it is me we are talking about here! Ten points if anyone can spot the risk I took.

We arrived in Amman and booked into a hotel that was in the book, they didn’t have hostels back then, I am not sure if they do now. We had taken a taxi from the bus station to the hotel blissfully unaware that it was quite far from the centre of Amman.

We were only spending the night and the next day and night in Amman. We had scheduled in an amphitheatre and some ruins on top of a hill.

So after the first night we walked the two miles into the centre and I think it was here that I first noticed grown men holding hands, of course I saw it in Egypt and in Africa but that all followed on from here.

On our way to the amphitheatre my friend started speeding up and I was practically chasing her through the streets and when I eventually caught her up she turned to me and declared that a man seemed to be following us! So we did what only we could do and legged it.

We found the amphitheatre that was steep but small and a great vantage point to take in your surroundings. As a child I remember my mother doing puzzles that had houses positioned on steep hills and not once did it register in my mind (you must consider that I spent most of my childhood with my head stuck in a book and they weren’t any that spoke of such things) that these places existed. But Amman is surprisingly hilly and in a small area and it was like stepping into one of those puzzles. The next thing for us to do was to go to the archaeological site…so we headed off. .. my motto for navigation as I may have mentioned is’ when lost always go left’ and so we did and we realised we needed to be on the top of this hill. I kid you not, we clambered up the streets to reach the top but there was no archaeological site and ruins. It had taken us a good while to get there too; we sat atop the hill wondering where we could have gone wrong. As I looked out to the town beneath us, I glanced across to the neighbouring hill and there it was! Yes, we were on the wrong hill!

Fortunately, we both are people who laugh in these situations, shrug our shoulders and get on with it. We did eventually make it there about half hour before dusk and had a mooch around. We were both keen to be on our way to Petra.

My friend’s instructions were to go to the bus station to catch the bus to Petra, there was one a day and it took a nice scenic route and the route we had hoped to take. Sadly, we had no tickets and weren’t aware that we needed to book in advance and so we had a choice either wait another day in Amman or try and get another form of transport way to Petra.

By mutual agreement we opted to leave Amman to Petra and secured the services of a private taxi. The car the driver had was a lime green Nissan. He would take us through the desert but not the scenic route…the main route but less travelled…practically deserted (get it?? I’m too fu-uh-nny) and during the whole journey which took several hours I think I saw one other car. So there was my friend and I in the back seat of a lime green car whizzing across the desert, what else could we do but sleep?! That was until the car stopped in the middle of the desert and the driver who barely spoke English told us me us to get out the car…’get out’ he said, I looked at my friend and the thought entered my head that this might not have been such a good idea…did I refuse and stay in the car? Of course not, I got out.

After some confusion, I managed to establish that he wanted me to sit in the front so that the police wouldn’t stop him that they would think that we were friends or something like that…so I did and we made it to the hostel in the evening. I laugh now especially at the memory of arriving, safely and in one piece and then arguing the toss over the price!

We spent the night and got up early in order to spend a full day exploring Petra (as that is all we would have there) and we chose to walk from the hostel as it wasn’t supposed to be far. The sun was already very high and it was extremely hot and we stopped a taxi to take us to the entrance after 5 minutes of walking, we sat down he drove about 100yds and we got out. Did we feel totally stupid? Of course.

We were there early though and it was pretty amazing. I have photos to scan and show you how it was then but we followed the route and then opted to take the long climb up to the Treasury (that is seen in Indiana Jones), we had to dodge donkeys speeding down the footpath that was a foot wide (and the whole time I was frantic about not being insured) and it was great to get to the top.

We decided to try one of the other routes and headed down, we reached the bottom at around 1pm and bumped into some girls we had met in Tiberius and who had only just arrived. We saw them again in Aqaba on the Ferry to Egypt and they hadn’t been too impressed with Petra, but then they had arrived 2 hours before it closed. Bad travellers! The second route we took was not favoured and we had pretty much to ourselves. It was majestic for sure and when we reached the top and I took a tumble I wasn’t too worried about the travel insurance.

We walked back to the hostel….yep,…..ALL the way!