1st

With a hearty breakfast of a bag of milk (our staple drink which cost only 2 shekels) and a pastry we took a taxi ride twice to the boarder of Jordan, the second time with Rhys' passport that was no longer safely tucked under his matress in the hostel. The guard at the boarder chatted to us about Australia where he was planning to study, and then advised us that it probably wasn't worth going to Jordan as the road to Petra were closed because of the snow. We opted to go anyway, but were a little disencouraged when we met some American backpackers going the other way who had missed out on it because of the snow. After walking the eerie 100m or so to Jordan through no mans land we met up with some Israelli's who also wanted to see Petra - Jael (ya-el) and Daniel. We struck a deal with a taxi driver to take us there and back for 80 Dina's which works out to be about A$40 each. We were then taken from the boarder in a samsung taxi to a driver who didn't speak much english in a corolla in Aqaba. On the way to Petra we saw a sleepy driver in a van smash into a guard rail (not too badly) as well as lots of dirt and mountains without any vegetation which looked just like piles of dirt from mines. It was getting quite hot in the car but when we stopped for coffee we realised it was actually quite chilly outside dispite the sun being out and not a cloud in the sky. Then all of a sudden we started seeing snow sitting on the desert floor - odd! It then got thicker and thicker until we had to take an alternate route because the road was blocked.
Our time in Petra was quite limited but was long enough to get a feel for how mighty it was, Jael and Daniel shared their megre lunch with us and we ambled through the ruins taking plenty of photos of the sharp gorges, cave, and the monumental treasury facade.

On the way back we had some thick turkish coffee and Jael and Daniel were dropped off at he boarder, and our taxi driver took us to a cheap hotel. Although he didn't speak much english he was good fun and we had a few laughs along the way. That night we had cheese burgers and realised for the first time that we actually missed not haveing cheese and meat together. Jordan is a lot more how i pictured the middle east to be that Israel, really baron and not many women about at all, the ones we did see were covered with the burquas, yet the ones that we saw on the music video's on the tv in our room were dressed just as scantily as you would see in any western country.

The pillows in Jordan were very hard.