Winter Break!!! Bring it on!!!
Rachelle, Denise, Carolyn and I took advantage of our break and spent Christmas Eve in Eilat. We took the Eilat to Jerusalem bus, leaving at 2pm, arriving just before 6pm, an hour earlier
than we expected - HOORAY! From the central bus station in Eilat we make our way to the hostel we have booked, but of course, not without adventure. We knew the name of the street that the hostel is on (Ha'Arava), and we know that just before we turned to head toward the bus station, we were on it! However, it's not so easy to get back there, being that Rachelle and I were both on drugs (legal drugs, it was just Travamine - the Israeli version of Dramamine) so we were all sorts of sleepy and out of it, and Denise and Carolyn were only half paying attention because they didn't know we really should have all been paying attention.
We start walking up the hill from the bus station to find that we are clearly nowhere near the right place. Down the hill it is! A taxi driver approaches us, obviously hoping we'd get in and give him a fare, but instead, we just ask where Ha'Arava road is, and the name of our hostel. He tells us it's down this way about a kilometer. Ok, wonderful - we start heading in that direction after telling him no thanks for the ride. We're young and healthy. And just sat on a bus for 4 hours. We can most certainly handle a kilometer. Or so we thought.
Turns out, the Eilat airport is right on that road, and at that moment, of all moments, the road to the airport is closed down because of a "chefetz chashud" or a suspicious bag. Here in Israel, they take suspicious bags very seriously, and I've seen it before - not just at an airport, but even in the middle of a street during my first ever trip to Israel in 2003 when I was a participant on Birthright. So this didn't really surprise me but did anger us all a little bit because we really just wanted to walk to the hostel that wasn't so far away. We tried sneaking around one of the buildings so the guard didn't see us, but it still led to a blocked road and we had to take a cab to the hostel anyway. We got there and checked in and got the key to our room, and relaxed a bit (in a lying down position as opposed to a sitting up position from the bus ride) which was so enjoyable! We eventually made our way out to the Tayelet/Boardwalk area by the water, so we could check out the sights and work up our appetite for dinner.
We saw a beautiful hotel (way too expensive for our tiny wallets) on our walk:
And we also saw a funny statue outside a restaurant called The Three Monkeys. How cute.
We walked and walked and walked and it seemed like the tayelet wouldn't end! We kept looking at restaurant menus and popping into stores. At that point, we were just being so goofy from being on vacation! We were excited to be in a new place and not with a huge group of people; it was just us 4 ladies! We decided to go to Cafe Cafe, which is a popular chain of restaurants in Israel, because they have a good and reliable/consistent menu, and they had outdoor seating on really comfy chairs. Koby, a friend of my roommate Marlowe, also met up with us, and brought 2 of his friends along. So we ended up with a nice little crowd for dinner and walking back on the tayelet toward our hostel. Our night wouldn't have been complete without a CREPE! Chocolate and banana? Yes please! Such a nice treat on our walk back.
Koby and the boys walked us home (such gentlemen) and said goodnight to us. We crashed fairly early knowing we had to get up pretty early.
By 6:15 I think we were all awake. For the most part, bags were packed and we were ready. Carolyn went ahead to the front desk to pick up our packed breakfasts so we were ready for our pick up at 6:55am to go to the border. We cleared out of our room and met our driver downstairs in the parking lot. Two other girls were already in the van, and he took us all to the Yitzhak Rabin border to Petra. We had no idea who he was but he said he was with "Eco Tours" so we went along with it! This was the first of many drivers who basically said, "follow me." Kind of hilarious. So he took us to the border and as we wait there, others are dropped off who also must be doing some kind of tourist thing. Families, children, couples, friends, lots of people. Rachelle, who was the one to coordinate our group tour with Tomer from Eco, told us that we'd each be paying our fee that morning when we got to the border. Now, I didn't see a store or an office or anything there, but suddenly, Tomer appeared! He has a credit card machine in his bag of tricks, each of us pays our trip fee and the border taxes, etc. He goes to the other people to check them in, explains that the border doesn't open until 8am but we were told to be there at 7am because the line gets long and we will be the first ones through. HOORAY! He then escorts us all to the gate at the border. We wait in line, trying to scarf down the last of our food so it doesn't go to waste (apparently we were told we couldn't bring food across the border, but really, no one checked) and throw away our trash.
The actual border process is, well, a process.
1. Pay your fees. OK - check.
2. Go through the Israeli side and have them check your passport. We get through with only a short delay, as Carolyn, Denise, and Rachelle are all past their initial tourist visa expiration date. Mine was fine because I was issued another tourist visa after coming back from Turkey. Step 2 - complete.
3. While Tomer is still with us (he is not coming with us on our tour), he says, "When you get through, you will give your passports to Mustafa." Ummm, what? Who the hell is Mustafa and why do I have to give him my passport? So sketchy, but hey, this is how this stuff works I guess.
4. Go through the Jordanian side to get stamped and turn in proof of payment of border tax. Pretty easy.
5. Hand over passport to Mustafa. He's such a sweetie pie - I hope he's not stealing our passports! While we all wait at the shop, exchange money, and use the bathroom, Mustafa is doing whatever he needs to do with our passports before he gives them to Ali (he says it's pronounced like Allie, but I'm sure it's really ahh-lee, the Arab way) who is our tour guide.
6. Get passport back from Ali and make our way to the bus with about 30 others. Not too difficult a process but still a little nerve wracking!
We all board the bus and Ali begins telling us a bit about the area and the country. Apparently there are about the same number of people who live in Jordan that live in Israel, but they have so much more land. I guess if all the land looks like the desert, it's relatively uninhabitable so it doesn't matter how much land you have; people are still going to be living in cities and suburban areas. He tells us about our trip so we know a bit about what to expect. After he's done with his short talk, we all rest a bit and try to catch as much of a nap as we can. Halfway from the border to Petra we take a rest stop to use the bathrooms, buy something to eat, or shop around.
Once we get to the city of Petra, those of us who are staying overnight take our bags out and leave them at the company's office. They aren't locked up or secured, but they are in the office. We really just trust this whole process enough I guess, to let this happen. In no other time of my life have I left so much in other people's hands. In a foreign country. What a trip. We get back on the bus and they tell us to return back here when we are done with our tour in Petra, since we will not be leaving the park with the group. We pull up at the entrance to the Visitor's Center and have another quick bathroom break. And time for a tourist picture:
We head on in to the entrance to the park and we are greeted by lots of Arab men who want us to take a horse ride into the park. Hello guys, clearly we're on a tour don't you hear the tour guide screaming "Yalla - Eco!" and all of us following the man in the hat and listening to everything he's saying? Well, I get it, you're trying to make a buck (or, a dinar, yeah, we're in Jordan), but we will do it on our way out of the park when we're tired later. Ali takes us on our tour of all of Petra, which includes carvings into the rock, aqueducts that the Nabotheans used to channel water to their village, and lots of beautiful eroded rock - oh nature how I love you so. We are basically walking in a slot canyon that reminds me of Zion National Park and the hike I've done many times up the Virgin River during 4n4 with Camp Echo Lake. I probably made too many references to Zion that the other girls wanted me to shut up but I was just fascinated and kept taking pictures (Facebook has 'em all!). The first 30-40 minutes of walking through the park, we see some beautiful stuff but nothing beats the Treasury, arguably the most awe-inspiring of all the carvings/buildings in Petra. Ali gave us fair warning - this is it guys, take out your cameras and get ready for jaws to drop. So we indeed took out the cameras and got the Treasury upon first glance. It was so crowded that it was hard to get pictures but at some point I think I just told myself - take a look at it and stop worrying about the pictures. Ali gave us about 10-15 minutes to take our own time there, which was very nice.
We continued our tour through the rest of Petra, looking at burial/funeral caves and some other paths/stairs that led to hikes in other directions. I think at that point we really wanted to go explore but we knew we were going to be limited on time, given that we hadn't even had lunch yet, which was part of our tour and we had paid for it already in our fees. At the end of our tour of Petra village, we said our goodbyes to Ali, who was absolutely fantastic. We walked over to the restaurant for lunch which was a nice buffet of food that, I think, for the most part, we all enjoyed! Salads, hummus, pasta, some meat that we all probably avoided (me being veggie and other girls being kosher) and a nice sweet rice pudding type of dessert which I loved! Well ladies it's time to head back out there because the sun is gonna set soon and we do not want to be stuck in Petra in the dark. We wanted to take some more pictures on our walk back, and explore some of the caves without taking too much time, so we stopped in a few places on our way back for some adventurous fun. Almost every 3 minutes there was another Arab guy on a donkey, horse, or camel asking if we wanted a ride back to the entrance: "Taxi? Taxi? Free air conditioning!" and although we were very polite and said "No thank you" they still persisted: "Luxury camel ride!" and "This one is a Ferrari, that one a Lambourgini" and we smiled again and said "No thank you." They even had kids on donkeys trying to get passengers. They were super cute but we still said no. First of all, we wanted to walk and take our time so we could take pictures. Second of all, no one ever came up to us with 4 camels or donkeys at a time so we couldn't have all stayed together anyway. Nice try pals. At the Treasury, we stopped one last time to soak it all in. When we got to the top of the slot canyon, we finally decided to get onto those horses we saw at the beginning of our day. After all, they were included in our visit and we just had to tip the guides. I was so excited to get on a horse! It's been many many months now! I'm not exactly sure how Denise, Rachelle, and Carolyn felt about hopping aboard, but I was pumped.
We rode our horses back to the entrance to the park, tipped our guides, and thanked them for a wonderful ride during the sunset. Whew! We made it out before dark set in. We walked from the park entrance to the office to reclaim our bags and make our way to our hotel. A cute little old man tells us he's taking us to the Amra Palace where we have reservations for the evening. He walks us outside, and shows us to our vehicle - a pick up truck. Really? Not expecting that one, but OK, I hope this ride isn't too long! Just another hilarious transportation moment in Jordan. As promised, he gets us to our hotel and we check in.
The woman behind the counter has the skin color of Snow White, yet wrapped up in a hijab/head covering, and beautiful beaded black dress. When she greets us, she sounds English, or South African but I can't put my finger on it exactly. Not quite what I would normally expect when meeting a Muslim woman, but I go with the flow. She tells us we have 2 rooms upstairs - 2 beds in each. We thought we were going to be all together in one room but we get even more privacy this way, so it's fine with us! She also tells us about a special deal the hotel is offering this week for 13 Jordanian Dinars, or $20. The package includes: jacuzzi and swimming pool, sauna/steam room, scrub and massage, cup of tea, and unlimited use of internet (in their computer room of the hotel). This is seriously tempting. All of us are sore from walking so much during the day, and for such a great price, we might as well do this! We tell her we will come back and pay for it when we put our things down in our rooms. We each decide to do the deal but we'll pay first, get into our bathing suits for the sauna and jacuzzi, and then go down.
We all have our tickets and we're all ready to go. If you thought any of the above was an adventure, just wait. For the next post.
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