7 September 2010

Today was a total contrast to Petra. By which, I mean it was kind of boring and pointless. We spent four hours driving out into the desert to look at rock formations. The formations themselves were amazing and massive. They would dwarf Uluru.

We went all the way to Jordan for Ange and Bruno to pole dance on trees in the desert.

Kate

The tour guide was young and a bit arrogant. He was interesting but there was way too much driving for what we saw.


From here we drove to Aquaba and spent the afternoon by the pool relaxing. It was really nice. It was also a good perve. We ended up filling in a few hours here before boarding the ferry to Egypt. The ferry was bigger than I expected. I had an image of a Brisbane ferry but it was more like the QEII or similar.

We’d been pre-warned that getting on the ferry would be “interesting” and that there was the possibility we wouldn’t even leave the port. That was my main worry – we’d wake up and not have left. I didn’t want to do the trip awake and thankfully I didn’t have to.

Prior to getting the ferry we drove in and stopped in a mass of cars and trucks and vans etc all waiting to do the same thing. We got off the truck and followed the border agent into a big building filled with many sleeping bodies, men, women, and children. We stood in a queue and waited to pay our exit fees for Jordan. Once this was done, we were lead out and towards another building, up a flight of stairs and into another queue, so that we could have our passports stamped. Both of these were for the Jordan exit, so I’m not sure why we couldn’t do it all in one go.

After all of this we went back to the truck. It was roughly about midnight by this point. Eventually, with all of us dozing, the queue started to move and we slowly but surely got driven over the gang way and towards the ferry. We then had to get out of the truck again and follow Teegs into the ferry, up some stairs and into a large dining area, already filled with other passengers. We were once again the focus of some interest and some people came over asking for photos with some of us.

Ange and I almost missed out on a sleeping berth as they didn’t provide enough for us. We think the requested number was misunderstood. Teegs and Drew gave us their room so then it was a case of wait and see for them.

The sleeping berth was bunk beds. I asked Ange if she would take the top, which she did. The headroom, or rather lack of, made it awkward and funny to watch while she climbed up. Ange almost did the splits trying to get in. When she started saying “oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!!” we both lost it. Too funny!.

I nearly died getting onto the top bunk! Don’t forget the incredibly loud flush in the toilet and the moment where I dropped the entire roll of toilet paper in the bowl. Fun times! (Ange's contribution).