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So, today was a very long day. I've been in Dahab for a few days now (another entry on that later) but today was the day set aside for visiting Petra. We had to leave Dahab at 5:00 for the two-hour drive to Taba. Taba is one of the areas along the coast where you can see four different countries at the same time: Egypt to the west, Israel just to the north, Jordan and Saudi Arabia across the sea to the east. At Taba we went through Egyptian immigration and boarded the ferry that took us across the sea to the Aqaba Marina in Jordan. I spent this journey chatting with two Americans from Philadelphia, Shannon and Bhuta. There we shuffled past Jordanian immigration and congregated on land. We took off for the bus that would take us to Petra. After about an hour of driving through the Jordanian desert our bus broke down! We figured that the laws of nature demanded that the bus would instantly work again the moment we were all off of it, so we hurried off into the sun, but - alas! - the bus remained broken. About 30 minutes later another one arrived for us and we continued the journey to Wadi Musa (the jumping-off point for Petra). Most of us slept through this journey due to the terrible hour we were forced to awaken.
Finally, we arrived at Wadi Musa at about 13:00. We were dropped off at a rather swanky hotel for lunch and then drove the huge bus through the twisty-turny streets until we arrived at our destination. One of the first things we saw: the Indiana Jones Gift Shop. That's right. We walked through the canyons and rock formations for about 30 minutes, expecting that the stone city lay behind every turn. We were disappointed in our expectations many times. Just as we were beginning to give up hope of ever finding Petra and thinking that the whole city was just a sham to boost Jordanian tourism, there it was! We turned a corner and the Treasury was right in front of us. Due to bus trouble and hold-ups at immigration we were short for time, so we walked/ran through the city checking out the different buildings carved right into the walls of the canyons. Between the carvings and the bright colors of the stone it was a beautiful sight. It certainly is worth the trouble to get to.
Then we walked/ran back through the city and up through the canyons to get back to the bus. All in all, we had about 2 hours at the city itself, which I do not think was enough tim at all but was certainly better than nothing. The bus departed 30 minutes late (I guess Jordan is not so different from Egypt) and we drove for about 45 minutes before turning around and driving all the way back to Wadi Musa - it turns out that we had to pick up other tourists who had missed their bus back to Aqaba. So after that we were finally on our way back. More driving and more driving until we got to the Aqaba Marina. Once there we shuffled through Jordanian immigration once more and settled on the ferry. It also left about 30 minutes late. Then we were crossing the sea and making our way back to Egypt. More shuffling through immigration and a health check (we were only in Jordan for half a day - if anyone was showing symptoms it would most likely have been something they had contracted in Egypt!) and we were back on the minibus to Dahab. After a long, cramped drive we made it to Dahab at about 23:00. It was a long day.
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