Day 1 Saturday 29th May 2010, London-Amman.

'Welcome to Jordan'

Cris' sister Margot had arrived safely the day before on a flight from Spain. Cris, Margot and Keith all left together to meet Iwona at Heathrow. Once there we checked in our bags but had to take Iwona and Margot's to outsize luggage, which meant almost carrying them onto the plane ourselves!

Once on board they had us sitting on the stand for almost and hour before we took off. Apparently the so called third party company handling the bags where short staffed... When they had managed to find enough plebs to load the bags we were then given a departure slot two hours later! Due to some sort of problem over Austria. Thankfully this came down to a matter of minutes as we taxied toward the runway, just as the captain had suggested, in his rather longwinded explanation for the delay. Definitely a case of too much information!

Keith has been off the booze now for a whole week in preparation for the trip and the heat of the desert. He is hoping to loose his travelling alias 'Mr. Puddle' earned while in Asia!

After a uneventful flight, save for the delay, we arrived in Amman five hours later. We got our visas, met our taxi guy, who was waiting with a sign with Cris' name on it (how sweet!) to take us to our first hotel in Madaba. While queuing for the visas we couldn't help notice an older British couple with their daughter. They ended up dropping out of the queue as they searched frantically for a missing passport. They show up again later on in the week and it turns out they are Welsh.

The hotel was a nice new place and we even had a telly in our room, which we never switched on of course! We decided to pop out for a quick drink before bed. There was a place opposite the hotel, which seemed to be for the exclusive use of local men. Rather predictably, after wandering aimlessly for a while we ended up there. It was bloody expensive at 2 Jordanian Dinars (JD) for a cup of tea!