walk like a nabatean

Greetings again... we have reached Dahab, Egypt, "travelers' paradise." That's about halfway down Sinai on the coast of the gulf of Aqaba. We can see the lights from some city in Saudi Arabi across the gulf.. room at Auski Camp for 10 shekels/pounds each.

let's see.. Toni & I left Amman the day before yesterday via Minibus and for the fare of JD 1.5 each set out on the three hour journey to Wadi Musa / Petra. Stayed two nights at Hotel Valentine (@ JD 1 each) at Petra, spent yesterday at Petra. Yeah, the Nabatean city is amazing, but the most amazing part for me was hiking out to sme point beyond the Monastary and having the sweeping view over the terrain & jordan valley.

Met a troop of ~ five Poles at Valentine who had come overland all the way from Krakow. Impressive. Everyone we met in Jordan (westerners that is) has been travelling north or south.. most coming from Turkey through Syria and thusly have interesting stories. We have been eating food from all over arabia.. cheese from Jordan, guava juice from Kuwait, dates from Iraq, soda from Syria..

Jordanians overall were very, very nice.. but in Wadi Musa (i.e. Petra) they make a business off of taking advantage of tourists.. annoying. Amman and Aqaba were better in this respect.

Last night, walking back to Valentine after a long day of hiking through Petra, we were startled by bursts of machine-gun fire, right above us. As I dive for cover, smoe locals notice the distress and laugh, "Don't worry, it's just a wedding!" There were parties all over Wadi Musa! guns shot into the air until around 00:00... rather disturbing.. spent the time indoors.

Our JD 1 accomodations were sleeping on the roof.. it actually gets rather cold in Wadi Musa at night.. fortunately there was a generous supply of heavy blankets.

Toni turned back into Israel at Aqaba to return to Tel Aviv this morning. I was alone for about an hour until |I ran into the two Australians with whom we had eaten lunch at Petra. My p[assport photo (from Tallinn) has caused trouble at each border crossing and leaving Jordan I had to show it to just about every customs official...

Took the "slow boat" to Egypt and it took about 9-10 hours (cost JD 16), of which the boat was only moving for about 2-3 hours. (-: Egyptians seem to dress quite differently than the Jordanians. Most of the egyptians on the boat (& there were only 5 westerners) were wearing white gowns w/ white skullcaps.. quite different from the bedouin look.

The australian guy was quite popular w/ the gyptians.. they all were qutie friendly but eventually it became apparent that they wanted to use him as a reference on visa applications to australia!

At Nuweiba we had to run around and get various stamps, visas, etc, before being allowed into customs. The five of us Westerners on the boat were all bound for Dahab so we shared a car down.. (EGP 22 each) rather crazy drive down. Wonderful night sky. very hot though.