My Trip to Wadi Musa....

Okay, so since we have finally returned from Jordan, I am now able to actually write about it. So to make it easier to read, I'm going to post about it as a few different topics, that way I can recall what happened easier and since there is a lot of information, it will make it easier to read (hopefully). We'll start with the trip to Wadi Musa...

Since I am not able to actually go on a trip in which actually getting to the destination goes as planned, we (my roommate and I) started off this trip by taking a bus to Nuweiba, a little resort city on the eastern part of the Sinai in Egypt. We left on a big East Delta Bus at around 11:15 pm on Wednesday night, assuming that we would be in Nuweiba around 6:45 am the next day. The bus was dirty, smelly and it was so cramped that even a sardine would feel suffocated. But alas, hours later (and a terrible Arabic movie), we arrived in Nuweiba.

After arriving there, we sat and remembered that we would have to wait for around 3 hours just to buy a ticket to take a ferry to Aqaba (in Jordan). The ferry wouldn't actually leave until noon, if it left on time (and this being Egypt, that wouldn't happen). So after being offered some roasted pigeon at 7 am, we went with plan B. We decided to find a taxi driver to take us back up to Taba, cross the border into Israel and go through Eilat, where we would cross the border again into Jordan.

Surprisingly, this worked pretty well (and ended up being a little cheaper than the ferry ride). Alex and I took a taxi to Taba and began our walk across the border. We figured in about 20 minutes we would be in Israel and 4 hours ahead of schedule.....then we met the Nigerians....

I knew that it was Easter weekend, but I didn't realize what that meant.....pilgrims. We met a tour group from Nigeria at the Taba border crossing and we were caught between two (possibly three) tour buses of Nigerian pilgrims heading to Jerusalem. The Egyptians were not prepared and so it took about an hour and a half to cross the border and finally get into Israel. Where we were quickly able to catch a cab and we were dropped off at the Jordanian border crossing 30 minutes later.

After a short exit process and entrance into Jordan, we were quickly able to find a cab that took us the entire 2 hour trip to Wadi Musa, where Petra is located. We made it to our hotel (the Petra Palace) around 3 pm local time, hours ahead of where we would have been if we waited for the ferry in Nuweiba.