City of Stone

I don't even know where to begin. Right now I'm in an internet cafe in Petra, Jordan, but what lead up to this moment has seemed to take place over a week insteade of less then 24 hours. And the night isn't even over yet. I had one of those great traveling days which makes it worth it to travel.


Me and Annie started off on the midnight bus to Eliat. I thought this took 5-6 hours but it only took 4.

On the bus ride up there a 15 year old continuously puked ON the bus. Not because he was carsick, but because he was drunk.

I was just trying desperately to sleep since I haven't slept properly in forever since Ive been living at hostels.

I even told the boy behind be to "Sheket Bevakesha" but then i found out he spoke English.

ISraelis are soo inconsiderate! On normal buses in normal countries everybody shuts the fuck up. On this bus people were chatting in the middle of the night, puking and playing their cell phone rings.

Annie was talking a lot to the guys beside us, one short and one tall guy and then decided when we landed at 4 am to ask them if we could sleep in the their hotel room.

Not with them-but in their hotel.

But they hadn't booked a hotel so we trapaised around with them in a cab from hotel to hotel until finally I gave up and forced Annie to sleep on a beach.

In these hotels though everybody was up and they all looked about 10 years old.

Its Eilat I guess..? How are these people going to be defending the country in a few years??

So we went down to the beach, dragged 2 loose loungers down the beach, slightly away from the 24 hour blaring hip hop and passed out.

We awoke to a beautiful sunset over the mountains of Jordan, across the sea. OKay well actually I was kind of grumpy and didn't really appreciate it, but it was pretty!

Then we hopped on a bus and asked the driver 'border' and he said yes so we got on.

Then Annie reminded me that I didn't ask him WHICH border and this bus actually only went to the Egypt border.

Comforting that no buses go to Jordan border.

So we hopped into a cab and went through Jordianian customs. Annie got a tiny bit questioned but they barley look at me.

Or maybe they looked at me and was like "hmm nice Jewish Girl" then looked at my passport and thought "ah..nice jewish Canadian girl". and decided that was more then enough.

We thought Jordan was so cheap but it really isnt! Or at least with the xchange rate that we got it wasn't/

A taxi to Petra was about 75 USD.

But we didn't give up and got a taxi to Aquba (11 USD) and then found out their was an Arabic bus going to Petra that was only 7.50 USD.


Oh we are such good, ghetto, budget travelers.

So on this Arabic bus we sat beside two very nice Jordinain men (THEY ARE ALL SOOOOO NICE!!!!!!!!!-not even a litle bit of sarcasm) and they gave us a biscuit that basically was a large mundle broid.

Near the end of the ride the guy beside me started taking pics of us with his cell phone then slid a ring on my finger.

I kid you not.

I am currently engaged to this man who got off at the next spot.
I think.

It was very nice anyways. Who gives a ring to a strange girl with no mutual language in common?

Then we arrived in Petra and happened across this hostel and checked in a private room for only 12 USD a person (btw, im converting Jordinan Dinar to USD)

Let me just sum up what had happened before noon

1. boy pukes on bus
2. we unsucessfully mooch hotel room
3. sleep on beach
4. take wrong bus in direction of Egypt Border
5. cross Jordan Border
6. take Arabic bus to Petra

right so at noon we got a lift to petra. The man driving us form the hostel invited us to a wedding tonight, which we are going to in an hour.

at petra..they don't fucking accept visa and the exchange rate was shit.
So we decided to walk to an ATM machine, to which we got direction times varying between 6 min- 26 min.

Annie hadn't slept at all, and it was extremely hot and she was getting verrrry tired.;

So we stopped in a shop and the man offered to drive us to the ATM machine.

He was 33 and was getting married next week to a 23 year old women. He was very cleanly dressed and had just opened his new shop. He used to work as a Tourist guide. Annie bought water (one of our like bajillion water bottles bought) and I bouight this not-so-good packaged arabic cake thing.

So his partener came and drove us to the ATM and then drove us back to Petra. He was supposed to drive us back towards the shop but we really just wanted to go to Petra already.

So at Petra we pay our extremely expensive fee (30 USD).

Annie sees that horses are available to take us to the entrance to Petra, about 800 mt. away. I refuse because Im a cheap ass and I like walking and have never ridden a horse. but she wins out and so 5 USD each, we hop on a horse.

The only other horse I have ridden was when I was 4 and its attached to a string around a pole. Maybe that was a donkey though?

Okay so I have to go now..but we are only at 2pm! I will updte later!