On Wednesday morning, as per usual Jet Lag, I woke up about an hour before my alarm went off. I was also really excited to finally travel to the south and make our way over to Petra, Jordan. After being stalled because the Israeli Budget wouldn’t give Preston the rental car for the price they originally offered, we finally got on the road about an hour late. Driving down 90 through the Negev is a visual experience everyone who comes to Israel should have the chance to see. What’s most fascinating is that the Israeli mountains look very different than the Jordanian mountains and the reason is because it’s the Great Rift Valley which starts just North. Of course, for a while the Negev is just desert with little to see, but for the most part it’s worth the roundtrip drive.

After making our way through the desert and also seeing the replica of the Tabernacle at Timna park, we finally got to the Israel-Jordan border crossing. The crossing was relatively easy for us, however, we crossed over at night around 6pm. Why was this a problem? Well, our Taxi ride was originally supposed to be 45 Jordanian Dinar (about $63 USD) for three people. But because it was at night, we were charged 60 JD (about $85 USD). So things got more expensive than we anticipated very quickly. So as we rode into Jordanian territory, no more than twenty minutes in our driver gets pulled over and gets a speeding ticket. The worst part was that this driver did not understand english at all so we really didn’t know what was going on at first. Then we turned down the road to go to Petra where our hotel was. We didn’t see it because it was at night, but this road has one of the most spectacular views in Jordan of the Mountains as well as the Great Rift Valley and at times of the Israeli Mountains. But it was at night, and no more than 5 minutes up the road was a major dust storm that lasted the entire way to Petra (a usual 30-40 minute drive turned into a little over an hour). Now, like I said, this has a spectacular view, however, that view also comes with dangerous slopes at times. Our driver, and this is not an exaggeration, could not see more than 10 feet in front of him at any given time. It was as if God was like, “Remember how you wanted to experience that dust storm in Jerusalem last week? Here you go!” We weren’t sure if we were going to make it to our hotel. Then, about half way there, our driver answers his phone and begins to talk during the dust storm AND with a manual operated vehicle. Let’s just say we were thrilled to enter our hotel doors when we arrived.

Our hotel wasn’t bad. It was 300 meters away from the entrance to Petra which made things easy for us. Now I could complain about the heater that had the most annoying sound in the world, but I’d rather tell you about our hot water…there wasn’t any…at first. Preston woke up around 6am and went to get a shower only to come out saying we didn’t have any. After a few rough days of traveling I really needed a hot shower to wake up. So I went in thinking there might be a place to turn on the boiler…there wasn’t. So I thought, “Maybe if the sink has hot water then our shower has to.” So I turned on the sink, let it run for a while and then boom, hot water! So I turned on the shower and by the grace of God we had hot water. So to save water, I turned off the sink…which for some reason turned off the hot water in the shower. So I had to keep the sink with hot water running in order to have hot water in the shower. BUT we had hot water!

After getting some breakfast we made our way down to the entrance to one of the 7 Wonders of the World. Now, at this point none of us had been able to get to an ATM. We assumed that the park entrance to one of the 7 Wonders of the World would have a credit card machine…they didn’t. The man told us it was $15 JD to enter the park. So we went over to another hotel which had an ATM inside and got enough cash for the park entrance and our taxi back. We came back to the entrance and he said, “There isn’t enough money. It’s $50 (About $75 USD) JD!” Apparently, we misheard him. So we did the same process over again. We came back a third time. One of my $50 JD bills from the ATM had a cigarette burn mark in it, so when I went to hand my bill to the clerk he looked at me as if I had done it. I said, “Sir, I just got this from the ATM. I’ve been here 3 times. When would I have had time to do that.” After giving me the evil stare for a minute he finally let me in (What a mess!).

$75 USD sounds like a lot of money for a park like this. As far as I know even Israel doesn’t charge this much for their parks. But it was totally worth every penny! I will be posting videos and pictures as soon as my computer starts working again (I’m writing this on my Tablet). We got in. We saw everything we wanted to see and made our way out of the park. It’s quite a trek up the hill to get out, so my two friends got a carriage up (this is actually quite normal). But before I could get a ride they had left. I thought you could get a donkey or camel to go back up for about 5 JD… I was wrong. So I ended up paying 10 JD ($15 USD) to get out. But he only took me half way and I only had a 50 JD bill.  Praise God, I saw some of our friends we had met the day before at the Jordan Border Crossing and they had change. I almost had to give the man way too much money for not even a full ride.

I’m gunna skip ahead here real quick because nothing exciting really happens for a while. We got our taxi ride back to Israel. Our taxi driver was crazy but he got us back quickly. We crossed the border without any problems. Got in the car and made our way up North. Since my two friends were going to tour the North, I decided to take the bus back from Ein Bokeq (Dead Sea Hotel Area) back to Jerusalem. Here’s where things get interesting once more. I had a carry on luggage, my book bag and my camera bag (In my defense, I didn’t know how long I would be traveling when I packed). The bus driver looked at me like I was crazy but finally opened the luggage bay underneath. I put my luggage away and then walked up the steps to pay. I handed in my Rav Kav (my Israel card to pay for bus/train transportation), but apparently it didn’t have enough on it. So he yelled at me for standing up and said, “It’s 44 shekels (a little over $10 USD).” Well, I didn’t realize it would be so much and I only had about 30 on me. Then he said, “Just have it ready before you get off.” Well I started walking back and I realize, “There’s no place to sit.” There was one place but a man had all of his bags on it. Well after standing for about 5 minutes on the windy roads along the Dead Sea he finally moved his bags (He wasn’t happy about it, but come one man!). As soon as I began to plant my butt in the seat, the bus driver starts yelling at me in Hebrew to pay. As I said, I didn’t have the money. So once again, Praise God, a man sitting near me offered to pay the rest of what I didn’t have. I mean this bus driver was legitimately screaming at me but he told me to have the money ready before I left (Deep sigh). With all of that being said, I made it back to a snowy/rainy Jerusalem, got a pizza and passed out for 14 hours thus ending my almost one month of non-stop chaos. I love traveling, but I was very glad to get back to my room to have some time to rest before my classes start next week. But now my computer is now out of comission for 10 business days and my classes start in a week. Praise God I have a good tablet and I purchased a keyboard while I was home. But it still isn’t the same and I don’t have all of my documents. So please pray that my computer gets fixed quicker than expected.