Kat's Visit: Part Four

My dear readers, in the immortal words of Motormouth Maybelle, it's time to wrap this mother up!  I'm hoping to finish out Kat's visit and my post on my trip to Hebron before departing on yet another adventure this weekend.

Bright and early on Wednesday morning, Kat and I awoke in the hostel, repacked our backpacks, and headed out to the curb to wait for our pickup from DesertEco Tours.  Shortly after our scheduled time, an open Jeep pulled up and we climbed in, introducing ourselves to Vanessa and Joe, who would be our companions for the next two days.

We drove to the Arava border crossing a few minutes away, then went through passport control into no-man's land before crossing into Jordan!

After crossing the border, we had a two-hour drive to Petra, during which we both snoozed.  We made a stop on the way in to see the Tomb of Aaron on a far-off mountain.

Finally we arrived in Petra and began our walk through the siq.  There were beautiful natural rock formations created by wind and rain erosion, and absolutely gorgeous colours.

We also saw some smaller carvings and several tombs along the way.

For a long time, Bedouins had lived in the tombs, but when scholars discovered the archaeological importance of the site, they were moved into government subsidized housing.  Eventually we arrived at the Treasury, the most famous site of the Rose Red City.

It was so magnificent and spectacular!

We continued walking along the street of facades until we encountered the Theatre -- a spectacular, 30,000 seat theatre carved entirely from one piece of stone!

We stopped and had lunched, and along the way we saw Camel Rock, a natural rock formation that looks like a camel!

 Then we decided to make the hike up to the Monastery -- 888 steps up, but absolutely worth it for the spectacular view!  I think it would be a beautiful place to watch the sun rise.

After that we walked all the way back down the stairs, along the street of facades, past the Treasury, through the siq, and up to the travel agent's office.  Here came trouble:  we had heard in the morning that DesertEco Tours had messed up our booking and booked us to spend the night in a hotel instead of the Bedouin camp as we requested.  We pointed this out to our driver, and he said to speak to the travel agents when we arrived.  When we first got into Petra we stopped there to drop off our luggage, and they told us they couldn't do anything.  When we returned, I pulled out my pushy inner Israeli and explained that we knew it wasn't their fault (they just make the bookings based on info from the tour company), but it certainly wasn't our fault, and we shouldn't have to pay for the tour company's mistake, so they'd better call them.  They did, and they explained that since it was the last day of Sukkot, they couldn't access the records to check until Friday.  I persisted.  They relented.  We won :)

So we took a taxi to Ammarin Bedouin Camp where we were greeted by Muhammad and Muhammad -- a common Arabic name, you see ;) They showed us to our tent and the showers, so we each quickly rinsed off the desert sand before changing into warm clothes -- always surprising to me, the desert gets freezing at night!  I'm getting used to it since I live in the desert now.

After that we headed into the common tent and joined Joe and Vanessa and met two couples from the UK -- and one from Foster City!  We drank delicious sweet mint tea, visited their small museum, and had an incredible dinner.

Man, sitting next to her made me look tan!  Coming to Israel with my California summer tan and then being out in the sun all the time kept me rather brown :) Afterward Kat and I stayed to talk to the Muhammads for a while and got some basic Arabic lessons.  After they powered down the generator for the night, Kat and I went out and looked at the stars -- there was no light pollution for miles around, so we could see SO MANY.  It was absolutely gorgeous.

The next day we rose bright and early, dressed, and had breakfast with our fellow campers, and were picked up by yet another Muhammad.

He was to be our driver and guide for our tour of the Wadi Rum desert.

This was one of Kat's favourite parts of the trip, because it involved lots of climbing up onto tall things, which she adores!

I, on the other hand, prefer to keep my feet firmly planted on the...sand.

But I did enjoy being her designated photographer...

...running down sand dunes...

...and RIDING A CAMEL.

Highlight of the trip for me.  We also had a delicious lunch of chicken, salad, and pitas.  Finally they drove us back to the Arava border (I napped again) and we crossed back into Israel.  On the way, Joe decided to make no man's land into a country called Joetopia.  We spent the Jeep ride back to the airport planning out our lovely country.  We said goodbye to them at the airport, then went back to the hostel so I could pick up the bikini I'd left out to dry.  We swung by the bus station to grab tickets on the last bus of the night to Jerusalem, then decided to go stick our feet in the Red Sea!

Two Israeli seas down, two to go :) We grabbed a shwarma for dinner, then headed back to the bus station, where we ran into my friend Charlotte, who was trying desperately to talk her way onto the fully booked bus.  And she succeeded!  So on the way back I snoozed, listened to music, and read Lord of the Rings.  Kat and I shared a taxi back to the Kfar with Charlotte, then took showers and fell straight into bed.

For Kat's last day, we decided to try and go back and hit something we'd failed to do earlier:  the Mount of Olives.  On the way, we stopped by the amazing falafel shop and got Kat one last amazing falafel.

Sadly, since it was a Friday, a lot of the spots we wanted to hit on the Mount of Olives were closed, but we hit a few spots, including Dominus Flevit, where Jesus cried for the sins of the world...

...the garden of Gethsemane...

...the Jewish cemetery, the most expensive cemetery in the world because many believe that this will be where the Messiah comes...

...a holy rooster?...

...and we also found an incredible view of the Old City.

Kat was feeling a little unwell at that point, so we headed home, lazed around for a while, watched TV while Kat packed, and then had pasta for dinner while watching The King's Speech.  She had never seen it, so I knew we had to watch it!  Then she went to sleep early in order to be vaguely conscious for her 3AM sherut, whereas I stayed up until 1AM, napped for a couple hours, walked her out, said goodbye, and went back to sleep.  It was so sad to wake up without her there, and even sadder to be facing a big pile of homework!

The big news of this post:  I am officially planning a trip to Egypt!  I am so excited that I will a) be checking Africa off my continents list (5 down!), and b) traveling into every country that borders Israel that one can legally enter with an Israeli stamp and visa in one's passport.  One of my current life goals is to fill up my current passport before it expires in 2018, and I'm looking forward to getting four more stamps =) My dear friend Charlotte found a reasonably-priced two day tour to Cairo departing from Eilat and invited me to join her.  It will be a jam-packed and exhausting weekend (leaving Jerusalem at 5PM Thursday, returning in the wee hours of Sunday morning), but we've agreed that the physical and fiscal costs are worth it:  this is a unique opportunity that we won't have two months from now when we return to the US!