Matt & Steph - Day 2

Saturday the guys woke up bright and early and went snorkeling (the gear had to be returned by 8am). They took Matt's underwater camera and looks like they got a few really great pictures. After their adventure, they came back, ate breakfast and we were off to Petra. If only we knew what we were in for. In September Sara and I had gone with a tour group but didn't have that of an great experience with the tour company. Matt and Steph seemed to think it would be pretty easy to just catch a taxi on the Jordanian border and do Petra on our own, so that was our game plan. We were able to "exit Israel" and obtain Jordanian visas with no problems. Once in the parking lot on the Jordanian side there were 5 taxi drivers available, but I'm pretty sure they were all from the same company. The head guy indicated it would be $180 USD for the 4 of us to go to Petra and return. Matt was our "negotiator" who had in mind $100-$120 USD. So the negotiations began... we finally ended up at $140 and were on our way. As we were driving away the cab driver said something about switching drivers in a bit. We didn't quite understand what he was talking about but within 5 minutes we were stopping and getting out of his taxi on the side of the road. Hmmmm something seems fishy here.

Anyway, another taxi was nearby and he motioned for us to get in... So do we need to renegotiate our price? I'm going to let Matt take care of this one. Soon we were on our way... at least headed in the right direction. Then the taxi stops at a gas station??? Okay it's already 10:30 and we are burning precious daylight with a 2 hour ride in front of us. The driver comes back a few minutes later with some juice and nuts for us. Snacks...that's kind of nice of him. And we are off again.... or so we thought. About 10 minutes down the road a "random" police stop pulls us over. The driver can't find the appropriate papers and he is asked to get out of the car. We are all sitting there thinking... Great another delay, are we ever going to get to Petra. Soon another cop car shows up with more officers. One of the original officers comes over to us and says... You speak English? Unfortunately your driver is a criminal and you will need a new one for your trip. Did he just say CRIMINAL? What exactly is he wanted for? How could this have happened to us? Perhaps the organized tour might have been the best route to go after all. The officer was kind enough to offer to call another taxi for us. Thanks, but are we going to have to re-negotiate rates again? Is this a scam? Glad there is 4 of us. After about half an hour the original taxi guy shows up with another driver and says this new driver can take us the rest of the way. And once again we were off towards Petra. This driver did make a couple of smoke break stops along the way but we did reach Petra without any further traffic stops just after 1pm (over 3 hours from when we started at the border!). Turns out that making it to Petra without any additional police stops was a very good thing because when we got to Petra our driver got out, ran to another vehicle, and ran back to ours with some paperwork. Apparently all of his documents were in Petra and had we been pulled over a second time we would have had more issues! Can you believe it???? And this was just getting to Petra, what are the chances of us getting back to the border?

Our taxi driver was helpful and assisted us in getting our tickets into the park. We arranged to meet him at 4:30pm exactly where he dropped us off. This would give us plenty of buffer time to get back to the border before it closed at 8pm. Finally at Petra... we started on our hike. We had a wonderful time and the sites were spectacular even for the second time. It was a bit chilly though, which I hadn't anticipated at all. Matt was the only one with pants and long sleeves, the rest of us were in shorts and short sleeves and wishing we had brought our sweatshirts. Strange. I was just here in mid September and thought I was going to die of heat exhaustion. Winter has arrived I guess. At 4:30 we were back at the designated spot, but there was no taxi driver. Hmmm. A little concerning, maybe his watch is slow? We waited and waited. Well, the border closes at 8pm, how long are we willing to wait? At 4:55 we started to get up and look for another option and then we see our taxi driver come running up. Apparently he was waiting in a different spot for us. We jumped in the taxi and headed back to the border at 140kph. We were flying down those roads...I was fearful for my life on multiple occasions. I think we made it in record time, under 1.5 hours. We made it back through customs and were happy to be back at our car on the Israeli side.