This morning I thought we should have got ourselves a new sleeping bag as the ones we are using feels warned out and rather thin. Last night the temperature didn’t go below 12C and we felt cold in the sleeping bag. After packing up we thought we could make use of the facilities in the pool area and stopped by.  I got in alright without any questions asked and made use of the toilet facilities. When I returned with Alison all was OK except that Alison had to go and check if the car was locked. Then all hell broke loose when the receptionist asked her to pay the entrance fees. Well to cut the long story short I had to go out of the pool area as well, when she called me out.

The neat thing to do was to ask Ali, at the beach area if we could go in. We were allowed in without any further payment, and while taking photos I heard Adrian crying and Alison telling him off. After some commotion, when Adrian was calmed down, he told me that he was scared of the monster in the Dead Sea. I had ago at Alison telling her not to inform the kid unduly of unnecessary things which would scare the wits out of him. We stayed up on the beach to let Adrian play while we had tea, when I spotted a local family getting comfortable and approached them. The head of the family Mr. Zahid could speak a little English and had come for the day to spend time with his daughters and grand children. First thing he did was offered me bread which he was eating and I accepted it and offered me coffee or tea whichever I wished. I had to decline on the coffee as I knew what it would taste like and was thought to have declined on the tea as well as no tea was served. All the same we had a nice little chat about some of the prophets having their beginnings around the area and then it was time for us to move on.

The road towards Aqaba was fine as we passed small towns along the Dead Sea coast full of vegetation and apparently it was tomatoes season then as we saw lorries loaded with tomatoes going north. At about 100kms from Aqaba we came to a check point with a junction towards the left. As Alison handed the passport she shut the windows which caused annoyance to the officer who told her to put it back down. I got annoyed too as the reason for her doing that was to keep the flies out and could get us into trouble. I asked the officer for the direction to Petra and he indicated for us to turn left.

Turn left I did and after a few kms came to a junction but as there were no signs indicating Petra we carried straight on until we saw a man waiting by the side of the road who told us that we should have turned right and taken the road to Mahli. The road was awful with lots of pot holes until we got to the edge of the mountains when it smoothen out but then came the windy bits. I was beginning to wonder if we were on the right track or a joke played by the Jordanian Officer on us, when we came across bus with its passengers having a picnic along a wider stretch of the road. They told us we were going in the right direction to my relief!

At the top of the mountain we stopped for a light lunch and shortly afterwards was joined by a Jordanian family at the same spot. The Hassan family who hails from Petra was on a day outing today being a Friday, invited us for coffee but we settled for a glass of coke each. I was hoping they would invite us to their house but no such invitation was forthcoming and we left after that/

The scenery thereafter was fascinating with surface of the mountains showing what nature could do to rocks surfaces. In the plateau there are efforts to cultivate the land and no doubt in a few years there will be lots of greenery around.

As we drove into Petra we could see lots of hotels mainly smaller ones and discovered later that the big ones are situated outside the town on the Kings Way. Then we met a guy who was admiring Tuah and he turned out to be an Israeli tourist guide who told us about Valentine Hotel owned by a Bedouin with an Italian wife. We found it without too much trouble and for the price we had to pay 15JD per night we could put up with anything including having to sit sideways in the loo and jump over it to get to the shower.

We settled in for the night and booked our dinner and breakfast at an additional 4JD and 2JD respectively. The dinner was laid out buffet style and it was good although I couldn’t really make out what we were eating as the lights were so dim, but ate I did.