WhereRtheWilliams?: Crossing borders...

Getting to Petra was an interesting experience!

We first hired a car from Dahab to Taba (Egypt's border near Israel) - too lazy after restful Dahab to do the bus thing. A policeman at the border tried to rip us off by saying it cost 200LE each to exit. Thankfully my pedantic research meant I knew this was a lie! When I protested he said actually it was 200LE TOTAL. Then when I just stood there he said 10LE per person. This time I loudly said to Ben "It's meant to be free to exit Egypt". A senior officer quickly stepped up and said "let me see your passports" and then after a cursory look said "it's 8LE total - 2 LE each". That was more like it!! This paid for a little glue-on stamp each.

Then we had to walk to the the main passport control building and fill out our exit cards on which we glued on the little stamps! :) The guys in that building did their thing with our passports and we were out in no-man's land walking the 250m to the Israeli border.

By this stage I was a bit rattled and stressed. We got greeted with smiles at the Israel end which helped a bit. However, when our bags went through the x-ray machine they saw something that made them want to examine one bag in detail. It was the 2 tagine clay pots I had bought in Luxor! Same shape as landmines Ben reckoned!! They carried them off into a room and then brought them back after awhile and said I could repack the bag. phew!

Next we walked over to the passport control booths and I asked the lady there if she could please not stamp our passport as we had "family" living in Sudan who we may want to visit at some stage. I apologised profusely but she was lovely about it and got us to fill out some other forms and stamped those instead.

however, when she got to my paperwork she asked me for my full name and checked again where I was born. Then she rang someone who obviously looked me up on some database (Terrorist??!) and then asked me for my father's full name! By this stage I was getting very nervous and self conscious! Then a supervisor came into her cubicle and there was much talking and checking me out!! Then they doubled checked that I was definitely in transit and finally they stamped the card!! oh my goodness... I got some extra gray hairs during this time!

Then we walked to the exit gate and had a very jolly guy who greeted us with a booming voice... "Welcome to the land flowing with milk, honey and Benni (pointing to his nametag)!!" That got us smiling. Then he continues with "Where's Brad Pitt" to Ben (at every point along the way they insist on calling out your name and waiting for you to respond as if the four of us all looked alike!!!) and "You must be Angelina Jolie" to me! :o) A couple of serious looking Israeli girls grabbed our passports off him and did a double check of it all. Obviously they don't trust ol' Benni boy!!

As we walked away we watched him get a line of people leavign Israel (locals by the looks) to start singing the national anthem (we think) as he conducted them. What a character!

By this stage 7 people had handled our passports and we were only halfway to Jordan!

Next we took a cab with a jolly Israeli taxi driver (very proud of his country) who drove us to the other end of the Eilat area - near the Aqaba border (jordan), giving us an unexpected tour and running commentary in his limited English on the way!

At that end we had to pay 101 shekels each to depart Israel, have our passports (cards) stamped and then walk across to the Jordan border - about 200m. At that border we gave our passports to a guy who entered our info into a computer and then passed it to 2 guys int he next room. At the window to the 2nd room we had to look into a machine to read our irises or something. Weird!!

And so finally after 1.5 hours and much handling and scrutinizing of our passports we were in Jordan and heading the 2hours to Petra in a taxi.

Chalk this up to yet another experience!!