I had to renew the visa I was given upon entering Israel, so I figure if I had to go to Jordan to do that, I may as well make a trip out of it and see Petra. I definitely did get a good adventure out of it, but didn’t quite make it to Petra (well, I kind of did). It’s a great story…

I left Ramallah super early, and because I’m a cheap traveler I went the long way rather than pay the extra 3 dollars for a private, direct taxi. I got to the border around 9 am. Nervously I entered the building. I just hadn’t had time to go over my story and knew I would be easy to trip up if they questioned me for long. (Of course you can’t say you live in Palestine.) I paid the exit tax (a whopping 30 dollars!) and then went up to the passport control girl. The first thing I did was ask how to say thank you in Hebrew. She told me and then smiled. “Morgan?” she asked as she looked at my passport.

“What?” I responded. A second smile from her calmed me. I smiled back. Then she stamped my passport and said goodbye. I was so shocked I took my passport and rather than walking on, I just stood there dumfounded. I roused myself, said thank you in Hebrew (toda), and walked on. That was it. I got on the bus, they put my bag underneath for me, and I sat there with the stupidest grin on my face. I’m still shocked by how easy it was. The bus finally crossed the bridge (you pay 3 dollars to ride the bus across for five minutes). On the Jordanian side they gave me a piece of paper, and that was that. I spoke with a foreign woman who was sending a friend to Israel. She asked where I was going, and offered me a ride to Amman. Really, I couldn’t have been any more stunned by how well the day was going. I got in Gill’s car (she’s an Australian woman living in Jordan). It took longer than a taxi would have because the woman kept stopping to help me run errands. She took me to a phone shop to fix my mobile, a liquor store to stock up on beer, and money changers to convert to dinar. I felt like I was visiting a long lost aunt. And not only was she helpful, she was so endearing with her high energy, down to earth charm. She dropped me off at Abdali, the bus station, armed with her phone number and some advice.

I was sent to Jeet, a bus company up the street. I was starting to get tired, but I hauled myself with my heavy pack up the hill to the bus’s office where the man swore to me the bus would drop me off in Dana, where I was going. I had an hour to kill, so I passed out—mouth wide open and drooling—in a waiting room FULL of people. I boarded the bus and sat next to the sweetest girl in the world. Her name is Ala’ and wa’la she was a good person. I love good hearted people! Half way along the trip, she asked where I was going. I couldn’t remember the name of the town above Dana, so I asked her what it said on my ticket. That’s when we all discovered that I was misinformed. The bus I was on was direct to Aqaba—the southern most city (resort town) of Jordan. The man lied to me to sell me a ticket. The whole bus knew about it and was very concerned for me. They were upset when I sarcastically declared, “Welcome to Jordan.” After some stress, I resigned myself to my fate. I was going to Aqaba. So I got out the photocopies I had from my guide book and started hunting for a hotel. Ala’ helped me out, using her cell phone for me and insisting that she’d make sure I was taken care of once we got there. And she was good to her word. She dropped me off at the door of my hostel. It was more than I wanted to spend, but the guy said he had roof top mattresses. So I went up to check them out. I was supposed to have met a friend, Nick, in Petra. Obviously that wasn’t happening, but I was hoping he’d not kept our date and had gone to Aqaba—in which case I’d have found him at this (the cheapest) hotel. I asked the receptionist if they had a guest traveling on an Australian passport there. They did but their description was of a very tall guy, and Nick wasn’t that tall. So I went up to see the roof, but the guy showing me around crept me out. I decided not to stay there but finished looking at it to be polite.

The roof had an incredible view of the sea and city lights. I glanced at the mattress on the floor. Only one person staying up there. Not too safe for me. I did a double take. I recognized the down jacket, then the brown shoes, and finally the backpack. It was Mark! The guy I spent two days with in Istanbul. We met when I desperately needed a hundred dollars in Turkish lira at the Syrian Consulate. He was my bank immediately after I ran into him (literally) when he was coming out of the elevator and I was rushing off to find money. Anyhow, I started yelling, “That’s my friend! I found my friend!” Mark was supposed to have been in Israel by then. We thought we would miss each other since I’d left for Jordan. At that moment, he was in the internet café emailing me an apology. Not only was the timing incredible, but I wasn’t even going to Aqaba and certainly didn’t want to stay at that hostel. He came back a few hours later. I shouted to him on the street when I saw him crossing to the hostel, “Hey, don’t you recognize me?!” He ran up five flights of stairs, and I ran down. It was, I admit, a bit dramatic. But we were really excited to see each other. It was crazy luck.

Mark decided to stay with me in Jordan and travel into Israel with me at the end of the week. Next morning we headed to Wadi Rum, the famous Jordanian desert. We spent two days camping there, walking around in red sand and climbing up mountains. It was beautiful and fun. Next we headed to Dana Nature Reserve. It was Friday, and transport there is complicated anyhow much less on the holy day. We ended up going through Petra’s village Wadi Musa (so I was basically there) and paying drivers to get us from town to town until we finally made it to Dana. Unfortunately the guys at the hotel were bastards, but did meet a really fun Australian couple. Next day we all hiked together. I was so exhausted by the end of the day, I could hardly make it up out of the valley. Mark had to drag me up parts of it that were too steep. After two days in Dana, we headed back to Amman. We got a lift with a French couple in their private taxi to a town called Tafila. There we jumped on a bus that was already full, squeezing into make-shift seats for a few hours. It was so uncomfortable. In Amman, I paid a guy to use his mobile and call Gill. She insisted we stay for dinner and spend the night. We ended up spending two nights in her beautiful home. The first night we joined an informal dinner party. The guests were friends of Gill’s sister. They were from Singapore. I was so impressed by them. Great food and wonderful conversation with highly educated, traveled people. The wife was a Supreme Court judge in Singapore. The husband an international maritime lawyer. Even their sixteen year old daughter offered enchanting conversation. The next evening we went to the European Film Festival before crashing for a second night in paradise.

Next morning we headed off. I was refused exit at the Jordanian border. Still not clear why. So we headed north to the border in the Jordan Valley. There we waited forever while they figured out what to do with me (visa problem apparently). Finally we crossed. The Israeli side gave us a mini interrogation, which was a joke but still made me nervous. So we ended up god knows where with no public transport, no private cars to hitchhike with, and no people to share the fixed rate of the taxi. Not many options. We could have walked it, but didn’t know how close we were at the time to the next town. We caught the taxi and were dropped off at a bus stop. It was too late to journey to Ramallah, so we opted to stay in Tiberias—45 minutes away. I made a sign in my journal for Tiberias and stuck out my thumb. It worked. A truck picked us up. The man gave us a tour of his tomato green house, handed us a bag of 5 kilos of tomatoes and pointed us in the right direction. We joined an Israeli girl and together flagged down another trunk. It wasn’t going in our direction, but another car stopped without our signaling for it at all. An older man who chattered away with the girl like they were family. For the last branch, we took a ride in a delivery car. It was easy and interesting.

So there we were. Tiberias sits right on the Sea of Galilee. It was beautiful. And the hotel gave us a huge discount after I bored him for ten minutes with my sob story of how broke we were. It was true, we were too broke to stay there. I had the world’s most expensive and most delicious falafel sandwich with curry mango sauce on it (a major highlight in my life). The town was so nice, and coming from Jordan felt like a time warp. Next morning I said goodbye to Mark and headed to Ramallah on an all day journey. A bus that stops every five miles to pick people up, a local bus in Jerusalem to the Old City, a hike from Jaffa Gate to Damascus Gate with stops to say hello to shop keeper friends, a visit at the convent, a bus to the checkpoint, a walk across Calandia, and finally a service to Amideast, my work. Home at last.

Would you believe me if I said that was the short version?