Looking at the suburbs of Aqaba, Jordan in the foreground and Elat, Israel on the far hill.We had arranged to pick up a rental in the border city of Aqaba, Jordan, as our Saudi car is not allowed outside the country. Aqaba is the gateway to Jordan from the Red Sea. You can see Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt from where we parked and started through the process of crossing of the international border, which is always an adventure in itself. The first snag was when the Saudi border police told us we were not allowed to walk across. While discussing our options a young Saudi guy told us we could ride with him so we loaded up our backpacks, hopped in his truck and drove across.
The young Saudi man dropped us off at the first major intersection we came to and we thanked him and I gave him one of my remaining Snap-On brand flashlights. They’re really nice and have a lifetime guarantee and I could tell he was going to get a kick out of telling all his friends some Americans crossing the border gave him a flashlight.
Our cell phones were working in Jordan (a definite plus in the Middle East) so I called my rental car contact to come and get us. We picked up our rental and drove northward through the Ramadan traffic out of Aqaba to Petra. In no time we were weaving upward through the mountains and getting nearer to Petra. We arrived at the Petra Crown Plaza around 1:00 a.m. having survived the swerving rear-end of our not-so-peppy little rental which seemed to have a mind of it’s own when steering any other way except straight ahead.
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