Ferry to Jordan

Before taking this ferry, I had heard many horror stories about it. According to both the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet, you absolutely must show up in Nuweiba to buy ferry tickets at least two hours before your departure time. Then you are supposed to fill up that time with miserable waiting in line, while you are forced to relieve yourself in squalid squat toilets and subjected to unreasonable and unexplained delays. It probably is more pleasant to go from Egypt to Jordan by bus, but Dan and I didn't have a choice—plane tickets are pricey (the ferry already clocks in at $70) and the bus passes through Israel—a real no-no for people who are planning to visit Syria. Eilat, Israel is actually visible across the water from our port in Aqaba.

Dan and I were not able to make it to the ticket office two hours beforehand. We had been planning to take a bus to Dahab, then a connection to Nuweiba the next morning, but it is low tourist season and the buses weren't running. This unfortunately forced us to negotiate with a rapacious cab driver, but he got us from St. Catherine's to the port by 2:00 for a 3:30 departure. They sold us our tickets, and we were off. I had no idea what was awaiting us after all those horror stories, but in this case it turned out to be... nothing. We had to go to three or four different windows to buy tickets, get our luggage scanned, and have our passports checked, but there was literally no one else there. We had to walk through a parking lot filled with random eighteen wheelers to get to the boat, but since it said "AQABA" on it this was not terribly difficult. The ferry wasn't crowded when we got on. It even left at 3:35, the engine revving up and settling to a satisfying whirr.

But it was all downhill from there. We had allegedly taken the "fast ferry," which allegedly takes an hour to reach Jordan. Try five hours! And the food options on that boat are pretty limited. To see if we were moving, I had to pick a fixed point and watch it like a hawk to see if it moved from the clear part of the window to the section with brown stains and peeled plastic. But other than being long, the ride wasn't all that bad. We got there, we were shuttled to the customs office where we got our passports back (you turn them in at the start of the trip), and we were released into a parking lot filled with starving hyenas (i.e. cab drivers).

Dan and I originally thought we would be able to get a good deal for a cab to Petra, since we met three other people on the shuttle bus who had the same destination in mind. But no such luck—it would have been easier to bargain with four people, but there were five of us and the drivers insisted we take two cars. Even worse, one of the girls we met was more desperate than the rest of us to keep going, and they kept working exclusively on her, knowing that we weren't going to abandon anybody. We ended up paying a somewhat steep 12 JD, but we got there. (FYI, unlike Egypt, Jordan is an expensive country—1 Jordanian Dinar is worth about $1.50.) It was also clear that all of the drivers had colluded with each other to offer the same prices. We could have taken a bus to the city center to work out a better deal, but it was late and Dan and I had already climbed a mountain that morning.

We didn't have any hotel reservations, but we asked the driver to drop us off at Cleopetra, which is probably the best-known budget hotel in Petra. It deserves its good rep—we were immediately shown to a room and then given a welcome drink. The US and England were playing their World Cup game at the time, so we cheered for the USA and then crashed out. When my head hit the pillow, fresh laundry smell immediately hit me and I figured I was in a decent place. Cleopetra offers free breakfast and rides to Petra (although no rides back). The minibus to Amman this morning picked us up at the hotel door, which was also extremely convenient. I'd definitely recommend a stay there if you are looking for comfortable but not fancy.