After a night in Aqaba, and a fantastic dinner with Robbie, the Jordanian tour guide, we had a great breakfast and then wandered the town looking for an internet cafe and a backpack for Tamz. It was a massive relief to actually know what the plan was, so we could then plan our own free time around it - and we didn't have to hang around a hotel lobby for hours wondering where our tour leader was and what we were doing that day! We headed off to Wadi Rum (Lawrence of Arabia's hang-out) and went on a jeep ride with a bedouin. The scenery was stunning, and the trip was good fun. We headed back for a very filling lunch in the bedouin cafe - food in Jordan is great.
After lunch we drove to Petra, and explored the town. We played cards in the lobby, then went to the Movenpick hotel after dinner to the rooftop bar and played poker some more. The Movenpick was absolutely stunning - Moorish in style. We were staying at the Amra Palace, which wasn't quite as nice!
The next morning, had breakfast and headed out to Petra. It is a surprisingly long walk (over 2km) to get into it, and then a long walk through a canyon to get to the Treasury. It was amazing what the Nabateans had done, carving the rocks into buildings, and the rock is really beautiful. There were loads of horse carriages going up and down, which seemed really cruel to me as the cobblestones were very hard on them and they kept slipping. You then walk further and further into the complex, and there are houses and other buildings carved all over the place. It was pretty amazing, and much bigger than I'd thought. Tamz kept humming the theme from Indiana Jones however.......
On the way back, we had a minor altercation with some moron carriage driver galloping his poor horse over rocks, and the horse was bleeding from gashes on his legs. Hideous idiot. On the way out Tamz and I went to the Brooke Hospital (very happy to see them there), and the vet showed us round the cases they had in. I gave them a much larger donation than I intended after seeing the amazing work they were doing with caring for the horses and donkeys.
