Getting from Jordan to Egypt

June 18 2009
Travel, travel, travel! This is the best way to describe today. We got in a cab in Petra and he took us to the Border in Aqaba the same one we crossed going into Jordan. He was driving really fast, making the otherwise two-hour drive in just over an hour. Next we began going through customs. Jordan was a breeze, but coming into Israel from Jordan involved and extensive search of our bags. They pulled every little thing out of Kris’s suitcase and examined it. We decided they must be training employees because they kept referring to their supervisor and policy manual, and of course those Americans wont mind…
Then we took a cab to the Taba Egypt border. The passport control people again looked in Kris’s bag, but not as extensively. He said he thought he saw a knife in the x-ray. The passport control guy really didn’t like us. I think he was upset that we already had our Visas for all of Egypt so he couldn’t charge us his price for one. He kept getting a real guttural ‘yeck’ sound from him. Out of the frying pan into the fire, catching a ride down to Sharm El Sheik was a real treat. We managed to share one with a nice young Israeli couple for part of the way, but some part of the bargain between cabbies got pretty heated and there was a serious shouting match happening between drivers as they all tried to get us to ride with them. We again “hauled ass” as Kris put it, down to Sharm in record time. These drivers are crazy!! We had to change cabs outside of Sharm because certain cars can’t go certain places, which is just crazy, but it’s not my government. Our non-English speaking driver than had quite a time of finding the Ritz Carlton. Something tells me that normally people who stay at this fancy five star hotel don’t take a cheap smelly cab down from Taba. We did though, and it was great to see the view of the desert Mosses wandered in for fourty years. We drove for under four hours and I was ready to worship a golden calf, so I completely understand the insanity those people were driven to by having to wander in that desert so long. It is a rocky, sandy desert.
Finally we are here at the Ritz, and it is incredibly beautiful. The water is so clear, the resort is very nice and we are looking forward to our R & R with in our vacation.