Day 19: Amman - Wadi Mujib - Karak - Petra (3)
We had wanted to make more stops along the way, but unfortunately the taxi had thoughts of its own. It stopped a bit too early, if you know what you mean. When we were driving up the hill in Karak the engine started to jolt and seemingly lost all its power. I recognised this kind of behaviour from my old car, and as the taxi was of the same make, it didn't surprise me to find the same symptoms: it is caused by a wrong ignition order of the spark plugs. I felt sorry for the guy, because I had never been able to fix this, not even by changing all spark plugs, the cabling, the ignition sequencer (of whatever it is called). The driver asked me how I had managed to solve the problem with my car in the end, and I answered truthfully “I sold it”
So this meant that we weren't making much progress. Five people in a car, plus luggage, on mountainous roads - we were doing less than 20 kilometres an hour at one point, simply because the car didn't have the power to climb the hills anymore. We stopped in a little village near Dana, where the driver found a small garage where they could have a look at it. They toyed with the engine for more than an hour, but couldn't fix the problem.
So we had to let go of our idea to stop for a walk in the beautiful Wadi Dana gorge, and drove straight on to Petra instead.
