Amman to Petra

In the spring of 2006, I had the chance to go with Jay to Jordan.  An opportunity to see yet another UNESCO site (and a nice anniversary trip).  But first a vsit to the Jordanian embassy in The Hague for a travel visa.  I had read that it would take about 3 days so I went early to drop off my passport.  The embassy workers were pretty friendly and said that it wasn't busy so come back after 3 pm and my visa would be ready.  OK, now what to do for the next 5 hours.  The science museum solved that dilemma.  At the end of the day I had a 3 month visa and a week later was packed for my trip.

Once we arrived in our hotel in Amman, I think around 1 am,  Jay called and left a message with Mario to see if he would pick us up the next morning for a ride to Petra.

  Mario was 'the usual' taxi driver that everyone (meaning the crew) used whenever they wanted to leave the hotel.  And I was told that Mario was not his real name which was difficult to pronounce, so he went with something easier.  How he came up with Mario ? He just liked the name, from Mario brothers (those who like computer games, know who I'm talking about).

The next morning (after a very short night) we headed to Petra.  I must have looked like one of those bobbing head dolls that you see on dashboards because I wanted to see everything, even if it was just desert.  We passed several Bedouin camps and groups of camels, but almost no other cars. Talk about a deserted desert.  At one point we stopped and sat in the middle of the road for what seemed like hours before we noticed a truck in the distance.  We weren't sure how fast it was travelling so we decided to get out of its way and continue on our journey.