Sunday, April 12th - Dubai - Muscat in 5 hours!!

It can be done!!! We drove back from Dubai airport to Muscat on Friday in 5 hours, like it's supposed to take. We left Jordan at 8am (had left the hotel at 3) for a 3 hour flight and got to Dubai at noon. Unfortunately, there were a gazillion people at passport control; we were there for almost 1½ hours. We left the airport, got into the car and drove home, without any problems at any borders, without getting lost ... it almost felt weird! It was a nice way to end a very nice trip!

We went for lunch on Saturday, and went grocery shopping while Julie did some work. We went out for dinner and called it a night afterwards. We set the alarms for 5am for Sunday morning; it's back to work for the final stretch.

We worked all day, went out for dinner with Julie and drove her back to the airport around 9:30pm. She is going back home after a very nice two weeks. It was a lot of fun to have her with us for a while. Next up is Nic, who is coming up at the end of April/early May.

Part of the crowd at Passport Control in Dubai

Thursday, April 9th - Little Petra and Wadi Rum (with mega pics)

We took a 20 minutes drive to Little Petra. The place looks somewhat like Petra, but on a much smaller scale. We were still able to see ruins and signs of life from over 2000 years ago. The site is pretty well preserved and we were able to go into some of the "buildings" (although just at the front). It was a pretty cool place to see and we were glad we did it. It would have been easy to spend more time but we had to get going to go to Wadi Rum, a valley located between two mountain ranges about 90 minutes by car, south of Petra. We had organized a tour with a driver and his old beaten up 4 X 4 (not exactly the jeep mentionned by the the hotel staff, but ...). We drove for 2 hours in the valley, visiting sites that have sculptures, writings and art dating back to before Christ. It was pretty cool. Julie and I also walked up a sand dune; coming down was a lot easier than going up!
We got back to Petra late afternoon, had dinner and crashed as we have to leave the hotel at 3 am. Our flight back to Dubai is scheduled for 8am, but we are 2½ hours away from the airport. It has been an amazing trip!!

Pictures from Little Petra

I`m pretty sure they only had one statue in there back then! This looks better!

Up anyone?

Part of the ceiling decoration in one of the rooms. Notice the shape of a boy in the middle left side.

The rest of the ceiling decorations, Again the flutist is located pretty much in the middle.

Take the stairs!!

View from partly up.

Notice how square the edges are. That was done over 2000 years ago!

Pictures from Wadi Rum

Rock formation at Wadi Rum

Text messaging, about 1000 years old

The Wadi as seen in the film "Lawrence of Arabia"

Our transportation for the excursion

We will go in there!

Taking a break!

Old scriptures

Drawings of humans

Real human!

And on we go!

Priceless!

Notice the two different colors of the sand (and Jacqui too!)

Having tea with our driver's bedouin cousins

Sunlight coming in through the tent - good thing it doesn't rain often!

Our mode of transportation

  

A sand dune - to be climbed

Here we go; it is a lot harder than it looks

OK Dad, we've gone far enough!

Seen from below

Seen from above!

Wednesday - April 8th - The day after our long walk!

Our legs are tired! Walking 20k in one day is not something we are used to. But it was so worth it. We had planned on visiting Little Petra today, but our driver told us that it takes only about one hour to do that and that we could combine it with our excursion to Wadi Rum that is planned for Thursday. So basically, we had a day off - which isn't all that bad! We took a cab to go downtown to see if we could do some kind of shopping. We weren't there very long. Jordan is a pretty poor country, almost like what we had seen in Africa. The downtown itself was very much local stuff. You would walk by shops where you could see chicken in cages (they would be dinner for someone later on that night), and goats and sheep (dead and skinned) hanging by a hook above the sidewalk. Not exactly your Zehrs or Sobeys!  So we walked back to our hotel (it was all downhill!!), but stopped in a few places once we got to "tourist street". We spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool, reading and sleeping. It was actually very nice. Before dinner, we went for a drink to a pub; there are only two places in Petra that serve alcohol - that pub and the other one is the Movenpick hotel next to ours, which is where we've had every dinner so far!!

Just like "Goldilocks and the three Bears"; which one will she choose?

More pics from Petra!

The canyon going in, called the Siik - the path to Petra

The Treasury

The theater; it could seat 7000 persons!

The temple

We're not having so much fun on the way up.

The Monastery

Going up into the Temple - or what's left of it

Multiple tombs