We started the drive back up the country to Jerusalem with me forgetting my travel wallet in the hotel room duh and I remembered just as we were driving outside of Eilat – and just before I checkpoint I pulled over to check in the boot but then I got paranoid that the soldiers would see me getting out and rummaging in a SUITCASE in the BOOT OF A CAR and would shoot me. Mum calmed me down and I looked but it wasn’t there so we went back and found it.

Fast forward a relatively uneventful 2 hour drive through the south Negev (although this time I had the insight to burn a music cd to listen to in the car rather than having to listen to Arabic music all day long) and we were standing at the foot of Massada. Now this is a place also that really needs to be visited to understand its amazingness. Massada is an ancient fortress on the top of a flat plateau hundreds of meters up the top of a cliff. It was the last stronghold of the rebel jews when the romans conquered Judea. They survived up their while it was being sieged for a long time because they had many stores but the romans eventually built a ramp up the western side with the rocks and drove a battering ram thing up and got into the city. Before they could the rebels had killed themselves rather than to be enslaved.

Anyway up a cable car ride you can walk around the ancient ruins of Massada and they are quite something – much of it has been restored but they paint a black line to show you where they’ve built up and which is original excavated ruin. There is a palace and a bathing house and a synagogue and a water cistern and storerooms – its basically awesome and the view out to the dead sea is spectacular.

After massada we went for a quick dip in the dead sea at Ein Geidi then proceeded to head to Jerusalem. Now let me tell you out of all the stressful places I have driven in Israel Jerusalem really cuts the mustard. Especially because we arrived in rush hour and most of the streets are one way – so finding the place was a nightmare and only after going round in circles for half an hour and stopping and asking for help did we discover that theres no parking in the city and at the hotel and you were supposed to just know this!! Anyway the helpful lady let us take our suitcases from the car and leave it in her shop (cause we were close to the hotel) and we went down the road and parked and walked back and got the suitcases and walked to the hotel. Phew.

That night we went to visit a childhood friend of my mums from Australia who is now religious and has 9 children and lives in some freaky religious area in Jerusalem and we had to cover our arms and legs to visit. She was really funny and her little kids were really funny and cute. After awhile some of our family Ella and Hayim picked us up and took us on a night time car tour of Jerusalem which was just awesome! Through some of the older parts of the city and up to the university and the mount of olives where you can see the entire city. Afterwards we all went and had a hot chocolate in a cafe which incidentally had been suicide bombed 5 years prior – its pretty much the center center of Jerusalem’s center. Afterwards we crashed!

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A bit of a restless sleep last night but nevertheless we got our 6′0clock wake up call and got ready to go to Petra! We ate breakfast and was picked up in a huge tour bus. We were not sure what to expect – but until we picked up a dozen REALLY ANNOYING American tourists we actually thought the tour would be casual and nice! They were TEXT-BOOK classic clique fat American tourists who have awful senses of humour and really loud voices. Anyway.

So the tour really started at the Yitzhak Rabin border crossing into Jordan. If you don’t know who Yitzhak Rabin is you should. Read for 1 minute here. The border crossing over to Jordan was a bit tedious – first on the Israeli side you go with your passports and get stamped and wait around – then you walk through no mans land to the Jordan side. This bit takes awhile – our tour representative takes all passports and goes and does the formalities on our behalf and we waited for an hour or so. Theres a little souvenir shop there and it gives you the first taste of haggling Jordanian sales people hassling you to buy.

After the border crossing we get on a bus and drive for two hours through some of the most phenomenal landscape I have seen. The mountains either side of the main highway are towering and made from sandstone rock with many different minerals creating huge dark colored lines which slice through the hills. Then you continue and start going through the desert valley where you see camels and donkeys and the landscape looks apparently the most like the moon and mars than anywhere in the world. Then you turn and head north west toward Petra and start climbing through the high mountains where you see nomadic bedoin peoples living in tents that they move every few weeks and leave piles of rocks indicating where they have lived – with the amount of kilometers they moved to in rocks high and the top rock pointing in the direction they’ve gone.

Once we arrived in Petra we drove through the township to the entrance to the hidden city and proceeded with our tour down into the canyon. Then what we saw inside is hard enough to describe with photographs or words aloud let alone down in writing. Even if you see photo or video of the entire place you will not feel the experience of Petra – its incredible. We wandered around for about 3 hours talking with the young kids trying to sell us ‘ancient’ artifacts and souvenirs – claiming that just for us they will sell it half price.

After the end we walked back out and got on the bus and had lunch at a nearby hotel. After the two hour bus ride back followed by a coach tour of Aqabar (the city on the gulf next to Eilat) and we were back at the border on our less painful return into Israel. After mum and I shared a pizza we konked out in the hotel room.

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