That Time We Went to Petra and Cairo and other places

Internet is scarce, and updates follow suit.
Time is also scarce, and pyramids trump blogging!

But, dear readers, I can copy and paste. Here's the e-mail I just sent my parents:

I hope you haven't been worrying too much. We haven't had internet for a few days, so I haven't been able to update.

On Wednesday, we left Israel for Petra, Jordan. We parked our car at the border, walked across, and took a taxi for the two hour ride to Petra. (En route, I got mauled by a camel, but that's a story for a different day!) We checked in to a hotel that our friend Zack had stayed in the night before, and then went to "Little Petra" and returned for the evening.

On Thursday, we went into Petra (with a free ride from the owner of the hotel :-)) and walked around and hiked all day. Literally from 9am - 5pm. Then we ate a cheap dinner, and took a cab through Wadi Rum and down to Aqaba, Jordan. We wandered around the city looking for cheap hotels, and settled on one with AC, as our hotel in Petra had been excessively hot.

On Friday, Sam left to go back to Jerusalem with the car, leaving Mike and I on the journey ourselves. We took the ferry from Aqaba to Nuweiba, Egypt, then a bus from Nuweiba to Cairo. The ferry is a story in and of itself... it was supposed to leave at noon and take an hour. All said and done, we ended up getting to the bus in Nuweiba around 7:00pm. Wowz. The bus took about 6.5 hours, and we got to Cairo really early in the morning, enjoyed tea at the bus terminal, then took a cab to the center of the city. Finally, as per recommendation of Lonely Planet guide to Egypt (which we borrowed from some English-speaking friends from Denmark to copy down info on the ferry...) we found a hostel that is really cheap but very clean and also has free breakfast!

Now, it's about 8am here. Our plan is to be showered, dressed, breakfasted by around 9am, then head off to see the pyramids of Giza. We're probably staying at Cairo another night, possibly at this hotel.

Tomorrow, we're going to take a bus/train to Alexandria, see the library and ancient Greco-Roman stuff, etc. bus/train it back to Cairo, take a late bus to Taba, Egypt, cross the border to Israel, etc.etc...

Anyway, that's all for now!

We're having an amazing time, and I have many stories to share with you. I'll update if I can the next few days, but if not, expect to hear from me on Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, when we'll be back in Jerusalem.

<3
Sal