It is with great sadness we say goodbye to Tarek who has been our guide in Egypt and we all wish he could come to Jordan with us. Our new guide certainly has a hard act to follow. The flight to Amman from Cairo takes 1hr 20minutes and once there we proceed to buy our visas which only cost $27 each but would have cost about $140 each if we had purchased them from Canberra before we left. No forms to fill out, no photos required - just hand over the money and all is sweet. We are met by our new guide, Nadine, who speaks English like a machine gun but when she speaks Arabic she sounds more like a Bedouin fishwife if there is such a thing. She doesn't shut up! Her spiel about Jordan is well practised over the 17 years that she has been doing this job and she doesn't pause for breath. Where are you Tarek?

Our mini bus takes us along unfinished freeways through desert land which makes up about 90% of Jordan. Life seems much less hectic than in Egypt probably because the population of Jordan is only a fraction of Egypt's. At our first stop in Madaba at the Greek Orthodox church of St George, we were able to walk around the quiet streets without being hassled to buy - a very pleasant change. Lunch is at a roadside restaurant in the mountains where we are told it snows in the winter - another surprise. The view of the desert mountain area from here is marred by discarded plastic as far as the eye can see. Obviously the environment isn't a big issue here and when I ask Nadine about it, she dismisses the subject agreeing it is a blight on their people but nobody does anything about it. We visit Mt Nebo's Memorial to Moses where there is a huge crowd of all nationalities and religions. We gaze out at the "promised land" from the mountain as Moses would have done. I'm sure it must have been more lush in those days as it doesn't look very inviting now. A ceramics factory is next on the agenda and while we appreciate the skilfull work done by the disabled and handicapped people who work here, the prices are extremely high and no one buys anything. Nadine drops the bombshell that we still have 3 hours to travel to get to Petra where we will stay for 2 nights. She talks non-stop for the first 40 minutes and most of us have switched off or gone to sleep. Eventually she too keeps quiet which is very welcome.

Finally at 9pm we arrive in Petra and head to our hotel Beit Zaman which consists of a series of hacienda like rooms meandering up the hillside like a maze. Our room is large with a tiled floor - easier to clean with all the sand. Bedtime is very welcome as soon as we eat dinner as it has been a big day.