We had an easy start to the day as we didn't need to get up early to depart to the port city of Nuweiba, Egypt. The fast ferry doesn't leave for Aqaba, Jordan until late afternoon. Still, by 9:40 am the van driver came by to pick us up. One cannot travel up the east coast of the Sinai. Rather the road runs several mountain ranges in from the Red Sea. We picked up one other passenger who was travelling into Israel via Taba, so we were dropped off first at the port.
I cannot say a lot nice about paying $75 each for tickets for a ride which less than two hours. I cannot praise the port facilities although we spied brand-new digs under construction which look as though they'll be world class. We were not fortunate enough to have a time machine with us. We had hours to wait in a disorganized place where nobody seemed to be able to offer the slightest help. It was a useful experience in retrospect. For example, I have a photo of two Arab youth engaged with their phone screens which appears to prove the world is more the same than different.
Getting into and out of the ferry was a nightmare. I feel sorry for those who must work and live in continual disorganization. It didn't really affect us much as we were here more as observers than participants. It was mayhem trying to board the decrepit bus which took us from the terminal to the boat. We were singled out to be on the first hot, cramped trip though. Also, most passengers had to put everything they were carrying into large luggage bins before getting on the boat. We as tourists seem to have been given special dispensation for our backpacks, but had to literally throw our two carry-on-sized bags into the heap. I wondered if we'd ever see them again.
As the ferry operated on Jordan time, it left an entire hour later than we had anticipated due to Egypt's unexpected DST change back a week ago.
After narrowly escaping death trying get off before hundred and hundred of others, we had to leave our passports onboard as we were travelling without Jordanian visas. We had read up on this and learned that as Aqaba is a free port, free visas were granted on arrival there. We didn't realize it would take several hours for the immigration people to find them and stamp us in. Again, it was already dark outside, so time was not really important.
We'd travelled without reservations but we did have the name of a few hotels. We haggled with a taxi driver for a price as we knew there really would be no more people coming out to share with us. We paid 8 JD and were delivered to one of the names on our list, the Mas Paradise. Luckily the desk staff gave us a triple room for the price of a double and we were set by 8:30 pm.
We walked down the hill to downtown, ate, and walked a bit at the waterfront. As this was a long weekend due to Jordan's National Day weekend, a lot of people were in town. There was even a special musical program which I pretended was just to welcome us to the country.