Kiwi Shot

After leaving our tour group in Aqaba we were once again on our own and led by the wisdom of Ye Olde Lonely Planet which was getting a bit tattered and messy at this point.  We took a bus back to Amman and found a fantastic central hostel which was great, as we’d not actually been in central city, due to an electrical fire the last time we were here.

We ate some amazing street food and met an American who had been in the region for the last 5 years.  He led us around a bit, chatted, bought us dessert then wandered off again.  Now that I think about it, it was sort of weird.  He was surprised at seeing us, I think, so made an effort to come up and introduce himself.  He shook my hand slowly and laughed, saying, it was the first time he’d shaken a ladies hand in 5 years.

We started the crossing by taking a taxi to the bus station then a sort of group shared taxi thing to the border, the King Hussein / Allenby Bridge.  Both taxis ripped us off, white man tax, but for a minuscule amount of money so it didn’t bother us much.  The border looked like every other Middle Eastern border, neat, tidy and secure but disorganised and laid back.  The first window took our photo and we presented our passports to the second window.  At the third window the guard looked at us and simply said “No”.
Wait, what, No what??
“No.  You came into Jordan with a group, I can see you have a group stamp.  Where is your group now?  You cannot cross at this border.”

I have to admit, we knew getting into Israel would be difficult but we didn’t expect such a flat refusal.  We stood there like mugs for a bit and tried to figure out what the fuck to do.  Worst of all, we’d carefully been spending all our Jordanian dollars before we left, had nearly nothing left and there were no ATM machines.  We talked to a few guards and few randoms outside, who like to get involved in tourist drama, and they told us that this border was really strict on certain rules.  From memory, and I might be wrong about this, I think it was a Palestinian controlled crossing as well, which meant rules were slightly different.  Whatever the problem was, it is NOT FREAKING MENTIONED in Lonely Planet.

A taxi driver talked us into letting him drive us to the next border which was really far up north and by no means a short trip.  Luckily, he knew the exact ATM machine that would work with foreign cards.  Fancy that.  It is a lot of fun driving through rural areas, the sights and SMELLS, hell, are a lot different once you’re off the beaten track.

Right, the next part was such flapping around, it took us a few hours to get through it.  After the taxi to the border, we had to get on another group taxi to the border.  I dunno what was up with these group/service taxis but they seemed to be the only ones allowed near any crossings.  From there, a Jordanian guard peered in the windows at me and asked a multitude of irrelevant questions like, what exactly is the name you call the ring in your lip, ahh, a piercing, did it hurt, etc and we were finally dropped at the border patrol.  From there, we marched in to get the Israeli passport stamps, which, in themselves, can cause a bit of an issue.  Basically, if you have an Israeli stamp in your passport, a lot of Middle Eastern countries will not let you into their country.  This is basically the reason why no tours go through Israel and why it’s best to leave this country till last.  The border office offered us a choice of having our passports stamped or just a piece of paper instead.  However, I have heard that some guards won’t offer this and will get offended if you ask.

I got my passport stamped as it only has a few more months left on it anyhow and Marcelo got his on a bit of paper.  We then had to wait for a special bus that took 20minutes to arrive and 5 minutes to drive us over the border.  Finally, finally, we were on Israeli ground.  But it wasn’t over yet.  We still had to actually get IN to the country.

The girls working at passport control were all doing their compulsory military service that they do after leaving highschool.  They were the hottest, most fashionable and ultimately the most terrifying, security guards I’ve ever seen.  One girl took one look at me and stuck a purple sticker on my passport.  I’ve been pulled up at enough airports to know this is the part where they drag you out the back to make you feel like shit and go through all your stuff.  When she snapped on the rubber gloves I thought I would die, right there and then.  As it happened, it was just another extra vigorous metal detection search.

We got split up and sent to different windows where we had to answer a barrage of more questions.  Our Syrian visas didn’t go down to well.  We were asked for our parents names, grandparents names, all email addresses, all telephone numbers – NZ and London, cell phone numbers a list of places we had visited previously.  Not just for this trip but for all time.  They sat us down and took off with our passports for 3 hours, another thorough security check.

I think, all up, it took us about 11 – 12 hours to cross from Jordan to Israel.