Israel & Jordan

  We’d booked a tour company called EcoTours to handle things while we were in Jordan. This was an expensive decision that wasn’t made by me. I tend to take the economical route when traveling, opting for free walking tours (always Google ‘free walking tour’ when you visit a new city!), cheap hostels, and bringing my own snacks… but Dad convinced me this was a better option given our timeframe. He was right. Very, very right. The company, who had been starved of customers for two years, really took care of us. Step 1 was get us across the border!! Standing at the border crossing on the Israeli side, our guides organized our paperwork, explained security, told us what to say, and spoke to guards on our behalf. There’s a sort of barren DMZ area between countries, our Israeli guides waved at us as we walked away and into this zone. Our Jordanian guide would be on the other side  waiting for us! We were the only people in the weird neutral zone, we were surrounded by the desert, and we wer

  I’m generally fearful of riding with my dad in my own country; he’s kind of an erratic driver. Not only is he accidentally erratic, he’s also got a surprisingly poor sense of direction altogether. So I was definitely uneasy about my job as co-pilot for today’s trip across a foreign land. We woke up and got a taxi from Rehovot BACK to Tel Aviv to pick up a rental car. The car was a little silver Honda. Today we would be driving across Jerusalem, into the West Bank, down along the coast of the Dead Sea, and into the border town of Eilat. Eilat sits atop the Red Sea and hosts one of the very few land boarders in the country. Our mission was to get into Jordan, but first we had to do all this driving.  To prepare for my co-pilot gig I’d been studying the traffic laws the entire trip thus far. Things I’d noticed: The traffic lights go from green to yellow to red, but then back to yellow before turning green again. When the lights turn yellow just before turning green- you better already h