Day 205 – Jordan

April 28, 2010 – Madaba to Aqaba, Jordan

Today we’re planning to go from Madaba to Aqaba. All we need to do is catch the city bus to take us to Amman’s Wahadat Bus Station and then from there, we need to catch one of the buses that regularly go to Aqaba.

Normally this should take about 4-5 hours, but today it takes us over 9 hours because important bits of information aren’t given to us.

We start at Madaba’s bus station. We find the city bus we need – the number is right but just to be sure, we ask the driver “does this bus go to Wahadat Station?” and he says “yes”. But what he fails to mention is that his bus doesn’t go to Wahadat Station – it just goes to Amman’s central bus station.

So now we’re at Amman’s central bus station.

We find the city bus we need – the number is right but just to be sure, we ask the driver “does this bus go to Wahadat Station?” and he says “yes”. But what he fails to mention is that his bus doesn’t go to Wahadat Station – it just does a loop of the city and then goes back to Amman’s central bus station.

Therefore, even though we’ve specifically asked if the bus we’re on goes to Wahadat Station, both drivers fail to tell us that to get there we don’t actually take the bus, so much as we need to get off at a random street corner and then walk almost 2 kms to the station.

Thankfully some of our fellow passengers take notice of the two foreigners sitting beside them and help us out and we finally get to where we need to go.

But unfortunately, the next bus to Aqaba doesn’t leave for 3 hours and there are really no other options.

So even though we left Madaba at 9:00am, we don’t arrive in Aqaba until 6:30pm. Our 4 ½ hour trip has turned into a 9 ½ hour day of traveling.

The saving grace is that in Aqaba, the owner of the hotel we stayed at when we first arrived in Jordan recognizes us and gets us the same room as before…. and we finally go back to a city that serves us good shwarma.

It’s the little things really.