Last night we moved just down the road from the hotel. This was a good move for the Pub but a bad move for the noise. The road noise we can put up with but at about midnight the disco started. Luckily they cannot have been busy as it only lasted 2 hours.

We are posting this from the adjacent Mcdonalds again and if they don't open soon they will have missed selling me a coffee as they are meant to open at 10am and its now 10:30. We aren't the only one surfing on the doorstep. Luckily the wifi is full open.

Not looking forward to today.....Egypt. Bah.

One good thing from staying near the pub was we got some cakes (sweets as they call them) from the bakery. This from a market over the road we'd not see the day previous. We also found another restaurant to get more burt meat.

Today we pulled a fast one. Well, not really fast but more of a slow con. We slept outside the Intercontinental 5 star resort last night. The road is a dead end and we parked up pretty early and got a good nights sleep with no cars whizzing by. In the morning we got up and entered the lobby with the intention of stealing a shower in the pool changing area. This looked to be too risky so we (actually I, me and not Julie (who allegedly doesn't do cons)) went over to reception and told a little story that we were meeting our friends and needed to clean up before they arrived (i think i might have said "check in" by accident). An hour later the reception manger had contacted the Spa manager and we were in. Into the Spa that is,,,complimentary shower with a much 5 star hot water as you can shake a loofah at.

So thanks Intercontinental for the best shower we've had in weeks and a really nice hotel also. I'd recommend it if you're ever in Aqaba, Jordan. They even look after the people pretending to be meeting fictional guests that afternoon. I did note a Spa day is 115jod so about £100. I wonder what a shower is? They have a really nice beach and no doubt a nice price tag. We considered staying there a second night but the lure of the Rovers Return Pub was too great so we're sleeping outside there (on the road with cars wizzing by. Such is the life of a overlander and the need to spend left over currency on beer and red wine)

We got our ferry tickets today to Egypt and also the Visa. The visa from the Egyptian consulate in Aqaba and this took a little over an hour. They were quite helpful and said we must promise not to got to that square where the problems are. We are of course not going there. The ferry tickets soured the whole Jordanian experience as they processed our tickets and then wanted payment. Looking up at the huge Mastercard sign about 6 inches from my forehead on the glass inbetween me and the agent I offered my Mastercard only to be told they don't accept it. He wouldn't cancel the tickets (he said he couldn't) and told us to go to the bank up the road. The bank up the road was no good for us and we needed to go to one about 15mins away. Which we did. On arriving back the guy had left the office for the day leaving a none English speaking person to do the deal. We had tickets, no idea what time the boat was and no idea where to go. He left us high and dry. We spent the next two hours getting the tickets translated and eventually ending up in the port to check we knew where we were going and what time. Thanks to the numpty in the offical office of the ferry company. We should have used an agent in another office we saw earlier ! If this were England i would have complained a lot !

So tomorrow (if i get chance to post this) we go to the worse place on the planet for getting a car into. The bribes the corruption and the hassle are second to none. We have two 2Kg Fire Extinguishers and i wonder how many they will force us to buy as ours arn't big enough...even though i've done the research and these are much larger than needed. This is a known scam by the corrupt customs team. The back handers and bribes are legendary and to be honest if Egypt could be missed every overlander would miss it out completely for this reason. We shall see if i feel the same in just over a days time.

Something i'd been looking forward to was this place called Wadi Rum...no idea why but Julie knows as its in the Lonely Planet. This is a very large deset area with some great rocks in the middle. You can see on the photos. Its like the holy Grail of off road driving and the mecca of all Land Rover fanatics. All round the world people eventually come here. Its a must.

Its also a bit of a tourist trap and once you have explained that "we have our own car" about 4 times your are left alone. Its only 5jod to get in and by all accounts theres a charge for the car which we never paid and no one asked. Even the guy that checked our tickets (on the road) never asked.

In the photos you will see we did some washing. We do this by filling a dry bag with soap and water and lashing it to the roof of the car. The motion gives it a good wash. We then rinse out in the other dry bag. (thanks to Andy and Emma for the Birthday present) The gatehouse to the Wadi had a tap so we took 60litres of water into the widerness to wash clothes and ourselves. Check out the photos of the clothes washing but none of Julie getting a desert shower as we thought the bikini in the dead sea was enough and I'm sure Bev would agree..( I doesn't happen often Bev and now I have photos ! )

We never got stuck in the sand in Wadi although i tried hard and there were some close calls. Since the are is so large we stayed 2 full days and slept in a couple of spots although they look quite close together they probably are in relation to the expanse. We drove probably 50 miles through sand, rock and dunes and saw some amazing sights.

You will see below a picture of the rear door stay that broke. I had it welded back up in Amman and fitted it in the lazy afternoon in the desert (not much to do!!!) We only took a bottle of vodka so unless we wanted to get drunk there is absolutely nothing to do after the sun went down at 4:30pm....It then gets cold so we went to bed by 6pm and watched a video on the Laptop and then sleep at about 7pm only to wake up again at 6:30 when the sun came up. We're getting a full nights sleep for sure.

The picture of the Land Cruiser wasn't me pulling him out or vice versa but a local guide who offered us a cup of tea and a chat. He's not getting much buisness due to the syrian thing and the Egypt thing. He's was quite well informed on all things and asked us to post his details to the following Sweedish contingent. We shall oblige. The tea was nice, as was the conversations and insight into local life.

The rock bridge although accessible was out of the question without a guide and Julie would have freaked out as well might I. We watched some people cross it as they can be seen on the photos (not the one i posted unfortunately).

You've got to be kidding......its 60jod to get in,,,,EACH !!!! that for the uneducated is £50 ish....admittedly the ticket is for 3 days but the one day ticket is 50jod so not much cheaper. you just have to pay it though.

I had no pre-expectations on Petra and knew very little about it. What i know now is you need 3 days and you need an lot of energy and its certainly not for the old, infirm or disabled. We spent all day walking miles and miles. We walked up and down 3 very large hills to see, the high place, the monastry and the high view of the treasury.

Poor little Matilda has never seen such hills than the ones on Jordan. I nearly had to go into low ratio to get up to the castle car park. This isn't helped byt the fact they pull out on you not realising i'm carrying 3 Tonne and my handbrake isn't very good !!

The castle is really good the car park is even better having got the best nights sleep so far. Better than the hotels by miles. Its only 1jod to get in a well worth the visit the excellent tour guide helped us wth the parking/sleeping arrangements and even got us a hot shower in the morning. This was in the ladies toilets but i'm not shy,,,the other tourists that came in part way through Julies drying session on the other hand might have been ! We used the shower bag obtained in Decathlon on our last trip, Morrocco. The guide showed us how to turn on the hot water so one hour later we could fill the bag from the tap. The hour was spent taking the rear door stay off (the thing that stops it blowing open and closed). This had fractured and broken and needs to be replaced (this is a later story).

You might see from the Map this evening we spend in a quarry and i did my first green field number 2 ( more on these later ! ). Julies still not needed one....i'm sure women are decended from camels and can hold it for a week. I wondered why she keeps getting strange looks from the "ships of the dessert". Possibly it should be shit in the dessert.

We stayed in Amman another day to get Matilda an eye operation. She now has left hand drive lights. They are soooo much better and will be much safer on the African roads. These were tested to the extreme as it rained all the way to the Dead Sea. Its not very far but we left late after visiting the landrover part place one last time to get some valve covers and some rockers for my kit. I'm now prepared for the problem the Dutch faced should it happen to me. The £25 worth of parts costing about £160 but thats life on the road......We didn't visit the John the Baptist site as it was £22 and a royal rip off. I wonder what JC would think to the price? I know if he were a Yorkshireman he'd think it was too expensive. The Dead Sea Panorama visitors centre on the other hand was £3.50 and excellent. Worth a visit. the weather had cleared giving us OK views of the other side. I doubt it gets much clearer across the sea as its very low lying at -400 meters. The lowest i've been ( other than when i worked for Noel ! ). The joke is for Noels amusement.....

We are now at Karak and sleeping in the car park of a Crusader Castle although I doubt they had cars so i think its an addition. This is one of the places we are visting that Top Gear haven't been as everywhere else seems to have featured in the show. It's better than Lonely Planet.

One of the highlights so far is the Dead Sea swim. The Dutch team kindly sent us the GPS coordinates of a secluded beach so we made good use of the seclusion and even Julie came in for a swim. More of a flounder (for both of us) than a swim. I now realise what a new swimmer must feel like getting used to floating as the dynamics are so different you flounder about like a fool.

The air quality in Amman in terrible so we are going back for antoher try.

Upon arrival in Jordan we went to Jerash into a hotel which the Dutch team paid for (a thank you for the help, very nice). It wasn't great but its was OK for one night. It would have had some fantastic views had the wather not been so rubbish in the morning. We arrived late and the night ported made us dinner in the form of omlette and hummus etc etc. Traditional stuff. We also had a few beers but then realised they were about 5 Euro each!! Again the dutch paid and this prevented me having a heart attack paying for 5 Euro beer.

We left the hotel and went into Jerash to see Its roman ruins,,,its quite large. I'll post some photos. We also took the now compulsary drive in "heavy traffic getting lost route" around the town. This seems to be a theme we are continuing everywhere we go. We tagged along with the Dutch as they seemed to know where they were going.

On leaving Jerash we went onto the capital Amman to firstly find me a replacement Fuel Lift Pump. We found eventually the main part supplier for Land Rover bits in Amman luckily still open late on Thursday (Friday being the weekend so closed). They were really helpful and had a pump in stock so my part is now replaced (over twice the price of the UK) . They are also trying to get me some left hand drive headlights and some spare rockers for my parts box. (we are returning to Amman on Saturday to collect them)

We managed to excel with the "heavy traffic" route to the Amman hotel taking two hours only to find it unsuitable, having no parking, so we moved on to another. We went for a walk into town to get some dinner and find a Bank. Santander had cancelled the card so i purchased a SIM to call them, so it cost me 10 Euro to call to sort out the mess. They say they hadn't cancelled it but next time we tried it it was miraculously working. Like they hadn't done anything! Dinner was in a famous street cafe, was damn nice and didn't cost much. We borrowed money to pay.......

We actually didn't use the hotel we found in the end and slept on the street outside. A nice quiet Cul-De-Sac. Since the weather is now getting better we were too hot. The dutch did however use the room. I thought 25 Euro wasn't justified having had a shower the night before. Budget and all that.

Today we've moved on to Madaba to see some mosaics but are on our way back to Amman straight after so we can collect the parts tomorrow.

I hate covering a few days in one post it gets all confused so i hope you get the jist of twhat we've been up to.

Have a guess where we found Wi-Fi.....side of the motorway in, you guessed it, the big Golden Arches......

Actually Sub Zero....This place was freezing last night. Heater was on all night making it too hot.

This is a gem of a place (Goreme, wikipedia) and i bet its really busy in summer. There's some stunning views, some off road areas, some caves, stone arches and geological and man made wonders. We will post some photos of the stuff we've seen but we haven't seen it all and need to leave this morning. The Dutch we are with have been here twice now and we might very well return on day to do all the tourist things we can't do today.

We rescued a stranded motorist in the off road area who'd ripped his trye off his rim. We were about a kilometer away ontop of a hill when they signalled us from the valley below. Waving arms and a white flag. I could see thier spare wheel on the ground (just) so we went looking for them. The place is a maze of tunnels and volcanic mounds of something called "Fairy Chimneys". It took us 40 mins to find them and we nearly got stuck. We blew their tyre back on and gt them on their way, by which time it was dark and getting very cold so i don't know what they would have done. Good job they spoke good English !

The party is complete, we've met the other two travellers and are now jointly travelling the rest of the way through Syria. Thats if they let us in !

We have also contacted a "fixer" (travel agent) in Damascus to see if they can get us a guide or similar to come with us the whole way through Syria. A local speaking person in one of our cars will be beneficial (possibly). Lets see what they say. I'm not so sure it will make any difference as he's going to be the first person running  away if we hit trouble and he's likely going to be more scared of the police than we are.

Tomorrow we move on to Goreme in the mountains and its meant to be COLD....the others have a hotel and we are in the car. Webasto heater will be on all night so we will be toasty. Benefits of sleeping inside the car at the moment but when its 40C i wonder how we will get along wth no aircon. The others have a roof tent. Did we do the right thing not getting one?

Firstly i'd like to assure everyone our diet of purely Mcdonalds is entirely untrue. We have only eaten two breakfasts and two hamburgers in the whole trip. We are using them as Wi-Fi hotspots only. We've had fishfingers, Chilli, Beans and eggs, spam sandwiches, frankfurters, Tom Yum Soup and a few other things i cannot remember. The useage of gas is begining to worry me as i was assured Camping Gaz was available everywhere and i've not yet seen a single suppier, shop, stockist or anything else. So we might yet be eating in Mcdonalds !

Today we are in our first hotel purely becuase we needed a shower and we are meeting our Syrian crossing companions who are staying at the hotel down the road. We had a little fight with the hotel parking attendant as the hotel is on a very steep hill and i don't trust my handbrake ilst carrying 2700Kg. The parking attendant seemed think kerbing was enough, i didn't and a fight to chock my wheels ensued with at one point about 6 participants in the discussion. Needless to say my wheels are chocked. I dread to think wat my 110 would do the parked cars down the hill had the cable snaped. The curb would do little but straighten the wheels out for the decent downwards.

The hotel is OK and we will sample the breakfast in the morning after all we think its included. I know a good strong coffee does wonders for my regularity if you know what i mean and they have western toilets so who knows how long i might have to last before my next sitting!

I can hear the parking guy right now directing someone else on the street below. He really rules the roost here.

We had a little snow last night as we were in the hills in a service station. The Webasto heater is getting some use. Matilda doesn't like to start in cold weather but did so first time, reluctantly. Filled up with fuel and the price here is comparable with the UK so it wasn't as expensive as i'd been told.

Once we hopefully meet to ther later on we should get something to eat.I'm starving.