past few weeks, it became clear that we did not want to return to France by plane from Cairo, as we had originally planned. Having never lived abroad so long, we were afraid of suffering a shock too great, landing in a French airport, full of French speaking, French-French concerns which we had gradually forgotten the content, especially as we don aircraft that very few read the news online, frankly too depressing when you live in the excitement of discovery learning. It remained to choose the route by land and sea. Leave Egypt from the west across Libya seemed to promise a fascinating route through the desert, but this involved a Libyan visa complicated and required an escort throughout the trip to Libya. Bad idea, then. We therefore opted for a Grand Bypass the Mediterranean to the east.
Before reaching Nuweiba on the Sinai coast is a tough road night reminded us of the journey to La Paz in Bolivia, because again, our bus to deliver an awful force smell of hot rubber, has been declared unfit to traffic in the middle of night. 
The driver, who was listening to religious sermons recorded on a tape, had therefore decided to stop driving at a walk, waiting for a bus in good condition to come pick us up. Strange feeling, to ride in the dark of the desert by saying it's a damn sleepless night! Nuweiba early morning air has a sinister, with its blind and filthy cats that continue, ignoring the silent crowd stood in line while waiting for boarding. Men sleep on transit benches, wrapped in blankets, others, those who hold the coffee, have the look a little too awake for those who will do good business.
Pending the opening of the window where we can buy our tickets ferry to Aqaba, Jordan first step, we will sit down on a piece of dirty beach, facing the brilliant blue of the Red Sea which not deserve its name. Later, armed with our tickets, we expect in a dark hall, crowded with benches too narrow. On one side of a grid, single men, many, on the other hand, families with women and children. This creates a weird atmosphere. Cluster flies clump on the sputum, peelings and other waste strewn on the ground. There is no running water the toilet. Jeremiah plague: "It looks like a refugee camp! "It's enough bitching, yes, because we still paid $ 150 for a trip that lasted an hour and a half. In addition, we are not starting at 14 hours instead of the advertised 11 hours ...
On the ferry, it is forbidden to go outside on the deck, then we remain quietly sitting on our plush seats. Jeremiah while chatting with a Saudi who wishes to give advice and contacts for the rest of our stay, I doze gently. On arrival, we wait before completing the formalities input on Jordanian territory. There is indeed a group of Swiss women in turmoil as their guide is not there to greet them, and they have to stamp their passports themselves. It was our time. In the window of the Duty Free shop is fun to notice a scent so-called French "Water" from Dupont, Paris. One wonders under what bridge was drawn that water!
With only 3 dinars in his pocket (or 3 euros) from the exchange of our latest Egyptian pounds, we will arrange a minibus driver who leads a youth group in Petra: we will deposit near center of Aqaba. We will not go to Petra in a few days. We remain silent during this trip that we made along the Gulf of Aqaba, blue and golden, the sea surrounded by desert. Young vacationers do not care to comment on the landscape, absorbed by the story of a Canadian too talkative proud to tell how he got ripped off once again and moult in Egypt ...
In Aqaba, we take the time to sit and write, and feasted their fill of fresh feta cheese, black olives and vegetables. The show airs neat town, with its small public gardens, its many street trash, its promenade lined with palm trees. We take the habit of going to see the sun set behind the mountains of Israel, just a few miles on the opposite bank. Jordanians suspected to have deliberately planted by the largest flag in the world, to defy the neighboring country. Although it is unclear how the locals live being so close to Israel, we feel a great discomfort when a restaurateur began to serve us, before we had ordered kebabs, an anti-Semitic speech nauseous. It even has the nerve to say that Sarkozy is in fact an Israeli who would leave his country until 1998! We do not like the dwarf, but we do not like the lies told by arrant asses!
In the minibus to Wadi Musa, the village near Petra, we'll meet Sandra and Julian, a young married couple who begin a honeymoon rather original, since they have just begun ... a world tour a year! Are discussed throughout the journey, some curious journey of others. Meanwhile, the mountains roam around the road is smooth, as high waves still a vast sea of sand. They leave us the way, for they have already gone to Petra. As for us, on arrival in Wadi Musa, we take a room where, for the first time in months, we re-discover a radiator! He is not running, but still ... Late afternoon we will walk in the surrounding olive groves. Everything is so peaceful that we choose a small clearing to do tai chi facing sunset. The call to prayer, proclaimed in 6 or 7 different mosques, disturbs the end of this moment of relaxation ... We returned at dusk, escorted by a flock of chirping sparrows to kids. The oldest, a teenager a little cheesy, I ventured to touch his head. He shows me the thumbs Jeremiah, seem to say: "She is too cool, your wife! "
The next morning we rise early to visit the archaeological site of Petra, the ancient Nabatean city. Upon entering the site, I am caught by the magic of quiet places. We pass houses of jinn, large boulders and clear-cut cube pierced by a door designed to welcome the spirits of the mountains to stay kind to locals and visitors. The stony landscape, dry as a dead stump, is dotted with hills and rocks monumental, with rounded edges by winds. 
It seems to be gradually swallowed by the mountain, which the esophagus narrows and darkens progressively as it deepens. In places, the ground pad that reminds those crazy Romans added their two cents. We are impressed by ditches dug one meter high in the wall and it is difficult to imagine that thunderstorms are dangerous to the point of turning into a torrent this bottleneck, a phenomenon halted for centuries by building a little further , an underground canal. From either side of the road, niches carved on the wall to provide shelter invisible protecting gods. Later, the remains of a caravan of camels three times larger than life can be glimpsed in stone yet, despite the blows delivered by gum winds millennia. A little further, a tree has managed to seep between the cracks and grows as it may, but firm on its twisted trunk dry fiber. The sun barely make their way to the ground, and it is not hot, to walk together.
After the parade, Jeremy knows a surprise waiting for me, since it is for her that he wanted to take me to this site he had visited. I can not make that first light brighter, due to enlargement of the neck ... then I realized! It is an immense front, already far seems monumental, almost leaves me speechless. This tomb was extravagant color salmon dug deep in the mountains, and decorated at the entrance columns, capitals and statues directly extracted from the wall. Reminds me of an anecdote told in Sophie's World: A little girl goes every day to visit a sculptor. After several weeks, the artist has finished his work, is a large marble Prancing Horse in its course. The girl then asked the sculptor: "How did you know The horse was hidden in the block of stone? "I, like, I wonder how the Nabataeans have guessed that such a beautiful facade hiding in the mountains ... Wren building rises so high that the artisans had to dig a kind of scale, ie a succession of holes that gave them enough grip to be able to climb to the top.
You laugh at the hat? But know that El Sombrero Magico has traveled from Argentina to be able to play the Indiana Jones in Petra! So there!
The rest of the site, a giant, is correspondingly: cliffs pierced and carved sculptures slowly polished by wind-borne sand, rock veins naturally colored, like a strange mineral paint ... Besides the tombs, there remains a Roman theater, a temple more imposing, and colonnades, half restored. Successive earthquakes have permanently destroyed the houses and shops of the ancient city. We spend the whole day, we too happy in breathless steep stairs leading to points of view. It's been a while since we did not trudge so!
course, like all sites exceptional there are crowd. The tours by camel or horse turn into a donkey turns on steep slopes, which has the effect of restoring the site to its original animation, price, nevertheless, a floor strewn with dung. Less funny, souvenir stalls are set up anywhere, any how, in defiance of the magic of Petra, which lies above all in the beauty of its landscapes. Even the views are busy! And stuff to sell necklaces, trinkets, old coins covered with gray-green and self-proclaimed "authentically ancient."
But the shame goes even further: children work on the site. Some temper maybe they do "that" sell postcards or bargain for souvenirs, only they have little more than 12 years, the youngest just 6, an age which the world West agrees that education is a duty as an inalienable right. I hear a tourist, thirties, ask a kid how much he earns a day with his postcards, and if bought sweets with the money ... She seems to think he did it for fun and make money! UNESCO, who scored the site on the World Heritage List of Humanity , would he so shamefully forgot to send it to UNICEF to protect these children?
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