day 9 - back to israel

I'm writing this entry while sitting on the floor of an Egged bus. We
got a cab back to the Aqaba/Eilat border for 20JD, which is much
better than the 60 we paid to get to Petra (my bad). The border
crossing there was as dead as it was the first time we crossed. We
only saw one other party the entire time. After passing through eight
stations (four on each side), we were eventually able to get through.
For some reason the Israelis spent literally 20 minutes inspecting my
passport, but the only comments were "no problem" and "Have a good
time. Welcome to Israel."

We then skipped multiple offers for taxi rides back to Eilat so that
we could hike back to the main highway where we could catch the bus,
and catch the bus we did. 140 of the 157.20 shekels on the bus fare
and standing room only for us. Ok, I took a seat on the step at the
back of the bus.