Monday 28-June 2010 – Riyadh/Ha’el, KSA
Original Plan was to spend three days in Saudi performing Umrah, driving through Riyadh, Taeif, Mecca and Al Wajh on the Red Sea. Then onto Al Aqaba, Wadi Mousa, Petra and Amman in Jordan for four days. We arrived Riyadh at 7pm on Sunday.
Our trusted Garmin 1410 GPS advised us that the nearest Hotel was Al Safeer 11KM. We soon found out that 11KM was the distance as the crow fly; actual driving distance was more like 30KM.As we closed in to our target so did the streets becoming darker and narrower.
Al Safeer was in a car dealer district area filled with shady second hand car sales people.
We checked-in had a shower watched Argentina-Mexico and fell asleep like a baby.We dparted 3:00am Mon just before sunrise, given that Mayssam had to fly out of Syria early, we decided to head straight to Jordan and perform Umrah on the way back.
We arrived Ha'el around lunch time, we stopped by the restaurant with the big golden arches, it was packed with crazed & zany young Saudies with their wild landcruiser pickups, doing donuts on the road. We drove straight through and stopped by a petrol station for a quick snack. A Saudi gentleman asked us
We followed his instructions and true to his words we arrived at the border by 6pm, but at Al Omarie border crossing north east of Jordan, instead of south.With Amman lying about 60 Km North vs Petra more than 200Km South West; we were at a fork.
Given that our strategy was developed to get us from A to B, A being Abu Dhabi & B is Beirut stopping at Petra was an initiative on the road map to ease the journey. Being closer to our final destination, the choice was simple continue north rather than add another 400Km detour to visit Petra. Petra & Umrah will be done on the way back.
Those who do not plan are destined to work for those who do.
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