Eilat

Earlier this year I travelled with 15 others from Berlin on a hiking excursion to Jordan. Enroute, we travelled through Eilat in Israel before attempting to cross the land border to Jordan. Unfortunately, we were told that the law had changed five days prior and we now required visas to make the border crossing :/

We found some emergency accommodation in Eilat and a day later found out that we didn’t need a visa at all, and could simply buy something called a “Jordan Pass”, which gave us access to a bunch of random attractions within Jordan. Being told we needed to pay to see a bunch of attractions we didn’t want to see, just to get across the border, seemed a tad odd. I can’t imagine Germany asking people travelling from Belgium to buy a ticket for a bunch of amusement parks, just so that someone could go hiking in Sächsischeschweiz.

After some run ins with a taxi on the opposite side of the border, and a brief police investigation of us (ask me in person if you want to know the full story behind this) and we were happily our way for our great Jordanian adventure 🙂