Captain Scott ~ September 26th, 2007

On the 21st we powered up the last few miles of the Gulf of Aqaba to theRoyal Yacht Club of Jordan. Now 115,645 nm under the keel and Jordan is the113th country collected. We circle a small island on the way that is covered with a Crusaders castle.

The Israeli make us backtrack and go 5 miles out of our way so as to not touch any of their water. The Jordanians on the other hand give us a warm welcome. We are in Aqaba and the Israeli town of Eilat is just a mile away. We travel inland for 5 days to visit Petra and WadiRum. Near Petra we stay at the Sofitel Taybet Zaman witch is a reconstructed old Ottoman stone village. They literally bought an entire village and remade each stone house into a luxury hotel room. Petra itself is hewn fromor into multicolored sandstone cliffs that line a narrow canyon. We walked (12 miles one day alone), climbed, and explored for 3 days. And one night we walked down the ravine to the Treasury in silence by candlelight. Thousands of candles lit up the canyon. Bedouin music was the played on original instruments.

Yesterday we drove around and camped out in Wadi Rum. This is the desert area where Lawrence of Arabia hung out and from where he launched his attack on Aqaba in WW1 its home only to the Bedouin and to stay you must camp out--as in tents. High sheer cliffs jut out of the desert. The desert at night was magic.

Today the 26th of Sept we are back on the boat but we can not move on. We must wait on water maker parts that are on their way--somewhere