Leaving Petra for Aqaba, we eased onto the almost empty main road south, after the King’s Highway and the Desert Highway merge, and were immediately pulled over by two Jordanian policemen. We reached for our passports and prepared ourselves for another of the frequent, polite checks and chit chat we had been experiencing all around the Dead Sea area and near the Israeli-Palestinian border.

Approaching the passenger window, one of the cops in mirrored sunglasses asked for our car papers. We were handing them over when the second cop began to bang insistently on the driver’s window. We lowered it hastily. “Driving licence”, he spat out. We obliged and he took it into custody. “You could have caused a disaster,” he declared. We were taken aback to say the least. “You didn’t stop before turning. Could have had disaster accident.”

Given the snail’s pace at which we  Read the rest of this entry »