Any land border crossing with armed soldiers is not going to entirely relaxed but our journey from Israel back to Jordan had an extra twist thanks to the slightly crazy Palestinian taxi driver who took us across. The guy is a born actor. He put on a perfect Australian accent for us (no wuckin’ furries) then did his London cabby impression. On the drive down towards the border north of the Dead Sea he railed against the Israeli occupation and how it had ruined the Palestinian land. “They take all the water and give us nothing. This all used to be farmland.” This was all very entertaining until we got to the Israeli checkpoint just before the border where we were held up in traffic while the guards checked for bombs under the vehicles. Our driver started honking and yelling and the guards when other cars got in before us, then he jumped out of the taxi to go and talk to whoever was running the show, as well as the other drivers in the queue. He got back and assured as that he had managed to get us in ahead of the next car. As we pulled alongside the car ahead of us he leaned out and offered them a lolly. They didn’t accept it, or look all that amused. When we got to the checkpoint he was cracking jokes in Russian with the female guard and putting on his gay accent as a couple of highly armed but thankfully amused Israeli soldiers looked on.
We eventually made it through to the border. “The Israelis can’t ever relax,” our taxi driver told us. “They stole this land”.
With that we crossed into the relative calm of Amman.
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