A Philly travel agent was stuck in the Middle East when the war broke out. Here’s how she got herself and a dozen friends home.
As a veteran travel agent, Mezgeron James was ready.
Mezgeron James, a 39-year-old travel agent from Southwest Philadelphia, found herself in Petra, Jordan, with 12 friends when the sirens began Feb. 28.
James didn’t panic. In fact, she said, the situation on the ground was much calmer than the news reports out of Iran led all of her anxious friends and family back home to believe.
That afternoon, Israeli airspace had closed, making their scheduled return flight from Tel Aviv on March 5 impossible. Still, things seemed relatively safe in Jordan, even when they could see, from a distance, missiles being shot out of the Israeli sky.
“It was business as usual there,” James said in a phone interview from her home. “No one was frazzled except for the Americans and tourists.”
As a veteran travel agent who owns her own company, You Be Everywhere Travel Agency, James was prepared to make, and keep making, new travel arrangements to get her group back to the U.S. safely.
Trying to get to Amman
James was able to book an early morning flight on Tuesday, March 3, from Cairo to John F. Kennedy International Airport, but the trick was getting to Cairo.
The first plan was to fly from Amman.
On March 1, a Sunday, “we were supposed to head to the Dead Sea,” she said. “We knew we were unable to go to Israel, because Israeli airspace was closed. We had to pivot.”
The group still spent Sunday at the Dead Sea, staying at a Holiday Inn, complete with a Jacuzzi, while they waited on their plans. It was all a bit surreal, in retrospect.
“Even though we saw the missiles being shot out of the sky, that was all at the Israel sky,” she said. “We still weren’t alarmed. We felt like Jordan was the safe place to be.”
The plan would have included spending Monday, March 2, in Amman, complete with a city tour and dinner before going to the airport. But the Amman-to-Cairo flight was canceled.
“Once the flight from Amman to Cairo got canceled, we were like, ‘We have to get out of here,’” she said. “Now we might be stuck.”
James and the group then took their private coach to the Jordanian border but were told they would not be able to go into Egypt, she said. The border officials did not specify a reason, she said.
At that point, she said, “we started to feel a little, ‘OK, now we really have to get out of here.’ Jordan was our best-case scenario. There’s only a few options.”
After determining they would not be able to make their way from Jordan into Egypt either by air or by land, the group made their way back to Israel, going from Aqaba, Jordan, into Eilat, a resort city in southern Israel.
Into Egypt
On Monday, March 2, they were able to cross on foot from Eilat into the busy border city of Taba, Egypt, weaving through crowded lines of other desperate travelers.
At the Egyptian port entrance, she said, they each paid $70 in cash for a visa to leave Taba.
From there, they boarded a bus to get to the airport in Cairo.
That took 12 hours.
“The bus driver was really slow,” she said. “It was midnight when we got to the airport.”
She added: “The biggest goal is just to get out. We can’t worry about anything but getting home. We crossed a lot of things off of my list. We’ll have to revisit Egypt.”
Back to Philly, then off again
They were able to get that flight from Cairo, leaving around 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday and landing at JFK at 11 a.m. local time.
“Everybody I knew was worried,” James said. “As soon as the war broke out, people who knew I was there were like, ‘You have to come home.’”
On Instagram, she reflected about a trip that began Feb. 25 with a flight to Tel Aviv.
“I crossed two new countries off my bucket list and had the opportunity to visit Petra — one of the [new] Seven Wonders of the World."
James said she had wanted to travel to the Middle East to see the two countries and their ancient and biblical sites, in part because of her Christian faith.
“I was never fearful,” she said in an interview. “I trust in the Lord. I know you’re omnipresent.”
Her current clients are a little nervous about making plans to travel very far from home, given recent world events, she said, so she has been suggesting destinations a bit closer.
But not for herself.
“Travel has a way of reminding you just how big and resilient the world is,” she said in an Instagram post. “And despite everything that happened, this experience hasn’t discouraged me from traveling. If anything, it has deepened my appreciation for seeing places for myself and helping others do the same.”
She’s off to Vietnam on Tuesday.