Wadi Rum

Wadi Rum 068
Originally uploaded by susiebarber

Sorry for a lack of update yesterday, but I spent the night in a Bedoin camp in Wadi Rum, the desert where Lawrence of Arabia did his thing and where they filmed the movie. But first things first ...

Yesterday morning I went with a couple of women from my tour group to the water front in Aqaba for a glass bottom boat on the Red Sea. We did it mostly to get on the water and see the landscape. You can see both Israel (very close) and Egypt from the water and if we had gone a few more kilometers down the shore front, we'd be in Saudi Arabia. It's truly a crossroads there. We also saw the king's compound and the Royal Jordanian Yacht Club. Under the boat, we did see a lot of coral, though it wasn't very colorful. There were also a few ship wrecks and a tank. Yes, a tank. Like the army uses. It was all pretty cool to see. Oh, and goldfish. Seriously. There were goldfish swimming around some of the coral formations. I guess they had to come from somewhere before they made it to the stores.

After, we met 15 more folks who had come over on the ferry from Egypt to join our group. Luckily, there's 2 buses, so it's not too crowded. It was then that we all set off to Wadi Rum. It's a pretty spectacular desert that just blew me away. We started at the visitor's center where we saw artist renditions of what the place will look like a million years or so down the road when the rock formations erode a bit more. It looks exactly like Monument Valley in Arizona! I guess I know what that place probably used to look like.

We set off across the desert in jeeps, stopping at a spring. You see, water doesn't accumulate in pools on the desert floor there -- it seeps out of the rocks into little springs. Some have water all year long which is why the Bedoin like it so much. We then were taken to a "Bedoin" camp. Actually, it was a camp for tourists that had tents made by Bedoin and all, but we had flush toilets. We walked around, rode camels in the desert (yup, I rode me a camel -- I prefer elephants) and watched the sunset. After, the Bedoin hosts served us dinner. The chicken and potatoes were cooked in the ground and were absolutely delicious. We also had olives, hummus, tomato and cucumber salad and pita (there's always pita). It was delicious!

After dinner, I snuck away for a walk by myself. We had a full moon, so that desert was all aglow and I just wanted to check it out. I was gone about 15 minutes before Khalib, our head guide, came running to find me. Long story short, the guy made a major pass at me and wanted me to sleep out there on the desert floor with him looking at the stars. I turned him down and returned to camp. His buddies were a bit in shock and he was too humiliated to return to camp. Needless to say, he didn't speak to me this morning.

But the night was wonderful. Breakfast was delicious. We had a 2 hour jeep tour of the desert stopping at a big arch, what's left of the building that they used to film Lawrence of Arabia, some Bedoin art etched into the rocks, and a huge sand dune before we returned to meet our buses. One of our jeeps got a flat out there, but they managed to roll the thing up on some rocks and skip the whole jack thing. The tire was changed very quickly.

We then drove to Petra to our hotel for two nights. Some of us have walked through town and then got Turkish baths a the hotel. We're now waiting for dinner. I'm so excited to spend the day at Petra tomorrow -- I've always wanted to see it. I promise to take a lot of pictures.

Cheers!