Petra - Wadi Rum

We drove about an hour south from Petra to Wadi Rum stopping along the way to see some beautiful views of the Jordan valley.

Wadi Rum is a dessert area in the southern part of Jordan where the Bedouin people live. Bedouins traditionally led a nomadic lifestyle moving to care for their animals, mostly goats.

Wadi Rum is nicknamed the Valley of the Moon but to me it seems to resemble what you would think Mars would look like. It is famous for a few movie sets, including Lawrence of Arabia and Martian with Matt Damon. You would recognize it in the scene where Matt sees the valley to do his test drives. I am sure they picked up all the garbage lying around and waited for a sand storm to wipe out the truck tracks before filming the movie.

Our first stop was to do a camel ride in the desert. Hold on when they get up and get down! A bit of a hokey thing to do but hey, we are in the land of camel crossings.

We then headed into the protected area of Wadi Rum. George and Ahab dropped us off and we climbed into the back of a 4x4 pickup truck (outfitted with bench seats) for a 15 min drive through the desert to the Memories Aicha Luxury Camp. It was 42 degrees when we arrived. But to make us feel better-a dry heat. We had booked a Panoramic tent. Even with the blinds closed the air conditioning could not keep up with the heat. We headed for lunch which was an

outdoor area built into the side of the mountain. It was a beautiful spot to sit, a little on the warm side but pleasant. Natural air conditioning. We took advantage of the down time to catch up on this journal and finish reading our books. There is no internet access here and most people were complaining of no cell service. Not us. A pleasant relaxing afternoon.

Around 5:30 we headed out on a tour of the sites, again piling into the back of the trucks. Interestingly they would only put 2 tourists per truck even though we were following each other from spot to spot.

1st stop - a sand dune to climb. Easier said then done. But we made it. There were a number of younger people from a different camp carrying snow boards up the sand dunes to ski down. Unfortunately we had to leave before we could see where they would ski down. I was wondering if they brought the snow board with them. But in keeping with being in a tourist area there was someone renting them out!

Next stop a canyon with petroglyphs. Then the Umm Fruth Rock Bridge that was a little scary to cross. Then we parked in the middle of the dessert to see the sunset behind the mountains. A few of us were commenting that we didn’t think the Bedouins had heard of sundowners. Too bad. Would have been nice!

When the sun went down the temperature dropped to being pleasant. We could open the curtains in our dome but you couldn’t see out the plexiglass windows to see the stars. We had dinner with a couple from Vancouver and headed to bed. Despite being out in the desert we couldn’t really see any more stars than we could see at home.

The Bedouin’s live in tents so that they can move easily from place to place. The tents are made of goats hair. While it is mostly black in colour, with a white strip running through it, it is incredibly cool inside.

An interesting observation is that from the time we have arrived in Jordan all the employees we have come across are male. Even the bathroom attendants, hotel staff, waiters etc. No females. In the camp at Wadi Rum they were all males there.