The next morning, we woke up early so that we could drive to Little Petra before the heat of the day. Many of the people staying in the camp the previous night had told us of Little Petra and how it was so much less crowded than its larger cousin. This gathering of carved tombs a little distance from Petra was apparently a suburb or trade outpost for the main city. It had similar tombs, although less of them, but seemingly just as many mysterious tracks leading up to the heights.
Then we decided to make use of the two-day duration of our ticket to Petra. We'd done the most strenuous trails the day before so this morning was for filling some of the bits we'd skipped over. We spent more time taking in the 'Royal Palace' tombs, which were bigger than the Treasury but more weathered. We then took the high road to something that looked like an archaeological dig, with a big tarpaulin shelter. It turned out to be a recently excavated Byzantine church with an intricate mosaic floor depicting the flora and fauna of the area. When we peeked inside we found a small congregation singing mass in French - not what we'd expected in that desolation!
We finished up by taking a closer look at the forum and some of the huge Roman structures that have only recently been unearthed/renovated. After a brief lunch we set of for Wadi Rum and high adventure!
We continued on the winding King's Highway for a while until it joined up to the Desert Highway, which was a shock. This highway had more than one lane and people actually drove quickly. We had to increase our reaction time very quickly to deal with the huge trucks all around us. And did we mention that any lane & also the shoulder can be used by anyone who has the guts (including driving on the wrong side of the road)? So we were dodging oncoming traffic in our lane as well....
After some mysterious detours and a lot of navigational guesswork, we safely arrived in Wadi Rum. This area is a UNESCO site and part of it is a protected Nature Reserve. It's famous for its Bedouin camps and the wild emptiness of its desert. We hoped to get onto a jeep tour that included an overnight stay in a camp. As we arrived in the area late in the day we needed to look for some accommodation for our first night. We cruised by several camps, were invited to take tea but, in the end decided that they were asking too much. We had begun to consider sleeping in the car when we reached the last camp on our list. In a show of tremendous Bedouin hospitality, after telling him we had no money, the owner of the camp (the lovely Raed), to our astonishment, said we could stay for free that night!
After we were sure he was serious and had no ulterior motive (such suspicious Londoners!), we settled in. At that point we met Emily, a French woman who had just finished a week-long horse trek in the desert, with just a guide and a cook for company. She told us that she worked in marketing for Christian Laboutin (apparently the ladies will know who that is) and had just been head-hunted by Fendi, so she was preparing to move from Paris to Rome! But during her holidays she loved nothing more than to take long horse-riding trips in remote locations - apparently her colleagues found that a bit hard to understand...
There was also a tour group scheduled to arrive that night so we were treated to a slap up dinner, the usual gorgeous sage tea and a lesson in Bedouin dancing. Several of the couples in the tour group were also dressed up in Bedouin attire and were made to sit through some kind of marriage ceremony. The dancing became particularly raunchy as Chris and the owner had a hip gyrating stand-off, followed by the latter reaching down his top and simulating a beating heart. Or was he just caressing his nipple?
The landscape in Wadi Rum was dramatic. We've both been to Arizona but travelling off-road really made Wadi Rum seem more desolate; it brought the emptiness home. The area is protected, so the most you'll see are other tours and the odd Bedouin camp, usually hidden by a bluff or in the lee of a hill. We were treated to a view of 'Lawrence's Spring', which was supposedly used by Lawrence of Arabia during the first Arab uprising. We were able to climb the highest sand dune I've ever seen, and run/tumble down screaming afterward! We took some photos of some ancient rock-wall paintings and had our own pictures taken after clambering up to the top of a rock arch.
After a wind-blown day in the jeep we reached our camp. We both took a pre-dinner walk out into desert, found a rock to climb and watched the sun slowly go down behind the rocky hills, lending a beautiful red glow to the surrounding rocks & sand. The camp was smaller than our previous night but the food was delicious and, as usual, cooked in the ground. There was no dancing but we did end up chatting with an Australian fellow, Rod, who had published a book about the economy and politics of East Timor & was now visiting his son who is living in Jordan. Randomness and diversity strike again.
The early morning saw us back in the jeep and heading for our drop-off in Rum Village. As we were heading in the same direction we offered to give the two Kates a lift to Aqaba. They were planning to catch an overnight ferry to Egypt however, this turned out to be more tricky than they'd imagined. Firstly, we drove them to the ferry terminal only to find that one 'obviously' cannot buy tickets there; you must do this in town, several kilometres away, at a location which could not be described by the security guard (making us wonder what on earth the "information point" in the ferry terminal was for - but we never found out, as you can't enter the terminal without a ticket....). Luckily a kind man said we could follow him in our car as he was going past the office. On the way back to the car Lisa bumped into a pair of Japanese tourists. They had tickets for the 11pm ferry, although no-one could confirm if it would actually run or not. At this point it was about 12pm, so they were planning to hang out for the whole day in the salubrious ferry terminal. Nice. In town it also seemed that no-one would give our Kates a straight answer as to when/if the ferry would run. Honestly! Tourists and their strict schedules.
They eventually got their tickets (a ferry ticket office DOES exist, albeit in a rather side-streety location) so we bade goodbye to the Kates and settled in for lunch on the beach with our feet in the Red Sea. Being a Friday, it was busy with families and with children swimming on the sea, It was a little strange to our eyes seeing people swimming pretty much fully clothed, except for some of the young boys. It was a reminder, after being with the Bedouin, that we were still in a Muslim country, where modesty is part of everyday behaviour.
The next day, we recruited one of the local felines to 'assist' us in packing up our tent. We almost took him with us! We then set out to find the Dead Sea Highway, the route to which turned out to be pretty much through the airport. Weird. We also had to make sure that we turned the right way out of our resort's entrance as a wrong turn would have had us at the Saudi Arabian border in a few minutes!
We were headed for Wadi Musa, a protected area where you can hike up a river canyon and abseil down a waterfall, if you're so inclined. To get there we had opted for the Dead Sea Highway, which lived up to our scenic expectations; deserted and salty! On the way we picked up a couple of French hitch-hikers who were also headed to Wadi Musa. Poor guys hitching in the desert.
The canyon has a river flowing down it so we were walking/wading up-river. At various points there are small waterfalls that we had to climb to continue onward. There were ropes to help but getting up some of them was very tricky due to spray and slippery rocks. Luckily we always met some helpful guides on their way down when we reached the tricky bits - always handy to have an expert boost! The "trail" culminated in a tall waterfall that we could walk behind. This is the same waterfall that, if you take a different trail, you end up abseiling down. By this time of day, there were only two other people (professional photographers by the look of their equipment - they must have some excellent waterproof bags!) at the waterfall so we could really admire this spectacular setting in near-privacy. Then it was an easy float back down to the visitor's center!
That was enough excitement for one day so we began to think about sleeping. One of the recurring themes for us in Jordan was how expensive accommodation had been. We had constantly joked to ourselves that, if it came to it we could sleep in the car so, this was the night we would make the car pay for itself! We cruised past a public beach but it was so busy (still a weekend) that it didn't look appetising as a place to rest. We ended up installing ourselves in a little pull-off next to the highway but screened a little by a hill. We attempted to have dinner on a cliff overlooking the Dead Sea, but a very mean-sounding dog seemed to be approaching rapidly just as we sat down, so we hightailed it back to the car. We had finished "dinner in the car" and settled down to play a game of cards when a fellow came up and knocked on our window. Through the medium of sign language it appeared that he was a local farmer and that we weren't allowed to park here. He motioned that we should follow him and he took us to a place a few metres up the road, next to a small water plant, where we understood it was ok to stay for the night. This area seemed to come with an array of guard dogs who barked almost continuously at the intrusion of our car - fingers crossed that we wouldn't need to pee, as there was no way we were going to step out of the car!
We must have been there an hour or two, managing to catch a few winks, when someone tapped on the window! It was our friend again. Now he seemed to indicate that 'police' come to close the gate to the water plant at midnight and we should go. His exact words were "one one four nine police"....this, about about 11:48pm. At this point, we were happy to move on from Mr. Helpful's land, if only so we can actually get some sleep. A few kilometres up the road we found a large public layby and finally settled in for the night. We only had one further disturbance when the police knocked on the window but, upon seeing we were happily sleeping and weird foreign tourists, wished us a good night!
 |
| Nabbatean ceiling painting |
 |
| Going slightly off-road |
Lisa took the lead and we climbed up the ravine, with Chris only receiving minor injuries. At the end we found a great view of the surrounding peaks and a black-clad, pale skinned Bedouin who had a story. We had a chat with her and she told us that she was originally from Denmark and, while visiting Jordan, had fallen in love with a Bedouin man. She now lives in a cave, with her parents' blessing, and sells handicrafts at Little Petra. I guess it shows that you can never tell where the future will lead.
 |
| Huge Roman temple |
 |
| Mosaic in Byzantine church |
We finished up by taking a closer look at the forum and some of the huge Roman structures that have only recently been unearthed/renovated. After a brief lunch we set of for Wadi Rum and high adventure!
We continued on the winding King's Highway for a while until it joined up to the Desert Highway, which was a shock. This highway had more than one lane and people actually drove quickly. We had to increase our reaction time very quickly to deal with the huge trucks all around us. And did we mention that any lane & also the shoulder can be used by anyone who has the guts (including driving on the wrong side of the road)? So we were dodging oncoming traffic in our lane as well....
After some mysterious detours and a lot of navigational guesswork, we safely arrived in Wadi Rum. This area is a UNESCO site and part of it is a protected Nature Reserve. It's famous for its Bedouin camps and the wild emptiness of its desert. We hoped to get onto a jeep tour that included an overnight stay in a camp. As we arrived in the area late in the day we needed to look for some accommodation for our first night. We cruised by several camps, were invited to take tea but, in the end decided that they were asking too much. We had begun to consider sleeping in the car when we reached the last camp on our list. In a show of tremendous Bedouin hospitality, after telling him we had no money, the owner of the camp (the lovely Raed), to our astonishment, said we could stay for free that night!
After we were sure he was serious and had no ulterior motive (such suspicious Londoners!), we settled in. At that point we met Emily, a French woman who had just finished a week-long horse trek in the desert, with just a guide and a cook for company. She told us that she worked in marketing for Christian Laboutin (apparently the ladies will know who that is) and had just been head-hunted by Fendi, so she was preparing to move from Paris to Rome! But during her holidays she loved nothing more than to take long horse-riding trips in remote locations - apparently her colleagues found that a bit hard to understand...
There was also a tour group scheduled to arrive that night so we were treated to a slap up dinner, the usual gorgeous sage tea and a lesson in Bedouin dancing. Several of the couples in the tour group were also dressed up in Bedouin attire and were made to sit through some kind of marriage ceremony. The dancing became particularly raunchy as Chris and the owner had a hip gyrating stand-off, followed by the latter reaching down his top and simulating a beating heart. Or was he just caressing his nipple?
The next morning, after giving copious thanks to Raed and learning a bit more about his previous company (jeep tours from Turkey to Jordan via Syria!), we set off for the Wadi Rum visitor centre to see if we could strike a deal with a tour company. Lisa even went so far as to prepare a colourful sign to attract other visitors, the logic being the more people went on a tour, the cheaper it would be for each individual. As it turned out, the first guide we saw was scouting for the last couple of people to fill his jeep so we were in! We drove onward to Rum Village, from where the jeeps leave, and proceeded to re-pack and re-water for our overnight stay in the desert.
We met up with our companions on the trip, which included the 'two Kates'; one was an Canadian/British architect who was working on her doctorate in Sudan, and the other was a physicist from CERN (they of the Large Hadron Collider!) who had just finished a tour of Palestine promoting opportunities for women to study sciences in higher education. Quite a diverse group then.
The landscape in Wadi Rum was dramatic. We've both been to Arizona but travelling off-road really made Wadi Rum seem more desolate; it brought the emptiness home. The area is protected, so the most you'll see are other tours and the odd Bedouin camp, usually hidden by a bluff or in the lee of a hill. We were treated to a view of 'Lawrence's Spring', which was supposedly used by Lawrence of Arabia during the first Arab uprising. We were able to climb the highest sand dune I've ever seen, and run/tumble down screaming afterward! We took some photos of some ancient rock-wall paintings and had our own pictures taken after clambering up to the top of a rock arch.After a wind-blown day in the jeep we reached our camp. We both took a pre-dinner walk out into desert, found a rock to climb and watched the sun slowly go down behind the rocky hills, lending a beautiful red glow to the surrounding rocks & sand. The camp was smaller than our previous night but the food was delicious and, as usual, cooked in the ground. There was no dancing but we did end up chatting with an Australian fellow, Rod, who had published a book about the economy and politics of East Timor & was now visiting his son who is living in Jordan. Randomness and diversity strike again.
The early morning saw us back in the jeep and heading for our drop-off in Rum Village. As we were heading in the same direction we offered to give the two Kates a lift to Aqaba. They were planning to catch an overnight ferry to Egypt however, this turned out to be more tricky than they'd imagined. Firstly, we drove them to the ferry terminal only to find that one 'obviously' cannot buy tickets there; you must do this in town, several kilometres away, at a location which could not be described by the security guard (making us wonder what on earth the "information point" in the ferry terminal was for - but we never found out, as you can't enter the terminal without a ticket....). Luckily a kind man said we could follow him in our car as he was going past the office. On the way back to the car Lisa bumped into a pair of Japanese tourists. They had tickets for the 11pm ferry, although no-one could confirm if it would actually run or not. At this point it was about 12pm, so they were planning to hang out for the whole day in the salubrious ferry terminal. Nice. In town it also seemed that no-one would give our Kates a straight answer as to when/if the ferry would run. Honestly! Tourists and their strict schedules.
 |
| Lunch on the table, toes in the Red Sea |
After lunch we followed directions to a group of divers resorts just south of town. Here we were allowed to pitch our tent, for a minimal cost. We managed to do this despite the insistent wind and then went for a walk along the beach. Again, being Friday (Muslim holy day), it was crowded with families, many of whom had set up large tents on the beach. We returned to the resort next to ours to have dinner. They had many guard cats and some Arabic beer (mmmalty and unfortunately non-alcoholic).
 |
| Our 'catsistant' |
We were headed for Wadi Musa, a protected area where you can hike up a river canyon and abseil down a waterfall, if you're so inclined. To get there we had opted for the Dead Sea Highway, which lived up to our scenic expectations; deserted and salty! On the way we picked up a couple of French hitch-hikers who were also headed to Wadi Musa. Poor guys hitching in the desert.
We arrived at Wadi Musa in the mid-afternoon which meant it probably wasn't as busy as it would have been earlier in the day but the narrowness of the canyon also meant that it was still nice and shady. We donned our life vests and started our ascent.
The canyon has a river flowing down it so we were walking/wading up-river. At various points there are small waterfalls that we had to climb to continue onward. There were ropes to help but getting up some of them was very tricky due to spray and slippery rocks. Luckily we always met some helpful guides on their way down when we reached the tricky bits - always handy to have an expert boost! The "trail" culminated in a tall waterfall that we could walk behind. This is the same waterfall that, if you take a different trail, you end up abseiling down. By this time of day, there were only two other people (professional photographers by the look of their equipment - they must have some excellent waterproof bags!) at the waterfall so we could really admire this spectacular setting in near-privacy. Then it was an easy float back down to the visitor's center!That was enough excitement for one day so we began to think about sleeping. One of the recurring themes for us in Jordan was how expensive accommodation had been. We had constantly joked to ourselves that, if it came to it we could sleep in the car so, this was the night we would make the car pay for itself! We cruised past a public beach but it was so busy (still a weekend) that it didn't look appetising as a place to rest. We ended up installing ourselves in a little pull-off next to the highway but screened a little by a hill. We attempted to have dinner on a cliff overlooking the Dead Sea, but a very mean-sounding dog seemed to be approaching rapidly just as we sat down, so we hightailed it back to the car. We had finished "dinner in the car" and settled down to play a game of cards when a fellow came up and knocked on our window. Through the medium of sign language it appeared that he was a local farmer and that we weren't allowed to park here. He motioned that we should follow him and he took us to a place a few metres up the road, next to a small water plant, where we understood it was ok to stay for the night. This area seemed to come with an array of guard dogs who barked almost continuously at the intrusion of our car - fingers crossed that we wouldn't need to pee, as there was no way we were going to step out of the car!
We must have been there an hour or two, managing to catch a few winks, when someone tapped on the window! It was our friend again. Now he seemed to indicate that 'police' come to close the gate to the water plant at midnight and we should go. His exact words were "one one four nine police"....this, about about 11:48pm. At this point, we were happy to move on from Mr. Helpful's land, if only so we can actually get some sleep. A few kilometres up the road we found a large public layby and finally settled in for the night. We only had one further disturbance when the police knocked on the window but, upon seeing we were happily sleeping and weird foreign tourists, wished us a good night!
After a slightly unfulfilling but very economical sleep, we woke up to the splendid view of the Dead Sea at dawn, looking across into Israel. Today was our last day with our beloved car so we made good time up the highway, passing through Madaba, where we had begun the Jordan leg of our trip. We made it to the King Hussein Bridge in time to drop off Raki, pack up our belongings which were liberally scattered around the car, donate the last of our Nutella to a cute but insistent young beggar (who did actually thank us!), and trudge toward the compound from where we would take the bus across the bridge and into Israel.
No comments:
Post a Comment