Wadi Rum - the drive in (Friday, April 18)

We were hoping to get a good jump on our afternoon and arrive in
Wadi Rum by 4:00 in order to have time to do a little hiking and playing on Friday, but we left Amman a little later than we intended. We stopped to fill-up with gas and bought delicious falafel sandwiches to take with us. These were the typical falafel as many of us have had, wrapped in fresh pita bread with cabbage, tomatoes, cucumber, pickles, and a tahini sauce. Yummy!

Pic #1: FIRST VIEW OF WADI RUM FROM THE HIGHWAY
Disclaimer - many of these pictures were taken from the car, so they aren't great quality!

By the way, "wadi" means a gully or stream bed that remains dry except in the rain season - so dry most of the time. There are a lot of Wadi this and thats if you look at a map of Jordan. We were headed for the village of Rum which is in a wadi - thus, Wadi Rum.

Pic #2: Getting closer!

Our drive would take us about 4 hours pretty much straight south from Amman, including a potty stop for the kids. It isn't a particularly remarkable drive, but as I love seeing countries from cars, I enjoyed it. The whole drive is through desert. Although Amman has quite a bit of green, it pretty quickly disappears once you get south of the road to the airport. A lot of those trees were evidently planted to look good for visitors arriving - and it does! On our drive, there weren't ever too many miles between villages - probably never more than 20. Almost every village has a sign welcoming you and then saying goodbye. There wasn't much variety in architecture, but that's been true in Amman, too. Sorry no pics of small villages - my camera was in the trunk!

Pic #3: Leaving Rum village (taken from the back of the truck)

After about 3 hours of driving, you climb a long hill, and as you come over that hill you see the Wadi spread out in front of you. It is breathtaking even from a distance! The view of Wadi Rum goes past the horizon, so you can only see a little of it. (See pic 1 above). It is amazing to see these monoliths rising out of the desert. Another 1/2 hour and you take a turn to the east and head toward the Wadi Rum visitors' center. This is a pretty new building with very clean and modern bathrooms - lovely! The area known as Wadi Rum is a national park, environmentally protected (somewhat), with a very small fee by U.S. standards. The drive from the highway to the center is about 20 minutes. We called our guide on the phone and he told us where to meet him in the village of Rum where he lives.

SIDEBAR: I'll tell you how this guide thing works if you live in Jordan or know someone who does when you get the privilege of visiting.... A large percentage of the Bedouins who used to live in Wadi Rum and still populate the area now survive off the tourism

industry. They drive jeeps in and out of the wadi, take people to their families' permanent camps, and act as hosts, caterers and tour guides. An amazing and adaptable group of people. My sister and her husband have a favorite guide they've used many times. They are quite comfortable in their relationship with him, trust him absolutely, and very much appreciate his excellent service. We gave him a call, told him when we wanted to come, what meals we wanted him to provide, and that was that...almost. A slight glitch in this expedition: their usual guide was full the night we wanted to stay (with a group of 20!), but his brother's camp was available.

OK, so we stopped at the visitors' center, paid our fee, headed on

to Rum and met up with our guide. Although my sister had never met him before, she recognized him right away - he looks just like his brother! He loaded our stuff into the back of his 4x4 Toyota truck, we all piled in on top of our stuff, and we headed out to camp - about a 20 min. drive.

I couldn't really imagine what camp was going to look like. I had a hard time picturing what the terrain was going to turn into. I couldn't believe all these sandstone giants rising straight out of the desert. Quite a sight to see! The desert is a true desert - dry, bare, nearly devoid of vegetation, beautiful colors of sand, lots of wind. We arrived in the

afternoon (and it is still spring), so it wasn't too hot. The air was

starting to cool and it was just lovely. The jeep ride was a little topsy-turvy for someone who doesn't like feeling out of control in a car. The driver was more than competent, but the feeling of alternately sinking into sand, skidding on sand, and bumping along on very hard-packed sand was a little crazy! We very quickly lost sight of the village and headed out into the wadi where we saw very few other people. We passed a few other camps, and so I began to get an idea of where we were headed and what it would look like. We did pass a man on a camel with his small camel herd. I wish I had asked our driver (our Bedouin host's eldest son) to stop so I could take some good pictures, but I'm hoping to get more pics from my sister since she has seen so much more of

Jordan than I have. It was quite a sight! I can't really describe how beautiful this place is. I'm hoping a few of my pictures will ate least be able to convey a little of it. I'll also try to find a few websites that might have better pictures than me.

I'll sign off for now. Tomorrow I'll load pics of our camp and talk about that. xo!