Jordan - Day 4

We woke up this morning in our camp site at Wadi Rum. The night in Wadi Rum was really quite freezing and it is only because Dave is so warm and toasty that I actually managed to survive the night at all. Dave even said that he was a little cold in the tent.

Dave and I had headed off to bed relatively early and it was only the following morning that we discovered that most of the brits had stayed up quite late the previous night drinking and being quite merry, and that some of them were feeling a little worse for wear that morning.

We all had breakfast at the camp site and then packed up and hopped into our very old nissan patrols to do a little bit of wadi bashing. I have to say that Wadi Rum is awesome. Along with the Dead Sea it was the highlight of my trip. We had some local bedouin drivers that took us about in the desert for the morning. The first stop that we made was by a little canyon and we all had to get out and then walk into the wee canyon a little bit. Once we got in there a bit we discovered that there were some ancient cave drawings on the walls. Apparently this was the way that the local bedouins recorded the events that were happening at the time that they lived. Very interesting.

After the cave drawing stop we made another stop at a couple of natural bridges. Osama allowed up to scramble up and climb the second bridge and I have to say that I would most heartily recommend to people to not try and do a climb like this in a skirt. It was fine going up, but coming down again, when you really needed to sit on your buttocks, with your legs splayed as though you were giving birth in some hospital stirrups, was not the best or most delicate method of getting down the rocks again. Needless to say I managed it with the utmost style, grace and decorum.

The natural bridge was really cool and standing on top of it gave you a fantastic view of the wadi. From there most of the group took a wee desert walk to a place where our bedouin drivers had set up a tea break. I declined to do this walk as my foot was sore and I was feeling a touch dizzy (not to mention that it I want to go for a walk in the sand I can just walk out the back door at home). The tea that the bedouins made everyone was amazing. It was normal tea but it was seasoned with sage and I have to say was some of the most lovely tea that I have ever tasted.

We ended up spending most of the morning in the wadi and once we left it our tour guide (Osama) took us for lunch at another close by campsite where they cooked us a traditional jordanian lunch. This consisted of meat, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes all wrapped up in tin foil and put into a open camp fire to slowly cook. I have to say that the food was amazing. Very tasty. Everyone else had chicken but because I am a fussy eater, I was given a lamb tin foil treat.

From lunch we headed off back into our usual bus to start the long drive to Petra , where we would be spending the next couple of days.

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