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Published: October 27th 2008
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Wadi Rum and I
Just one of the many incredible views Well, I suppose its time to give an update to all that care. Sorry it took me so long, my comp was down for a while... and i've also not really wanted to sit down and do all this. Regardless, here we go...
Late September:
The whole group went for a three day excursion to Wadi Rum, Aqaba, and Petra. Definitely one of the coolest trips of my life. After the 3hr bus ride from Amman we arrived in Wadi Rum. All of you Lawrence of Arabia fans should recognize the name, yup its one and the same.
We all hopped on camels (yes camels!) for a 3 hr trek into the desert. My camel was the man, I named him George, and we had a grand old time. We stopped at a bedouin camp and had tea, some of the best tea EVER actually. the trek was unbelievable, through some of the most starkly beautiful country I've ever seen. We ended up at a camp beneath a cliff and spent the night there. Bedouin food, camp fire, dancing, all that good stuff. A couple of us decided to sleep under the stars that night.
The midnight hiking was awesome! The moon was so bright that it was almost an eerie daylight that lit up the whole valley. relaxed on a huge dune, but woke up freezing at 4AM and found my tent. I didn't exactly come prepared for a night out under the stars.
We woke up early the next morning and headed south in 4x4s. I guess the idea was why take the highway when we could follow Lawrence of Arabia's route and go through the desert. That was pretty friggin cool. We stopped a bunch and went rock climbing and exploring and stuff. Nearly broke my arm jumping off a sixty foot dune... that was a good idea. I'm still finding sand in places....
Thankfully CIEE has done this before and knew that the next thing we should do would be swimming. We headed down to Aqaba and went for a cruise on two party boats. it was 60 kids, and we had a grand old time. My boat was blasting dance music as we headed out into the sunshine. From Aqaba you can see Jordan (obviously), Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia (kinda). Pretty friggin awesome! When we stopped we
Aqaba....
Sunset over Egypt... What more can I say? all grabbed our snorkel gear and headed into the Red Sea. Believe it or not, its not red. It is in fact the most incredible clear blue I have ever seen. And quite salty! We spent the next couple of hours diving around a sunken tank and checking out the reefs and whatnot. Horsing around on the boats was fun too. Mine electrocuted anyone that tried to get on it. But I don't think that was intentional. Who knows. We dicked around jumping off the upper decks, good times with a hurt shoulder... but I never said I was a bright boy.
After the ride back (see picture) we all took advantage of the tax free zone (hehe) and got on the bus for Petra. We spent the night in another bedouin style camp (more touristy though). The next day we went through the ancient city of Petra. It was amazing. The whole city (an ancient burial city) is carved out of the sandstone. We were all pretty traveled out by this time but I still made the effort to see as much as I could. If you remember Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the spot where they find the Holy Grail is actually the Treasury at Petra. We decided for some reason to run up and down this big fricking mountain to see the monastery, but it was worth it. Amazing view. Instead of walking back to the bus I used animal forms of transportation (donkey, then horse). that was pretty fun. Especially when I almost ran over this old british couple with my donkey, as if I actually was controlling the damn thing.
That was that weekend...
Couple of weekends later I went on a hike through Wadi Hasa (Hasa Valley). That was pretty damn cool as well. It was sold as a "water hike". Didn't take me long to figure out what that meant. We started the hike out by sliding down a rock face into a pool of water, and spent the majority of the 6 hr hike either swimming or wading along the stream that ran along the bottom of the valley. It was so cool! There were some awesome cliffs to jump off, and some really awesome Apocalypse Now style views. (swimming through reeds and stuff like that). We finished it off with a nice relaxing time in the natural hot springs. The coolest thing about this whole hike was that we were literally in the middle of the desert, just moving through a strip of green maybe 20 feet wide at most.
Since then the only real travel I've done was over the Eid al Fitr (end of Ramadan Festival break). A bunch of us went down to Aqaba again and spent the 4 days chilling on the beach, making bad decisions, and spending way to much money. Our trip had its ups and downs, thats for sure. Took us a while to find the right bus station at first, and at one point the van I was in ran out of gas and was rolling backwards down a hill into traffic. That was fun... Once we got there I cabbie decided it would be fun to take us to the Saudi Boarder "looking for the right beach", but I guess that was a worthy experience in the end. We didn't pay him as much as he wanted... so he chased us hahaha. His fault.
It was a good time overall, I slept in a tent the hotel had set up in the space between buildings. What do you expect for 6 bucks a night? That was an experience to check out of by the way, I didn't really know what to do, never mind how to express that desire in Arabic. The last night I again made the terrible decision to sleep outside. We thought it would be cool to sleep on the beach. Not really, I almost died. I spent the night wearing khakis and a button-down (trust me... it was buttoned UP) with the wind howling. I was getting hit by sand and trash all night haha. Definitely a worthwhile experience, but next time I'll spend the night in the hotel room I already paid for (doh!)
Well, it was kinda like the spring break I always wanted. I went SCUBA diving, it was AWESOME! that crap is so much heavier than I thought it would be. I went diving with a 5 foot nothing girl that must weigh about a hundred pounds. I have NO idea how she did it, I was struggling hahah. Crazy experience though, totally worth it. I definitely felt like I didn't belong down there, but it was cool to explore nonetheless. The Snorkeling was almost more fun. We rented some snorkels from our hotel and just walked out to the reef. after drifting a half mile (really safe mom, huh?) Then we just walked back to the hotel up the beach. Aqaba is an incredibly beautiful place. The nightlife leaves something to be desired, but it is a Muslim country, so what could I expect?
Plans for the future: Skydiving, trip to the Ummayad Desert Castles and... Egypt/Istanbul?
we shall see...
love you all
-R
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