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Published: June 15th 2007
Tea with Bedouins
Wadi Rum Bedouins drinking tea in the desert Tuesday, June 12, 2007
We leave Dahab, on the East side of the Sinai peninsula early this morning for a short drive to Nuwiba where the ferry departs for Aquaba at the Northern Tip of the Red Sea.
This is a typical ferry trip, except that it starts in one country and ends in another, so we have to go through exit customs and immigration; and then we have to have all of our bags x-rayed by an x-ray machine that doesn’t work…..And we don’t take all of our bags, just a bag each so we can meet whatever formality the Egyptian gvt has decided they want to enforce.
Usually the Egyptian gvt requires an exit payment of 50 gyppies per person. For some reason they don’t charge us, so we get to leave for free.
Once on the ferry, our guide manages to finagle entrance to the “distinguished passengers” lounge, but it is about 100 degrees in there, so we have a nice place to sit, but it is almost unbearably hot. I take my collapsible chair out on the deck and sit with the Muslim pilgrims traveling to Mecca. This works ok for a while,
but the aisle soon becomes too crowded, so I go back inside.
We buy a great lunch in the “first class” dining room, with rice, chicken and some very spicy pickled vegetables; all for about $5.00.
Finally the ship docks and we spend another couple of hours getting off the ferry. It is hard to understand why they check our passports AGAIN to leave the ferry, but we didn’t have to unload any luggage for Jordanian immigration or customs; they just came on the truck and gave a cursory look at our passports. So by 7 p.m. we are on our way.
A short drive takes us to the “Bedouin Village Camp”, sort of a hostel/motel/camp. Some of our group pitches tents, the rest of us “upgrade” to an air-conditioned room for about $10. Then we set up the kitchen, cook dinner, and about midnight, finally get to bed for the night.
Wed, June 13
After a tasty breakfast of beans on toast, (apparently some sort of British delicacy) we head out for Wadi Rum. Known as the headquarters of Lawrence of Arabia, this area is now a desert reserve established to showcase and
Children on the Ferry
These kids wanted to teach us how to play monopoly in arabic protect this region.
Of course, I didn’t know that and apparently not many other tourists do either. We did see some Japanese tourists, but otherwise tourists were noticeably absent.
We took a 3 ½ hour jeep tour, driving almost 28 miles in a winding journey to various places in the preserve, to visit various oases, ancient petroyglyphs carved into the rock, and sites identified as being associated with Lawrence and his exploits.
And from there we drove 10 miles or so directly out into the desert…in fact we drove until we got stuck, and there we camped overnight; with the stars of the Arabian night shining brightly overhead.
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cuz Beth
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O.K. was Lawrence of Arabia a real person?!!
Dear Bill, I confess my woeful ignorance but I thought Lawrence of Arabia was just an old movie classic which I saw for the 1st time last yr. Was he for real?!! If so, you'll have to tell me more about him when you return Stateside! The fancy lunch looked good. Got to keep some lbs. on you! :) Are you saying that this obsure area should remain obscure to the tourist map or did you feel this portion of the trip was worthwhile?!! I'm dubbing you the Clayton Explorer! Love, Beth