Petra to Wadi Rum

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Petra and Wadi Rum
From the Dead Sea we drove to Wadi Musa, the town closest to Petra. It’s becoming so popular now the town in visible from the site of Petra itself. We arose early to get to the Treasury to enjoy the sight when the sunlight highlights it to its best. The desire to run through the gorge to get there quickly is hard to resist. But the gorge itself leading there is really lovely, the colours of the sandstone, the effects of time and wind and rain on the rocks, the light filtering in. As you get the first glimpses of the Treasury through the end of the gorge you can’t help but go Wow!
From the Treasury there is another long section to explore, more tombs and beautiful facades carved out of the coloured rock. There are several side journeys you can do; one is up to a Monastery with 900 steps. I was offered an air conditioned taxi, (a donkey) but I declined. I walked back to the entry point in the heat, and saw lots more groups just starting their adventure. The treasury is fabulous when the morning sunlight highlights it, later in the day it’s in shadows, but the view through the gorge was still stunning as the light highlighted the beautiful stone. Covered in dust and weary we enjoyed a cold drink in the Cave Bar before we headed off to our Bedouin camp at Wadi Rum for the night.
I was imagining that camping in traditional Bedouin tents was going to be communal. But we had twin share tents with beds and quilts. The meal we were served was cooked in a traditional way, in the ground in a covered fire, the same principal as a hangi in New Zealand. It was superb, lamb, chicken and vegetables. Later we sat around an open pit fire and were entertained by the locals playing music and dancing. The next morning was the highlight for me, a camel ride. My camel was enormous and I felt rather vulnerable at first, I was a long way up! He tried to get up before I was properly seated and as a result I fell backwards into the arms of the guide. We walked for an hour up into the sand dunes, I never realised how webbed the camels feet are, perfect for walking in the sand.
We are now in the port of Aqaba on the ferry that will take us to Egypt. It’s not the experience as you’ll have on ferries in Australia. The passengers walk onto the ferry the same way as the vehicles and we were instructed to leave our bags on one of the vehicle ramps. Just have to hope a vehicle doesn’t run over them. We were sitting downstairs where it was overcrowded and smelly when suddenly we were ushered into the First Class area upstairs where we have loads of room and the option to go outside as well. The seats look like they were once business class seats on a plane. Bye bye Jordan, it’s been fun.
Not so fast.... we sat on the boat for two and half hours before it finally left for Egypt, and then there was more fun and delays in store for us.

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