Wadi Rum

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Seeing Wadi Rum was one of the things I was most looking forward to on this trip, and I think it surpassed my high expectations. There's such an incredible romance to the desert, especially in Arabia. Unlike the undulating sand dunes of The Sahara, Wadi Rum is full of majestic rock mountains, canyons and gorges. One of the guys in our trip described the rocks as looking like melted candle wax, and I think this was apt. The rock appears orange or red but on close inspection is a spectrum of colours - ochre, brown, yellow, pink. The sand is a rose pink and it's already entrenched itself through all our clothes and shoes - an eternal reminder of our stay under the desert's vast sky.
To see Wadi Rum, we took 4WDrives and spent the afternoon seeing canyons and rock formations, as well as the ruined house where Lawrence of Arabia once lived. We arrived at our desert camp in the late afternon and got to see the spectacle of the sun setting over the valley. Our Bedouin hosts cooked us a delicious meal of roast chicken, roast potatoes, roast onions, rice and lentil soup. All the food was baked in the ground and took two hours to cook. The roast onions just popped out of their skins and were sweet and almost caramelised.
The stars last night numbered thousands, a blanket of light. We saw three satellites and a shooting star, and seeing the satelites made me wonder how they differentiate between terrorist and tourist camps. A scary thought!
As an aside, I must mention our Bedouin host who is obsessed with finding a wife and targeted Kylie! He offered ten camels, his desert camp, a flat in Aqaba and three Landcruisers! He was certainly joking but it was pretty funny to watch him constantly ask 'where's my wife?' whenever Kylie was nearby! He was an older man who wears flowing robes and a headdress, and although he was intelligent and witty, I somehow don't think he's Kylie's type! I'm sure her parents would never forgive us if we sold her off!

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Comments

[Sam]

I am sure that with time, Kylie's parents would realise it was a pretty good deal.