Blogs from Wadi Rum, South, Jordan, Middle East - page 4

After three days of sailing up the Red Sea we arrived in Aqaba, Jordan. The city was filled with half a million tourists celebrating a local holiday. It was a good day to head out of town to the desert. Yazeed was our Jordanian guide. He is a Muslim who was educated in Britain and is married to a Spanish Catholic woman and has some very interesting ideas about the Middle East. He calls the Arab Spring the Arab Hell because of the instability it has brought to this area of the world. Jordan is being inundated with Syrian refugees fleeing the violence of their homeland. The numbers are reaching about 2000 a day. Yazeed says that Jordan is surrounded by “naughty neighbors” who are always causing a ruckus. We passed Bedouin herders tending to their ... read more

Its difficult to go back and write about my previous travels when I am still on the road, especially when the countries are so different. However, I know if I procrastinate until I am home I will forget even more detail than I have already and might even decide I'm too caught up with life to sit down and write. We were only in Jordan for five or six days. It went by way too fast. We arrived at the port in Aqaba late at night so were given most of the next morning free. My mom and I decided to go for a walk around and stretch our legs a bit after being confined in a seat for so long the previous day. After Egypt, Jordan seemed quiet and peaceful. I'm sure there was still ... read more

Israel After a short and – let's say interesting – experience in the Israeli kibbutz, I packed my bags and got out of there as fast as I could. I don't want to go into too much detail, but the particular job I had to do was borderlining with slavery and I didn't come to Israel to milk cows for 10 hours a day. And because I was in the country on a volunteer visa (which got cancelled), I had about 48 hours to leave the country. And as I conveniently booked a flight from Amman to Bangkok in Februrary, I decided to spend 10 weeks in a real Middle Eastern country: Jordan. Thanks to HelpX, I had already arranged a place to volunteer in Wadi Rum. So I went down to Eilat and crossed the ... read more

Oh Familie und Freunde! Nun weiß ich ja, dass ihr wisst, dass ich schon seit einer Woche mein Dasein in China friste. Trotzdem mag ich, gut Deutsch, die Reihenfolge nicht brechen und euch ein paar Sachen über Jordanien erzählen. Der Plan lautete ursprünglich die kompletten drei Wochen in Wadi Rum bei einer Beduinenfamilie zu verbringen. Ein bisschen mit den Touristen im Wüstencamp aushelfen, ein bisschen Englischunterricht für die Kids geben. Klingt einfach. Klingt schön. Es war beides oft, aber bei weitem nicht immer. Am Ende bin ich nach zwei Wochen gegangen. Aber dazu später. Ankommen in Wadi Rum war großartig. Aus dem angeblichen Direktbus an einer Highway-Gabelung rausgeschmissen, kam ich im Touristencenter mal wieder als Tramper an. Meine Nase an der Autoscheibe war platt; ich war es auch. Wadi Rum ist ein riesengroßer Sandkasten, in dem ... read more

Today we ventured across the red sand sea to visit Wadi Rum. Thamodians (pre Nabatians) are Bedouin and Nomadic tribes who crossed over from Saudi Arabia, roaming the desert in search of water and pasture. Eventually the Thamodians settled on Petra and built the Pink City. A 4 hour jeep tour took us through some spectacular scenery and we visited many sites said to have been significant to Lawrence of Arabia's campaigns against the Turks. The most interesting was the Khazzalah Siq (canyon) which was where sharp shooters were placed on the mountains, while the rest of the army climbed the mountain and circled back around behind the Turks to slaughter them. Last stop for the day before reaching our desert camp, was a massive sand dune embedded to the side of a mountain. It's funny ... read more