Wadi Rum

Trip Start Nov 01, 2007

Trip End Mar 01, 2008

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Flag of Jordan Aqaba, Jordan
Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Today I decided to splurge on a 4wd tour of Wadi Rum (the desert in southern Jordan of Lawrence of Arabia fame), complete with an overnight say in a Bedouin camp. As I write this, I'm freezing under a pile of blankets, trying to stay warm in the desert extreme cold (there will be a lot of frost here in the morning, according to the guide). Four other people are here with me...a pipe smoking older German couple, a middle-aged Japanese guys that keeps saying "Danke" with a Japanese accent to thank either the German couple or myself for taking pictures for him, and this crazy old swiss guy that apparently was tired of staying in this resort in Aqaba. Our dinner conversation was about Arnold, the beloved governor of California for some odd reason. I'm still trying to understand why that is all we had to talk about.

The desert was vast and amazing, although I would have preferred to be on foot rather than rumbling around in some decrepet Jeep thing

A Dune

. See the photos for more detail, but when we walked away from the Jeep, everything was so quiet and serene. It was cool to be in a place where there wasn't just one thing to see, but rather an entire landscape to take in.

The tour accomodations and dinner are actually pretty unremarkable. There are no Bedouin people here, and the camp is just off a fairly main road and a railroad track. So much for the serene desert evening that was promised. In fact, I think I'm going to post something negative about this tour company. As far as I can tell, we never even actually entered Wadi Rum...I think this was a scam.

Aside from in our camp, there are Bedouin living throughout Wadi Rum, and it was interesting to stumble upon their camps and people herding goats through the day. Speaking of goats, today I saw this line of carcasses in the Aqaba market, which turned out to be goats, skinned except for their tails and heads. Looked gross, but I'm sure they taste good. It's just beyond me why you would still want the tail and the hairy face.

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Evidence of tourists	Out across the desert	Looking down into a valley	Me on the dune
Bedouin with goats	Old drawings	Across the desert again	Me and the desert
A canyon	The desert	The "jeep"	Lawrence of Arabia scene
Hearty plant	Down on the jeep	Ben of Arabia	Emptyness toward Saudi Arabia
Lawrence's house (for the film)	Shadows	Me in the shadow	Rock bridge
Broken?	Very green plants for how dry it was.	Bedouin camp	Lawrence's face...compare to Egyptian carving
Pee in the sand (sorry, couldn't resist)	Sunset!	With clouds	Plant + wind = pattern
Breakfast fire	The group	Making toast	The group heading out on camels
Why I dislike camels...what a beast	My bed

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Comments

eadamson on Dec 3, 2007 at 11:36PM

AHNOLD
In my experience, Arnold is frequently the only thing people have to talk about. Usually multiple impressions are included in the discussion, and rarely are any of them very good.