After Petra we took the buses to our next overnight location, Wadi Rum. So far that was my hardest bus ride yet. My ears were having a lot of trouble and they were plugged from that bus ride until this morning (20th). It was extremely annoying but I got used to it.
Now this was a Bedouin camp that we stayed at, which means we slept in tents. I was excited at first, but as I will talk about later the night proved to not be very fun. But here is a picture of the camp and the inside of my tent.
We had about an hour of free time before dinner. Most of us chose to shower and rinse off all the sweat and dirt from Petra. Then it was dinner time. They had cooked up lamb and buried it in the ground so we all watched them pull it out of the ground. So for dinner we had lamb, vegetables, rice, and the usual pita bread and hummus. I tried some of the lamb but it was really crispy so I didn’t eat much of it. So once again dinner was basically Pita bread. Then to our surprise the “entertainment” for the night started.
It was so interesting to stay at Wadi Rum and experience their culture. Specifically the dancing. They were playing music on drums and what not and slowly started pulling people out of their seats. Eventually all of us had been divided into circles and we were dancing like crazy. It was quite fun. At one point on of the dancers pulled me into the middle of the circle and danced with me. It was embarrassing at first but then I didn’t care, so I just started trying to copy what he was doing. Never though that Dance Central for Kinect would come in handy, but I am pretty good at mimicking dance moves if they are simple. The dance circles went on for awhile as each group had different people dancing in the middle while the groups danced around.
Because of jet lag and little sleep at night I had trouble enjoying the rest of the night. The dancing went on for another hour. Different dance numbers. They kept sending us back to our seats but then having everyone stand up again. After the first one I refused each offer to dance after that and stayed in my seat and watched and took some pictures.
Then came my least favorite part. Time to sleep. Because we were sleeping in a tent that was set on top of a rug anything could crawl under the bottom and come in. We were told to check our blankets and stuff to for scorpions, spiders, and snakes. Plus, because I have been drinking crazy amounts of water, I have to go to the bathroom a lot, and our tent was as far away from the bathroom as you could get. At first I fell asleep right away but then I got up to go to the bathroom and when I came back all I could hear was all these weird noises. So I laid in bed terrified of animals coming to get me (after talking to more people in the morning I realized I wasn’t alone in thinking this). So basically that night I got very very few hours of sleep.
The next morning was the camel trek. Now I know I talked to most of you about how excited I was to ride a camel. But that was when I thought it was going to be a required thing that wasn’t going to cost any money. I decided because of how tired I was that I didn’t want to do it. But they took an hour long trek into the dessert. Here are some pictures
After that we all piled our stuff on the buses to be ready for us later and then we all got into Jeeps for our jeep trek into the dessert. So far this has by far been my favorite favorite part of the trip.
The drivers were really competitive and even though we had to basically stay in a straight line they were always competing to get to the front, no matter what obstacles were in their way. They drove crazy. It was a blast! At one point our truck went off track and we got to a hill and he stopped cause it was steeper then he expected but then he decided to go for it, we felt like we were going to fall out the front, but it was fun.
The driver behind us was HILARIOUS! He was totally flirting with us. He was making faces and getting super close to the back of our car and doing dance moves and what not. It was so much fun to interact with him. We got a picture with him after (sadly it wasn’t with my camera so I don’t have access to it). Afterwards we all had a layer of brown dust on us, I chose the wrong day to wear my white shirt haha.
Here are some pictures of Wadi Rum, which is the area we explored on our Jeep Trek.
This spot reminded me a lot of Double Bluff. Just a lot more hot. Haha.
After the jeep trek we once again piled into the bus and headed to the Israeli border to go to Eilat. The border was interesting. Apparently Israel is much hotter then Jordan and to add to that we had to drag our luggage all over the place. I think I sweat more at the border then I did at Petra. Most of us got through the border smoothly. Some people took longer because their backs had to be searched and what not. I got through really quick though and hopped on the bust to head to our youth hostel in Eilat.
-Wendi
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