Wadi Rum

Even though we were harassed by street merchants in Egypt, anxious to sell their wares, we have experienced no more begging than we normally would have at home. As we arrived in Jordan yesterday, we were told that Jordan has been closed to Chinese tourists. That might help explain the empty state of our hotel in Amman. Given the volume of Chinese tourists normally everywhere, this may make our remaining tours much more enjoyable. Sorry China! Waiting for breakfast this morning we switched on Al Jazeera English Channel and learned some disturbing facts about women around the world as we celebrate International Women’s Day, like 10 women are killed every day in Mexico by men and the age of sexual consent in the Philippines is 12. But we do have a female guide here so that is progress. So we left our hotel at 8:00 this morning setting out for a fairly long bus ride to the south of Jordan. Amman is named the White Capital so all houses must be covered by white limestone - they are kind of off-white, but let’s not be picky.

Jordan is a very patriarchal society and all couples keep having babies until they have a boy. There is a whole story that goes with that. With the birth of the first son, the parent’s names change to “father or mother “ of that son. Therefore most families are pretty large. Even though it is legal for Muslim men to have more than one wife, it is unusual for all but the very rich. Reasons for woman covering up: 1. Very beautiful 2. Conforming 3. Sun protection 4. Husband requests it. 5. Fashion . No reasons relate to The Muslim religion. The road we took south to Wadi Rum is the same road to Mecca. We now understand that Jordan’s main commerce includes phosphate mining, potash mining, cement production as well as tourism. Shepherds feed their largest sheep more sugar and pen it beside a donkey so the large sheep who will get the leader’s bell thinks the donkey is his mother and follows it. This makes the shepherd’s job much easier. All he has to do is ride the donkey.

Halfway to Wadi Rum we made a pitstop at a place with lots of Dead Sea product.

As we approached Wadi Rum we experienced a lot of bleak desert scenery. Plus, we may have encountered a camel on the road. In the villages along the way you see white tanks on the roofs of the houses. This is because water only flows for 24 hours every week - one day only - so they store water in these tanks for the rest of the week.

Before our 4x4 truck ride, we lunched at a Bedouin tent restaurant. The specialty here was a chicken and rice dish called upside down.

Then it was time to take the fabulously, famous truck ride through the canyons and gorges of the Wadi Rum. This may have included several camel sightings. Dawn did pretty well getting in and out of the truck. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

What a fabulous excursion!!! Then it was back on the bus for a two hour ride north to Petra. On the way, we passed Lawrence of Arabia’s train.

Our road to the hotel Hayat Zaman was called the King’s Way and it wove up the mountains above Wadi Musa. We came to a particularly beautiful outlook just at sunset.

We finally got to our very desert looking hotel, the Hayat Zaman. The rooms all had exterior passage entryways and it was built on the side of the hill so the rooms were on many levels. We had dinner and called it an early night.