The Stars are Brighter in the Desert

Our trip to Wadi Rum was short and sweet… Maybe a little too short:(
Since we had to drop our car off in Aqaba, we left Petra and headed straight to Aqaba, bypassing Wadi Rum on the way.  After spending a few days saying goodbye to a friend, exploring Aqaba and such, we took a random taxi drivers word for it and booked a tour through Wadi Rum.  Not the best idea.  Generally, we only book tours if other travellers recommend them to us.  We weren’t that impressed with the company, so we stayed only one night in the desert.  We cut our losses though, since we will be hanging out in and around deserts for the next few months- the opportunity will come again.  Though we were disappointed with the operator, Wadi Rum didn’t disappoint and at the end of the day we are laid back and seasoned enough that overall everything was chill and we just rolled with the punches.

Some of the beautiful red sand dunes in the Wadi Rum Nature Reserve.  Climbing proper sand dunes is really, really difficult…..did everyone know that except me?  I was tuckered;)

Great…our first flat, our driver is stuck in the ‘Jeep 4x4’ because his door won’t open and we are less than half way through our day trip…um… hmmmm.  This is just getting worse.

Me, having some fun scrambling up and around some wicked rock formations.  Good Times.

Here birdie, birdie!  Dan and I went out for a hike when we reached camp and found these tracks…but only tracks, no animals :(  Apparently there are sand snakes, which I would have loved to see and scorpions, which I am happy we didn’t see.  Creepy scorpions.

We watched the sun go to bed on a nearby cliff :)

Our camp at sunset!  OK, so the tents were fantastic… Seriously, they might have been larger than some of the rooms we have rented throughout our trip.  We were disappointed with the camp set up since it didn’t allow us to pull our beds outside to sleep for the night, so we settled for a blanket on the sand.  Though we had to do scorpion and snake sweeps every few minutes with our flashlight, our blanket was cozy and the stars lit up the night sky.  It was so peaceful and silent out in the desert, so, so silent… I felt like I was finally ‘away from the sprawl‘. Pure magic.

OK- bad picture but you get the idea anyways.  One of the camp guides is digging out our dinner… Chicken, roasted over hot coals, on a rack, covered with a lid, then covered with sand.  I rarely eat chicken, never off the bone but if all chicken tasted like this, I may rethink my dislike for it.  Yum, Yum!

Some random shots of the cliffs and rock formations that make up the nature reserve.

Dan on one of the famous rock bridges in the park.

I tried to get a shot of some of the more bizarre rock formations.  One mountain in particular looked like a massive cake that was iced before it had cooled- icing dripping down all sides.  Or maybe a melting candle or a stick of slowly melting butter.  Whatever- something like that anyways :)