One of life’s conundrums is how it can take an entire day to do a 1-hour flight. We traveled from Luxor back to Cairo on an overnight sleeper train, and then got a short WC and café break before spending three hours at the airport for the short flight to Jordan. It does seem that a large portion of Kenya’s, Egypt’s, and Jordan’s economy is dependent on employing people to make us go through security check #1, passport check #1, boarding pass, passport check #2, Security check #2, boarding pass check #1, etc. And then when you get to your destination, there’s the person you buy the visa stamp from, the person who checks the passport, the person who puts the visa (adhesive) stamp into the passport, the person who rechecks the passport…and then you go through customs. We amuse ourselves by trying to guess how many people will pretend to check our documents.
I think Jordan is our monarchiest* country yet. I know UK is lousy with royals, but it seems different here. The only ones with more power than the king are the big, big businesses. Hmm, so maybe not that different from anywhere else, including home.
The capital, Amman, has a few things to recommend it. One, street vendors are amazingly polite, low-key, and non-pushy, especially compared to Luxor and Cairo. Two, they have a fabulous dessert called kunafa, a warm dish served with melted goat cheese as the base, layered with a sweet cake-ish top and drenched in honey-sugar syrup, and possibly pistachios. For not having any chocolate, it is remarkably delightful, but even a small piece must be split five ways because it is so rich.
Amman was a quick layover before we headed far south to Wadi Rum. Wadi means valley, but Wadi Rum means holy-cow-it’s-desolate-even-for-a-desert. It is where Lawrence of Arabia, The Martian, and Dune were filmed, if you are unsure of what “desolate” means.
I could have easily hated it…except my kids loved it.
Just five minutes after we switched our comfort bus to the sand-handling Land Cruiser, we made a stop to see where caravanners had scratched their names thousands of years ago. Before we had even turned our backs, Wes and Piper were scrambling up the hill. Kyla was torn between the grown-up desire to nod solemnly over ancient carved writing and joining her sibs. Rock writing did not win. (Goats are visible in the first picture; the kids are somewhere in the second, but we never saw them!)
Our next stop was a red sand dune climb up to a Very Important Rock. Again, climbing and creating sand games, then scrambling to the very top for a panoramic view. No matter where we landed, the kids figured out something fun (and off-script) to do, including building a pyramid to entomb a dead beetle. I guess they were paying attention in Giza after all.
We stayed at Sheik Zaib’s camp for two nights. All resources had to be carefully doled out, and we slept in two-bed tents with a single light bulb and no heat. [Dwayne and I shared one twin bed and the blankets from both beds almost kept us warm. The kids did not fare as well.] Winter became Spring, technically, during our stay and the daytime temperatures never got warmer than taking off our puff jackets while we hiked and climbed midday.
We have now seen camels like we see deer back at home. 
I surrender. The desert actually has lots of flora, even if it not easy to see through a wide lens. 
Sunset over the Wadi Rum. 
It looked like this no matter which way you turned. It’s beautiful in it’s own monochromatic way. 
Ancient wall engravings. This is an elephant, which begs the question where elephants roamed thousands of years ago. My pictures of the woman giving birth are too dark to publish. 
These are the 2-person tents we stayed in. The long one in the back is the lounge / dining room / warm room.
We did get to have zarb our first night. It is a delicious local bbq, done by layering veggies and meat in pans and burying it with a fire under the sand for an afternoon. True to all of our experiences so far, all the veggies offered were cooked (blech, as quoted by youngers) and there was a lot of dry pita bread and non-sweet foods. Luckily, we brought a tine of cookies and another tin of baclava for our two days here.
The sheik had chosen his camp a location of both sunrise and sunsets over the rocks. I did not get my cold self out of bed to witness the first, but we enjoyed the evenings.
Wes and Piper, perhaps bonded by misery, were determined to build the tallest cairns on the rock where we watched the sunset. Finding rocks that neither could lift separately, they moved them together. And they got to 40 rocks tall (aiming for 47, the age of their parents) before gleefully witnessing The Fall.
The Wadi-Rum was an experience I’m glad I had, now that I’ve had a hot shower and a good night’s sleep. Next up is the reason we came to Jordan: Petra.
*Again, a coined word that makes sense in this context.
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