Crazy Weekend

For some reason, the people who planned our program thought that it would be a good idea to take the first week of school, cut off the last day, and attach it to an insanely busy weekend of traveling. We saw Wadi Rum, Aqaba and Petra in the span of three days, and then I still had almost 300 pages of reading to do when I got home.

We left early Thursday morning for Wadi Rum, stopping on the way at a large guest house where we were invited to buy overpriced paintings and Bedouin swords. The postcards were decent, though. At Wadi Rum, we got lunch at the Visitor's Center, watched a laughably breathless and psuedo-profound movie about the marvels of Wadi Rum, then wandered the exhibits of the Center. I'm sure that they were fascinating, but I was more interested in reading the French descriptions that accompanied the English. Most of the time, the translation was decent and seemed to say roughly the same thing, but occasionally I would run across two side-by-side paragraphs with similar headings that shared entirely different information.

When we were all totally fed up with that, they bussed us out to the middle of the desert and put us on camels. It was of course an interesting, unique experience, but camels are bad-tempered and riding them for three hours is not my idea of comfortable transportation. The sound of eighty angry camels is astounding. The scenery was incredible, but I felt as though I would have been able to appreciate it far more if I had been walking with our Bedouin guides instead of sitting on a saddle made of a worn out tweed suit jacket.

We stopped for the night at a Bedouin tourist camp. Watching the sunset from some rock outcroppings, I started to feel a bit more impressed by the area. And that night, lying under the stars, I really understood why so many people love Wadi Rum so much.

The following morning there was a three-hour ride in the back of a bouncing pickup, which was actually a lot of fun, but by the end I felt about as dusty as the time I hung out the back of a jeep on one of the dustier legs at Headwaters. The buses picked us up by the side of the highway and we headed to Aqaba.

Lunch was there, then out in boats for swimming and snorkeling. The coral reef near Aqaba is fantastic, even though I ran out of patience with salt water in my nose, mouth and eyes pretty quickly. We lept and dove off the side of the boat and hung out in the sun for several hours, then rinsed off and headed back.

We spent that night at another Bedouin tourist camp near the back entrance to Petra. We ate dinner, then climbed sand dunes and played star tipping in the dark. A large group of us took our mattresses out of the tents and slept in a prepared area outside, which was fantastic because all the lights in the camp turned off around 10:30 so we could enjoy the stars until we fell asleep.

The next morning was an early one so we could avoid the heat of the day. We walked from our camp to the Petra Monastery, about four miles up and down hills and across narrow ledges. I really enjoyed it because the scenery was beautiful and I haven't been getting enough exercise since I've been here. The monastery itself was incredible, and I hiked up to a view point with a great view of the mountains and desert around.

By the time we got down to the main part of Petra, ate lunch, and started wandering the other sights, I was getting pretty tired and hot, and so I didn't enjoy them as much, but it's all really cool.

Finally, we got to get back on the bus, and headed back to Amman for a late night of studying and finishing homework.