Low Point on Our Trip

Well, in Jordan, we finally reached the low point on our trip. Actually, we reached the lowest point on earth that we’ll ever go: the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea touches Jordan and Israel not too far away from Amman and Madaba. Not only is the lowest point on earth, it also has four times the salt content of any ocean, making it impossible not to immediately float once you hit the water.

We hired what was supposed to be a budget driver from our budget hotel to take us to the Dead Sea and back to Madaba, but by the time you add in the cost of the driver and the 15 JOD admission fee to the tourist beach they take you to, it was quite a costly morning. There are supposedly public areas you can visit, but our driver acted like he had never heard of that.

We didn’t stay in the water long, because it was a challenge to avoid getting the super salty water in your mouth, and it stung my sensitive skin. But it was fun being buoyant for a while.  And people – especially those trying to sell you the Dead Sea products – believe the minerals in the water have health benefits, so why not go for a swim?

Naturally, it is obligatory for every traveler who goes to Jordan to make the trip to the Dead Sea and take a photo bobbing around in the water. I think it must be a condition of getting your Jordanian visa, or something, so who were we to argue?

Pardon the pasty paleness; this is actually me, tan.

Tom and Jerry, Sun-lit Scenery, and Porn: Just Another Trip to the Desert

You may recall in Morocco, we rode camels into the Sahara Desert and stayed overnight in a Berber camp.  You may also recall that we were glad we went, but said, and I quote, that there is “not a chance” that we would ever go back into the desert again. Famous last words.

Into the Desert We Go….Again

One of the main attractions in Jordan is Wadi Rum, a desert area in the southern part of the country where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed.  In addition to the sites from the movie, the desert is renowned for its interesting rock formations rising up from the sand.  At first we planned to skip seeing Wadi Rum.  But the more that Sean read about it, the more he wanted to go.  So somehow he talked me into seeing the desert again.

We both agreed on one thing: no camels this time.  Ideally, we wanted to just take a jeep tour for the day, but when we read that public transportation in and out of Wadi Rum is a bit difficult to find, especially for a round trip on the same day, we decided we would spend the night.  (As it turns out, there were others on the bus to Wadi Rum that were just planning on being there for the day, so it obviously can be done).

The only bus from Wadi Musa to Wadi Rum that we could find left Wadi Musa at the ungodly hour of 6:30, so we found ourselves in the desert at 8:00 a.m. with plenty of time on our hands.  We had reserved two spots at a well-rated camp run by a Bedouin family the night before.  Nail, the son of the mysterious Obied, a man we heard much about and even talked to on the phone but never saw in person, picked us up in his fancy new Toyota truck (a.k.a. our “Jeep”).  I’m not sure exactly how old Nail is, but I would wager that he is in his early twenties.  Nail appeared to be on the vain side. To our continual amusement, he kept checking himself out in the rearview mirror and fiddling with his head scarf to make sure it was perfect.  Even though we were in the desert and no one was around, except us.

A Typical Saturday Morning

The campsite

When we got to the camp, we were the only guests there.  We looked at each other.  Now what? It was only 8:30 a.m.

Sitting around, watching the vast expanse of sand and rock

We sat around for a while, and around 9:30, Nail asked us if we wanted to come with him to run a few errands in his village, which was just outside the Wadi Rum protected area.  Not having anything better to do, and not wanted to sit around and swelter in the desert all day, we agreed.  First we got gas.  Next we picked up vegetables for dinner in a shack covered with crates of vegetables.  Finally, we dropped off some of the vegetables at Nail’s family’s home.  All of this took quite some time, because Nail appeared to know everyone in the village.

At Nail’s family’s home, we were invited into the living room.  Although I was dying to, I didn’t take any pictures while we were there because it felt intrusive.  The room was bare except for a carpet, a couch lining the room that essentially was cushions on the floor and propped up on the walls, and a television.  We ended up hanging out there for a couple of hours.  Nail kept asking us if we wanted to go, but we both were relishing the opportunity to see how a family lived in a small desert town.

The village near the Wadi Rum protected area

Nail’s little brother and sister – around 7 and 8 – sat watching cartoons on the television.  Tom and Jerry was on most of the time, which is a favorite of our friends’ son.  In between watching television, the little boy and girl hung out with us.  We played with legos and play-doh.  The little girl played some game with me that I suspected she had made up, which involved putting little bits of Kleenex in your hands and the crooks of your elbows in a certain order that I was never able to master.  Sean played match after match of checkers with another of Nail’s brothers, who was in his teens.

Meanwhile, women came and went.  Even though we were there, some of the women who had entered wearing a full face covering removed them once in Nail’s parents’ home. It was obvious that family ties were important, based on the presence of extended family, the way Nail spoke about his family, and their closeness in their home. In the privacy of the home, Nail’s mother sat and hugged her children, including Nail.  In the background, in the kitchen, a tween-age girl, presumably another sister, hurried around performing domestic duties enrobed in a head scarf.  No matter how many times I saw women with the full head scarves or face coverings, I still could not get used to it.  I could not wrap my mind around the fact that the adorable little girl in pigtails, a pink shirt and jeans would someday soon need to cover her head or her face from the world.  If it wasn’t for the womens’ dress and roles, the whole scene could have taken place on any Saturday morning, almost anywhere in the world.

Except it wasn’t anywhere in the world. It was in Jordan, and it was September 11. The news at home, I had read the day before, was running stories about the outrage certain people felt about the proposed placement of a Muslim mosque near the former site of the World Trade Center. How ridiculous, I had thought.  Yet the whole time I was watching Tom and Jerry, I couldn’t get over how surreal the whole thing felt. Back in 2001, I never would have guessed that 9 years later, I would be spending the anniversary of that horrible day in a Middle-Eastern, predominantly Muslim country, sitting in a Bedouin family’s living room, watching cartoons and playing games with Jordanian children.

Cruising Around the Desert

In the late afternoon, after we left Nail’s house and ate lunch, we took our “Jeep” tour, complete with super-authentic air conditioning and super-loud Arabic pop music blasting. It felt wrong to not be experiencing the desert in the open air, but then I remembered that I hate sand and wind and decided to embrace the music as a soundtrack to our desert exploration. We bounced and flew along the sand for three hours, viewing the rock formations in the late afternoon sun and some of the famous landmarks.  The reddish sand dunes in the Sahara in Morocco were impressive, but the rocky scenery in Wadi Rum was quite amazing.

Wadi Rum rock formations in the late day Golden Hour

Sean and me at Um Kruth, a rock bridge

The one who is not a fan of heights at the top; I stayed at the bottom to photograph. Not because I was scared, no siree! (Actually, it was because I wanted to spare the other tourists the spectacle of my klutzy self scrambling up the rock in my flip flops).

Bow-Chicka-Bow-Wow

Later that night, we were joined for dinner by two other guests (hello, Diana!), Nail’s friends, more brothers, and his uncle.

Digging up our chicken and vegetable dinner, which was buried in the sand

Most of the crew at the camp

The guests had to leave right after dinner, leaving Sean and I sitting around the campfire with our Bedouin hosts. Our hosts smoked flavored tobacco from the shisha and we drank tea, a.k.a. Bedouin whiskey (suspiciously similar to Berber whiskey we had in the Sahara) while being told how wonderful it was that we were experiencing Bedouin culture in the silence of the desert under the stars. After tea, I didn’t feel like talking, and laid my head down, silently lamenting my inability to see such stars, once again, due to all of the bright lights around the campsite and wondering what silence they were talking about, since their cell phones were constantly going off and they alternated playing Arabic music from Nail’s truck or through the tinny speakers of their phones. Suddenly, Sean asked me, in a strange voice, if I was ready to go to bed. Once we were in our tent, I found out why he was ready to turn in so suddenly. Unbeknowngst to me, Nail’s uncle was looking at pornographic movies on his cell phone, and felt the need to show them to Sean not once, not twice, but three times, with commentary like, Nice, huh? or Check this out. Sean had nodded politely, but then he escaped since he had no interest in sitting around the desert with a group of men watching tiny pornographic movies on a cell phone.  I was shocked that the uncle would show Sean these images, especially with me right next to him.

This strange event capped off a very surreal day.  The porn screening was at odds with the family-centered atmosphere we observed earlier, and was in interesting juxtaposition to the covered women and strict rules of Jordanian Muslim society.

Early morning sunrise

We rose early the next morning to watch the sun rise and to hightail it to Aqaba for a proper shower and snorkeling as soon as possible. In Morocco, the sunset was the highlight of the desert experience.  This time, it was the sunrise (definitely not the awkward porn screening!)

Wadi Rum sunrise

Wadi Rum sunrise

Wadi Rum rock formations in the early morning Golden Hour

It was interesting how the Berber and Bedouin cultures are so similarly marketed to tourists, yet reality does not always live up to the advertising.  Nevertheless, as it turned out, our second trip to the desert was even more memorable to than the first.  What we experienced on September 11, 2010 may not be the authentic Bedouin cultural experience they market at the tour center, but for better or worse, we did get to see how some of today’s Bedouins live.

Riding Down King’s Highway

I’ll admit it; the main reason I wanted to take the long way from Madaba to Wadi Musa down the King’s Highway was because King’s Highway is one of my most favorite songs.  I’m pretty sure one has nothing to do with another, officially, but unofficially, they are linked in my mind.  This was a song I listened to quite frequently when daydreaming about the trip, long before I even knew there was a King’s Highway in Jordan or that I’d someday ride down it.

When the time gets right
I’m gonna pick you up
And take you far way from trouble my love
Under a big ol’ sky
Out in a field of green
There’s gotta be something left for us to believe

Oh, I await the day
Good fortune comes our way
And we ride down the Kings Highway

No you can’t hide out
In a six gun town
We wanna hold our heads up, but we gotta stay down
I don’t wanna end up
In a room all alone
Don’t wanna end up someone that I don’t even know

Lover, I await the day
Good fortune comes our way
And we ride down the Kings Highway

– King’s Highway, Tom Petty