Camel dodging in the Jordanian desert

After a few days in Egypt i said goodbye to Chloe and Elize and jumped in a local van back towards the Israel border. From there i would cross through Israel into Jordan. In the van i met a german girl (Geraldine) with a similar plan, so we joined forces for the mission.

We arrived in Jordan in the afternoon and went directly to Petra, which is an incredible archealogical amusement park (figuratively speaking). Along the way we had to stop the taxi because a bunch of wild camels were chillin out on the road. It was the quintessential Jordan experience (pictured above).

We went for a night mission around Petra that night (they set up candles all through this long canyon and have beduoin dudes playing music in the dark), then trekked around petra for about 12 hours the next day, climbed a few mountains, which offered grand views of the ruins. THis was the most impressive old stuff i have ever seen. At the end of the day we climbed this big mountain, where you could look down over the dead sea across to Israel.

This photo fails to show the scale of 'the treasury', which is a couple of hundred metres below my position. The thing is MASSIVE, a person standing in the doorway would be pixel sized in the doorway of my self portrait. Look how small Geraldine is in the photo of 'the Monestry'. Later there was a random local bedouin guy sitting on the roof of the Monestry playing a local string instrument, with his legs dangling off the edge! He was a mad hatter. The sound rang out in the valley, echoing from all around.

THe next day we went to the middle of the desert, to a place called wadi rum, where desert tribes live. We were like R2D2 and 3Po, trekking through the desert. This place is where the storz Lawrence of Arabia is based.

Then I went to a place called Dana nature reserve. THis is the known as the most lush place in Jordan, but is actually not very lush compared to the non-desertified world that we are used to. Anyway I went for a run down into a MASSIVE valley, which dropped about 1000 verticle metres below the little town i was staying in (by comparison, mount victoria is 200 verticle metres high). It was amazing, but then i ran out of gas half way back up, after having been running for a couple of hours. Oh dear, it was a hard slog walking out of there, and there was no beer awaiting me at my destination.

Rammadan was in full swing in Jordan, so finding food during the day was, at times, quite difficult. Finding beer at any was even more of a challenge, and seldom happened (but i was getting used to it by this stage).