Following Lawrence's Trail....

Wadi Rum- 27 April 2010

Lawrence of Arabia-Wadi Rum

Oh I do suppose it is about that time I post my Wadi Rum blog. Last weekend was our last CIEE sponsored excursion. By far, it was a great note to end on. For those of you who don't know, Wadi Rum--which means Valley of the Moon--is a famous valley in southern Jordan full of sand dunes and amazing geological formations. Its where Transformers was filmed, as well as the movie Lawrence of Arabia. In fact, it is the area that the actual Lawrence of Arabia passed through to attack the Ottoman forces at Aqaba in WWI, which led to the successful British takeover of Jerusalem. It is currently inhabited by Bedouin tribes whose descendants have live there for generations.

Day 1-

The main activity for day 1 in Wadi Rum was getting to have a 4 hour 4x4 truck trip throughout the desert. We started off slow, passing from mountain to mountain, taking in all the amazing geological formations that are abundant in Wadi Rum. I got to do a little mountain climbing, which gave me a great birds eye view of the area. The coolest thing we saw this morning was a weathered "rock arch" that was pretty amazing. As our caravan continued on, we also stopped to see some ancient cave drawings on the side of a mountain. They are extremely well preserved due to the dry conditions of the region. There were two amazing parts of our 4x4 trip. The first one was when we stopped on the side of a sand dune and just spent about 45 min relaxing. We raced up the hill, people rolled down, and some peoples drivers were daring enough to get up enough speed to race up the hill (one truck almost rolled!) This area gave us the cliche desert scenery where you pictures the sand dunes with the wavy texture caused by the wind. The sand itself was cool! It was red and soft and acted similar to water. (i.e. when you stepped on it, the displaced sand would "trickle" down the hill.) Next, we raced our 4x4's to the end of our journey. The 1st half of the trek, we drove pretty slow. But here, our driver Ali was going between 40-60 mph through the desert. The amazing scenery and the wind blowing through our hair combined with the rough terrain was a sight to experience. We ended our journey about 1/2 a mile away from our campsite where our group climbed a plateau and sat at the top. Overlooking the valley, we got to watch the sunset over Wadi Rum. Following sunset, we made our way to camp, which was an all season tourist camp with tents and pretty decent bathrooms. We got assigned to our tents, and enjoyed the rest of the night looking at the stars, listening to a live Bedouin band, and dancing around the fire.

Day 2-

I woke up about 5:30 am the next morning, not so much to see the sunset, but because a damn flock of birds (most likely hanging around to nibble off tourist food) wouldn't shut the he** up. Nevertheless, is was a great wake up call compared to the horns of the big city. I did manage to wake up with enough time to straggle out of bed and head out into the desert to enjoy the sunrise. Boy was it worth it. I have never seen the sunrise over such a gorgeous desert before. At 9 am in the morning, we all gathered out front of the camp where our Bedouin guide were waiting for us to mount up for our 3 hr camel ride. I was immediately ushered to the albino camel who happened to be one of the biggest camels there. My friends nicknamed him "Gandolf the White." My guide was a pretty nice (but foul mouthed) 15 year old Bedouin guide named Adil. He showed us several different positions for sitting on our camel. I preferred sitting cross legged, but when we galloped, I went back to the traditional "horse riding" style. I do wish very much so that the saddles had stirrups, because that would have saved me a little pain later on, instead of having my butt pounded into the saddle repeatedly whenever our camel took a step while he was running. However, it was definitely a great experience riding a camel through Wadi Rum. We had about a 75 camel caravan moving together. we took occasional rest breaks here and there to enjoy the scenery and climb mountains. I ended the voyage racing some friends of mine to the end when my guide Adil was kind enough to give me a whip and the reigns of my camel.

Soon after arriving to the visitor's center, we were scheduled to watch a video and then break for lunch before we returned to Amman. However, my friend Farah lost her wallet in the desert after the galloping forced her purse open. I spent about an hour driving with her and a guide in a truck through the last trek of our journey to find it. (It was brown, about the size of a brick. Good luck) We were unable to find it, but after we returned to the visitor's center and ate lunch, she came up to me and told me that one of the Bedouin men found it and returned it! Hamdullah!

Kneeling on sand dunes in Wadi Rum

Starting our 4x4 tour of the desert!

Rock Arch

Wadi Rum

Gorgeous sand dunes

Standing in the desert...

In the back of the 4x4

Sunset over Wadi Rum

Our camp for the night

Starting our camel ride through Wadi Rum

Me and my camel

Near the end of the 3 hr journey

The end our our trek, near the visitor's center