Wadi Rum, Orien’s Sword and of course Lawerence

After Petra we headed out to a jeep ride through the desert.  I was not to keen on this initially, as I had been on one of these in Dubai and it was a ride sliding up and down the dunes full of thrills and spills!  Frankly I felt car sick throughout it and one jeep all the airbags exploded in the middle of it, but thats another story.  This ride was much better.  We headed out to an area that all the Jordianians are extremely proud of where ‘The Martian was filmed and of course Ibad had to ensure that I posed exactly right in the right spot for the picture.  We then went on through the beautiful red desert through natural images of Spinx’s and elephants and where Lawerence of Arabia held meetings. In honor of him they engraved a picture of him in the rock. I have to say I was a wee bit disappointed.  He looks nothing like Peter O Toole and I was told he was short and dumpy.  All my fantasy’s splashed!  The fat face in the photo above is the carving.

Maps/ charts/ GPS

The carving of the camels above are type of signposts or directions for caravans coming through and it indicates North south east and west and milage etc.  A type of chart/ Map or GPS for the modern minded.

And we came across this group resting before moving on.  At the end of this we were picked up and taken out to the middle of the desert to the camp we were staying the night on and this was really fantastic.   It was a high end camp and we were greeted with cold towels and a refreshing sorbet drink.  Our tent had hot shower and a heater for the cold night.  I would advise good warm PJs for this.   We sat out watching the sunset amidst the most beautiful silence disturbed only by the occasional refill of our glasses.  I fell a wee bit in love with the waiter (In a maternal manner it must be noted!)  He was so shy.   We had our own fire and the manager tasted marshmallows for us before we the sun set and we went on for our meal.

They cooked a feast from a pot dug into the sand and left to cook for three hours.  and there was one other couple ad joined us.  Really nice from England and we shared travel stories.

At the end of the meal we went out to marvel at the stars and of course a photograph will not do that any justice.   Millions of stars.  The Milky Way was so clear.  I was looking at the Seven sisters and saying to Sue that it is really amazing to view through the binoculars and trying to impress them with my Celestial knowledge.  Well Mike ran in and got the binoculars and politely amazed at my wisdom and then Sue showed me the Nebulous in Oriens sword which is incredible to see and the Red Glow from the star in the sword next to it. She apologized for not remembering the name of the sword but suffice to say I learnt a lot more about the stars from them.

I had full intentions of getting up to watch the sun rise but it was at 5am and Pat didn’t put the heater on until 5.30 am and I certainly wasn’t getting out of bed to put it on.  We did get out though to see this and had breakfast overlooking the sand and rocks .  I loved the Antarctic and the silence and wonder there but I have to Amit it is too much nicer to have a bit of silence and wonder in luxurious comfort.