***Note: 2 days in 1 entry...another long entry...be advised....

Day 1 Wadi Rum - Not today camel, not today.

We got up and, with heavy hearts, drove out of Petra. Navigation went well enough, but we soon discovered a significant lack of gas stations along the way. Getting toward the 1/4 tank mark, we became a bit concerned that we were going to run out of gas. In the desert. Which would be bad. Happiness returned when we found a station and a nice man filled up our tank.

We drove into the Wadi Rum desert, a vast expanse of red sand, dunes, and sandstone mountains rising up 800 meters from the desert floor. The plan was to camp out under the stars with the Bedouins who called the desert home, ride camels, and explore the vast emptiness and majestic vistas.

First up was getting some camel riding done. We met our camels and guide, a Bedouin man who did not speak much English. And by that, I mean no English. He would basically point to something while we were riding our camels and start talking in Arabic. Now, I may have some basics, but really, when it comes down to it, I don't speak Arabic. So I would nod and smile and have no freaking clue what the hell I was supposed to be looking at. We rode and rode, playing 2 hours of the questions game along the way, and stopping once for lunch and once for a snack and nap under a cliff. And while Steph and I rode along pretty well and were fairly content, Chrissy was not so happy. I think she was in some camel-riding-my-pelvis-is-separating-pain. Poor Chrissy and poor baby dragon. Something tells me that Chrissy will never again be tempted to climb atop a camel.

Now, for those of you who have never ridden a camel, let me give you a brief explanation of the process. Camel leader guy yells at the camel in angry sounding Arabic and makes a very gross sounding hacking up a hairball noise at it. Said camel is then supposed to lay down, you climb aboard, and the camel stands back up. This is what is supposed to happen. Here's the problem. Our camels were not super well behaved. Sometimes they didn't want to lay down. Sometimes they decided to stand up when you were halfway on. And sometimes they would get up and start walking away before you could even try to attempt to get on. Enter T the camel whisperer. At one point the guide was helping Steph onto her camel, and the other camels just got up and started walking away (as they do). And I was just standing there. And I thought, surely I can do this. I figured, what the hell, I can hack angrily at these camels until they lay back down. Not today camels, not today. T means business. You don't mess with T when she means business. She will hack at you until you lay down where and when you are supposed to.

Also, just to let you guys know....we may have named our camels. I know, I know. Anyway, Chrissy's camel was James Dean because he was a rebel. My camel's name was Whippy because he was my b*tch and did as he was told. And Steph's camel...well her camel was named Big Steph. She named him (yes, he was a boy) Big Steph because the liked all of the same things as regular Steph...namely, snackies, napping, filling the hump, being easily distracted by food...you see where I am going with this.

After many hours on camels, we finally made it to our campsite and found our tent and stuff waiting for us (hooray!). A quick icy cold shower and we were ready to get some food in us. Dinner did not disappoint. Chicken and potatoes cooked in the ground, rice, veggies, bread...amazing. After dinner, the guys built a fire and we sat around with tea while he told us the stories of his life and work. Walking back to the tent in total darkness we saw what I'm pretty sure were millions of stars and the Milky Way. Tomorrow it's up for sunrise and what I'm sure will be another great day in the desert.

Day 2 Wadi Rum - I'll meet'cha on the other side.

We woke up to the morning dawn streaming into our tent. Chrissy and I quickly got up, grabbed our cameras, and headed out five or so minutes into the desert to watch the sun come up over the mountains. We ate breakfast with some of the people we had met the previous night. An Italian guy, a British couple, and a family from Canada with two daughters. The dad from Canada had apparently left his shoes outside the tent overnight only to wake up to find himself missing a shoe. He looked all over for it, and we decided that it had probably been snatched by a wild dog or coyote. At which point the camp leader said confidently that he would look for the missing shoe. He walked off maybe 50 meters or so into the desert, and lo and behold, came back with the shoe in question. Turns out that there is a rogue fox that lives near camp that has a thing for stealing shoes. It would seem that he would do it on a fairly regular basis as our intrepid leader knew just where to look in order to find it.
 
Anyway...after breakfast we headed out for our day of exploring the vast reaches of the desert riding in the back of a pickup truck outfitted with benches and a canopy. It was a great day of driving, hiking, climbing, exploring and ended with a beautiful sunset over the mountains. On our second hike of the day, our guide let us out of the truck and told us to hike though the canyon and he would meet us on the other side. The truck was too narrow to fit though the canyon, he said, so he would drive around it and meet up with us. Two points now need to be made:

1. For almost the entire first half of the hike, we could easily see tire tracks from previous vehicles. Too narrow to drive though? I'm calling shenanigans on that one.
2. The second half of the hike should have, in no way, been called a hike. Hiking, to me, implies some form of walking. What we did would have been more accurately described as scrambling up and over many large rocks and crevices. I was a bit worried that we were going to have a 127 Hours situation on our hands.

But we managed to make it unscathed to our lunch and nap spot, where we proceeded to lunch, and then nap.

After lunch we continued on seeing the sites, including some truly impressive rock bridges, which we were encouraged to climb. While Chrissy opted to chill on the safety of the ground for the larger bridge, Steph and I took to the rock. The climb up wasn't too bad, and it was pretty awesome up there. But then we had to climb down. And the last bit of descent was a fairly steep-ish 20 foot sort-of-kind-of drop off, which I decided to get down by shimmy-ing on my hiney. The guide was coming down with me and kept trying to get me to take his hand and scramble down the cliff with him. At which point, the following conversation occurred:

Guide: Take my hand and we will walk.
Me: No thank you. If I take your hand and try to stand up, I will most likely fall. And then you will fall. And we will most likely die. And Chrissy will have to drive the truck back to camp. And Chrissy doesn't know the way back to camp (T gets a bit chatty when she is concerned about plummeting to her death).
Chrissy (from the ground): I have an excellent sense of direction.
Me: Which way is camp?
Chrissy points.
Guide: That way is Saudi Arabia.

Yeah, if it's all the same to you, I think I'll just shimmy down on my behind. Thanks though.

So that ends our time in the Wadi Rum desert. It was, as I'm sure Steph and Chrissy will agree, a great experience. Two final things should be said:

1. Bedouins drink a lot of tea...and I mean a lot. I think we were offered tea no less than two dozen times in two days. I drank more tea in 48 hours than I have in the past 34 years.
2. I'm not sure you guys know this, but there is a lot of f*cking sand in the desert. Jesus it's everywhere. I have sand in every single thing I brought to Jordan. Every. Single. Thing.

Moving on tomorrow morning. I'd like to float in the Dead Sea now please!

Chrissy:

I would like to just add in, when we originally discussed the desert camel ride, I had opted out due to the discovery of the pending offspring. However, two days before we leave for Wadi Rum desert I was asked by my good friend T 'your going on the camel ride, right?'. Well what else is one to say but 'sure, why not'.

Now I don't know about everyone, but when someone tells me a camel ride before going to camp, I think its a one hour out and back ride on a well trained, obedient camel; then a driven trip to the campsite. No where in any conversation did it ever occur to me that we were actually going to ride a gang of rebel camels (aside from Big Steph of course) 6 HOURS to the campsite, with a very nice man from Sudan who spoke NO English and had difficulty controlling all 4 rebels on his own.

Now lets just keep in mind, that while I'm the only one in the group who has ridden horses for years, riding a camel is nothing like riding a horse. I do not plan on ever again climbing atop even the most well trained of camels, but at least I can say that I totally rode a camel in the deserts of the Middle East. Horrifying, yet totally awesome :)