After a long, wet day at Petra, chest cold worsening and exhaustion setting in, we made the only logical decision there was, and booked a trip out to the desert. We headed down to the Wadi Rum with our two other tour members- The German and The Spanish.

We spent an hour driving then got shuffled from our car to an open jeep and started touring around Lawrence's desert. We had mint tea with the Bedouins and climbed some rocks. We saw Lawrence of Arabia's house (which at this point is another pile of rocks) and some giant red sand dunes. After a few hours of mucking about, if felt as though I had as much sand in my shoes (and elsewhere) as there was in the desert itself!

They took us to a cliff with a natural rock formation that had created a bridge between two large rocks and told us to climb. When our guide pointed to the "way up", I thought he was joking. Then I realized people were actually going up the steep side he had pointed to. A reasonable woman would have waved on her younger, more athletic companions, but I decided I wanted to see the view from the top. I started scaling up, a little unsure footed but doing generally okay, but then three quarters of the way up, I made the age old mistake- I looked down! Apparently I'm developing a bit of vertigo in my old age, and pictures of all the idiots who plunged to their deaths in pursuit of the perfect selfie, came rushing through my head. I had made it that far, and down seemed far scarier than up, so with a little help from my friends, I scrambled to the top. I lay down, took a picture, felt dizzy and lay down some more. Now the real problem! I had to go down the way I came up!

It quite literally took all three men to get me down. Eventually Spanish jumped in front of me, grabbed my hand and guided me down the entire way, while German carried my jacket and Brian steadied me from above with words of encouragement. When I finally got back to the ground (to a round of applause and a lot of picture taking), I resolved to be content to wait below next time something like this arises. Ha! Famous last words, no doubt! But it feels like the sensible thing to say now! And anyone who knows me, knows how very sensible I am!

We had a very cold night in our tent after a seriously wonderful dinner replete with shooting stars and more mint tea, and then woke up to a morning camel ride before heading down to Aqaba to catch our bus north to Amman. It felt like we had done a lot of zigzagging this trip, but Brian being more pragmatic and organized that I am, decided we should take the scheduled bus instead of hoping for the best on the side of the road. So zigzagging we went.

More soon from the capitol!