Sweimeh

After leaving Petra the morning after, we headed south to Wadi Rum, a 300 sq mile red-desert valley lined with towering limestone and granite towers and inhabited by Bedouin tribes. It was the location of many parts of the story of Lawrence of Arabia, and, despite being the “Valley of the Moon,” the film “The Martian” was largely filmed there.

It’s a vast and scenic place with views for miles when there isn’t a sandstorm (“warm and dusty” was the forecast).

From the visitor center, we loaded into the open backs of Toyota 4x4 pick-ups for a 30-minute drive across the desert to our camp for the night. There are a number of isolated camps, and ours was made up of domes, connected by a boardwalk, that were each a guest room with running water, flushing toilets (but you couldn’t flush toilet paper), showers, and electricity; a portion of each dome had a curtain that could be opened for a view of the sky. A central lounge area was where meals were had, and a separate lounge building had a bar (but no liquor was served), a pool, and outdoor seating. We were nestled among towers of stone.

We arrived just before sunset. The sound of the desert was glorious.

Dinner included goat that had been cooked underground; after dinner, a number of us sat under the stars, drinking wine our tour director brought with him, smoking a hookah, talking.

The next day started with desert activities – 4x4 driving, climbing a large rock towers to get a view of the desert, hiking in a mountain canyon where there are petroglyphs, walking up a sand dune, and camel-riding (which we started from the area where TE Lawrence located a water spring).

After that we had a four-hour drive north to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth. Here for two nights, this morning we visited “Bethany Beyond the Jordan,” the location believed to be where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and then I did what is the traditional Dead Sea activity: float in the water and cake yourself with soothing black mud. After that, it was relax by the pool until dinnertime.

Tomorrow we cross the border into Israel.

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