But wait! There’s more!

The next day being Friday, and my parents’ last day in the Middle East, we had planned to see Wadi Rum in the morning and move on to Amman that evening. However, although Wadi Rum is Jordan’s Second Most Important Site To See, there was very little transportation between Petra and Wadi Rum, and even fewer options from WR to Amman (because everybody else is on a tour bus). We were too tired to plan anything after we got back from Petra, but we realized we would most likely end up hiring a taxi to take us for the full day, or not go at all. The latter was clearly not an option, particularly because my parents had watched Lawrence of Arabia just before coming to visit me and though my mom and her aching feet were now second-guessing spending the morning hiking in the desert, my dad was fully ready to relive the stunning panoramas and desertscapes that make the 3 ½ hour epic worth the time investment.

And although we definitely slept early that night, we woke up only to realize that Daylight Savings had just kicked in and we had already lost an hour of the day.

Our driver for the day (a 25 year-old Special Ed teacher during the week) took us south along the picturesque Desert Highway (the name is pretty self-explanatory) 1 ½ hours to the village of Wadi Rum. From there we hired a guide (23 years-old, he jokingly tried to bargain with my parents to exchange me for 200 camels) and his “Japanese Donkey” (the Bedouins’ affectionate name for the 4WD Land Cruiser that has taken the place of animal transport—still, the ride is bouncy enough that you don’t miss out on the experience), bought some snacks (kaek, datebread, bananas, water) and sunscreen for the ride and invited our taxi driver to join us for the morning.

Our first stop was a rock scramble up to a tree and a spring (“Lawrence’s Spring,” he wrote about it in his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom), with a souvenir shop where my dad bought his own red and white checked Bedouin headscarf. From the top we could see other 4WDs gathering below and hurried back down to beat the group to the next site. At the bottom there was a rock carved with some Nabatean inscriptions (more of those throughout the site).

So I just realized that writing about Wadi Rum is pretty difficult; it seems that the most articulate means of expression is via the pictures. There isn’t much history, beyond the wall carvings (and I don’t remember where/when they are from or what they mean) and points of interest for Lawrence fans. We visited a canyon, sand dunes, little rock bridge with great panorama, Lawrence’s house/pile of rocks where he lived for the years he spent in the desert…each site we got out to explore and climb and each time there were fewer and fewer tourists around.

Our 3 ½ hour trip just began to scrape the surface of the possibilities of activities there: one could be more eco-friendly and spend the day hiking or on camelback (or do it for three days if you wanted to ride like Lawrence to Aqaba), camp out under the stars, scramble to the top of rocky mountains, rock climb (with your own gear) on Bedouin climbs (see books by Tony Howard and Di Taylor for more info)… LP also offers hot air ballooning (I feel like that might ruin the desert experience for those on the ground though), microlighting, sand yachting (I don’t even know what those are) and sky diving.

Despite our relatively short visit, though it seemed we stayed longer than most visitors, we got a pretty good idea of what the environment was like—without the sore legs and sunburns, thanks to our Japanese Donkey. And particularly because it was the last trip on the end of a long (but not long enough!) two weeks of travelling, we were ready to go when the time came to get back in the taxi and drive the 4 ½ hours north to Amman.