Jordan? You remember from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade…
My trip to Jordan was a memorable one. I went with some people from school and we had a blast. We rented cars upon arrival at the airport in Amman and decided that we were going to loop around this small country while taking stops at the Dead Sea, Wadi Rum, and of course Petra (made popular by the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade movie as well as Transformers). Our route looked something like this:
We jumped in our piece of shit car and proceeded to drive through Amman, getting lost along the way and getting split up from our other friends. We finally found our way out and proceeded to the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea shares its border with Israel, which we could see from the other side. We got in the water, floated around for a bit, rubbed some mud on ourselves then went and had a few ten dollar beers at the bar. Accommodation was ok, but nothing special. We knew we had a big driving day ahead of us so we got to bed early so we can enjoy the Dead Sea one last time before we drove off…..
The next day after a nice little dip in the Dead Sea, we took off on our journey to Wadi Rum. The land is rather desolate here and reminds me a lot of the El Paso desert. On our way, literally in the middle of nowhere, I ended up with a flat. We pulled into a semi service station and I went to change it and figured out that the tire iron did not match the lug nuts. When push came to shove, a guy helped me out with a wrench and we got our tire changed, however I was on a donuts for the long haul…
Reaching Wadi Rum on my donut finally after not finding a tire shop, I talked to the Bedouin and he said to leave the car and they will get a new tire for me. Cool!!!!!! We ended up going out in the desert and staying at a Bedouin camp that night. The people we used were called Bedouin Directions. It was a fine time as we slept in tents for the night, got to watch the sunset and ate some typical Bedouin food. The next day we got up in time to see the sun rise and we started a jaunt around Wadi Rum which is known for filming of some Transformer movies as well as Lawrence of Arabia (he actually lived here during WWI). The rock formations as you can see are fabulous…
Now this is the time we were all waiting for…time for Petra!!!! We stayed two nights here in a rather descent hotel (not awesome), but it was close to the entrance of Petra and its name was http://www.petrapalace.com/. I would recommend staying here because it is in proximity to everything. Next morning we woke up with the tune on my ipad to Indian Jones playing, we made our grand entrance into the Petra Treasury!!!!! The better part of the rest of the two days, we spent hours walking around there as there is so much to see and took a hike up to the treasury where Transformers was filmed. I can tell you that everything that I heard about this place was great and it exceeded my expectations with its sheer brilliance. As you can see from the pictures below it is awe inspiring. Just wish we didn’t have to get back to work the next day…..
