Amman and Wadi Rum

Besides being close to the sights of Amman, the hotel is also conveniently located close to a mosque. The call for prayer started at 4:20 am! Come on, who is up at that time to go there and pray! The mournful voice over loudspeakers is five times a day. After a while it gets to be background noise and you don’t notice it as much.
In Amman I walked up to the Citadel on top of one of the many hills the city is set on, with some impressive Roman ruins. I unintentionally found a shortcut up, through a driveway with a couple of new Mercedes cars and a couple of goats. Way up there I heard another call for prayer, clear as a bell.
The day was very warm, but I was well covered up as is the custom. I had only one male hiss at me, a boy of 16! You are always told you should have your shoulders and knees covered, but what is missing from that advice is to cover your chest, up to your neck. Your shirt does not have to be low cut to attract unwanted attention so it’s best to just cover up with your clothing or a scarf.
I walked across the street from the hotel to the Roman amphitheatre and climbed to the top on the steep, narrow slippery steps. It’s always easier going up than down, I needed to support myself on the seats to make my way down.
I set off with a couple of others from the trip in search of a meal, and found nothing but masses of people and local souqs or markets, selling everything from fruits to furniture, so ended up back at the hotel for lunch.
That evening I met the tour group. Our leader is Mohammed, whom I shall refer to as Mo in this blog, born in Bethlehem in Palestine, family moved to Jordan as refugees in 1967 as a result of the Six Day War, trained as a fighter pilot then air traffic controller in the Royal Air Force, and now retired from the military. The rest of the group are from London, California, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and Morocco. And there are only 12 in the group! We went for local dinner of falafel at Hashems, open 24 hours, 2JD, then had dessert from a shop on the way home. Jordanian dinars are worth about 30% more than our dollar.
I stayed up with five of the guys for a drink in our hotel bar afterwards, where Middle East politics was discussed, and now I understand less than I did before.
The following day, Sunday, we left our hotel in rush hour traffic. Here Friday and Saturday are the weekend, and Sunday is the beginning of the work week. We drove through modern western Amman, very different from the old downtown where we stayed. A few hours later we reached Wadi Rum. Wadi
means valley. It is a huge desert, famous for being the home of Lawrence of Arabia, and setting for the film. At the entry there is a visitors centre next to the massive rocks named Seven Pillars of Wisdom, after the book written by TE Lawrence (of Arabia).

We transferred to four wheel drive vans for our tour through the sands of Wadi Rum. We stopped at the main spring named Lawrence Spring, then to a siq (narrow opening in the rocks) where we saw ancient graffiti and drawings, then to a sand dune that we climbed up, then the Umm Froth rock bridge,
a narrow piece of rock suspended high overhead. Geert from Holland and Khalid from Morocco, who trained as a mountain guide, ran up to stand on the bridge but the rest of us just watched in envy.

We reached our camp in time for the 5:00 sunset. The camp is nested between some high rock formations, and is a bunch of camel hair tents, more like bungalows, with solar powered lights. Mo calls it our 5000 star hotel. We were greeted with mint tea, as we are greeted everywhere, and after
watching the sunset from a high viewpoint followed our Bedouin hosts to a hole in the sand where our meal of chicken, potatoes and onions had been cooking all day.

After the meal there was not much to do but watch the stars in the pitch dark sky so it was an early bedtime. 8:30 early. I had to get up in the middle of the night and didn’t need a light, since the nearly full moon had risen and lit up the sky. Some of us got up to see the sunrise, which was anti-climactic since it was already so light out. After breakfast we drove through the amazing landscape back to our van, and headed off for a couple of
hours drive to the World Heritage site of Petra.