Going rough - Bedouin style - Part 1

We had big plans for today. In our minds today this was going to be an easy day.

We would drive to Al Karak (home of a crusader castle), a city 140 Km south of Amman, then we would make our way to another crusader castle, Shoubak (an hour North of Petra) and finally we would make our way to Wadi Rum  (famous by its amazing landscapes) where we would spend the night.

As always not all goes according to plan...

It all started well... we drove all the way to Al Karak with the help of our gps Monica and made it to the castle as planned.

This is a fairly well preserved castle, apparently it was a crusader castle for 46 years until Saladine forces took it after a siege than lasted  for more than a year.

The walls are quite tall, you can see some people on the top of the wall

It's got amazing views of the whole valley all around it

Long stairs... our in-house model showing the scale of things.

The main reason why they managed to endure more than a year of siege is because this castle was built with siege in mind. There have tens of underground tunnels where they could store enough food to last ... although I doubt they ever thought they would have to do it for that long...  

Our in-house model showing the entrance to one of those tunnels

After that we went back in the car just to discover that we couldn't start it. No matter what we did, it would just not start... so we called the rent agency and waited and waited... we tried again and it worked so we wasted enough time to have to skip the next castle (shoubak).

So without any more delays we drove directly to Wadi Rum

There are 2 roads to go to Wadi Rum, the motorway and the Kings way which is the old road, very scenic that goes up and down the valleys... Incidentally, the only way to Wadi Rum from Al Karak was by the Kings way.

We did have a small incident with the petrol... or more specifically with the lack of it.

As we joined the motorway we started looking for a petrol station as we were getting low on petrol... Cars in Jordan tend to be of the not-so new kind.. some you have to wonder how is possible that that car still running...

The case is that after 120 Km the light went off and not one petrol station on sight.... and after 150Km we were starting to get nervous about it when we saw a petrol dispenser on the other side of the motorway... mind you not a proper petrol station, only one petrol pump and a guy maning it...

Maria with her newly acquied Jordanian driving skills did a turn around in the motorway, pretty basic manoeuvre in Jordan... I wouldn't be surprised if it were on the Jordanian driving test, although I must acknoledge that although depise of the driver's skills I did sit tight and got ready for impact as I am not used to that kind of manoeuvre.

After surviving that standard basic manoeuvre we headed to the pump as the blood was coming back to my numb limbs.

The guy at the petrol station smiled, we looked at the burnout pump and tried to ask the guy whether he had unleaded petrol... yes, yes...unleaded my friend... he replied...

He seemed more eager to sell us the petrol than to make sure we had the right kind of petrol so I asked again just to make sure... he smiled back at me and said "unleaded", "unleaded" "no problem" and then handed me a cookie and another for Maria...

Okaaayyy... he gave us a cookie so it's all good then. :-)

Another u-turn in the motorway and back on the road to Wadi Rum.