Going rough - Bedouin style - Part 2

After a long day driving in Jordan we finally got to our destination.

The day before we had arranged for a tour of the Rum valley (Wadi Rum), dinner, one night stay and breakfast.

We met our guides before the entry of the valley by the train station. There was a little shop there, were we waited for them while the owner gave us some complimentary tea... I've never drank so much tea in my life since I came to Jordan... everywhere you go they give you some tea. Really nice tea by the way... and in this particular case the shop owner added some cinamon...

Dressed for the ocassion... Not sure whether they wanted to sell me that turban or whether they thought I didn't bring anything to cover my head and fell pity for me... the case is that I ended up trying it on not to be rude.

After that we got on the car and crossed the entry of the valley and that's when we noticed that the two guides tried to hide us as much as they could ... We suspected that foreginers have to pay an entry fee and they just wanted to save it for themselves...

After entering the valley we went to the back of the truck so we could admire the scenic views from the outside.

Below you can see the in-house model climbing to the back of the truck.

and the views were magnificent. Absolutely worth every mile to get there.

We made a few stops along the way... the first one was by the ruines of an ancient Nabataean temple.

 Maria and Mohamed, one of our guides.

 Above in-house model to show the scale of the temple

The next stop was at the natural spring

 Nowadays the water is brought all the way to that tent you see there via a hose half way the montain

You can see there is some green in this part of the desert.

Important places like springs and directions were marked on the rocks nearby in order to help caravans navigate the unforgivable desert.

Next stop was the dune

 Apparences can be deceiving. It looks nice and small but it's guarateed to give you a nice burning feeling in your legs should you decide to make it to the top of the hill... and depending of your current level of fitness you might get there with total oxigen deprivation... as you can see on the pictures below, most people decided to stop at some point along the climb and enjoy a more oxygen rich environment.

Oxygen is overrated and my legs were aching for some action so here are the views from the top

The next stop was a very narrow gorge

 The contrast of colors was quite radical in some places

Then a quick stop in a place with a couple of Nabataean signs

On this second sign, there was another guide there from another group who didn't speak much english and was trying to explain that it was a map of Wadi Rum and when I asked him what the different symbols within the map represented he repeated... it's a map...and then louder as if I had some kind of hearing problem... IT'S A MAP!!! ... I tried to ask my question using easier words and he just laughed at me as if I were some kind of idiot and told me even louder that IT WAS A MAP!!! so there you have it... it's a map!

Then we went to a place to see the sundown

As soon as the sun went down all the little crawlers came out of their hidden places

From here we got back to the truck and started driving towards the camp.

From previous experiences and from what we could see around us the idea we had in our mind about the camp we were expecting was a bedouin tent with proper beds and a buffet. Normally these camps are shared with other excursions so it's a good opportunity to mingle with other people.

We kept driving and got away from all the camps in the area until we reached a small and narrow valley where the truck suddenly stopped in the middle of the valley... it even sounded like it was struggling with the sand, the guide came out from the front seat walked towards us and said:

We are going to make camp here.

Maria and I looked at each other... looked back at the guide trying to guess whether he was pulling our leg and I asked "here? like right here?"

He smiled and said "yes" as he started to get blankets, pillows etc from the truck...

We were still trying to figure out what was happening so we kept pressing...

"Sooo.... what about dinner?" "are we going to have dinner?"

"Yes, he replied, I'll cook bedouine dish for you"

Okay... at least we'll get some food we thought... but we were still a bit unsure of how everything was going to work out as there was a real posibility that they could decide to leave us there in the middle of the desert, drive home, watch some telly, have a good night sleep and show up tomorrow morning to pick us up so just to make sure I asked: "and you are going to sleep here too?" and they both said, "of course we are bedouines we sleep in the desert all the time"

Okey Dokey... no worries then!, we thought. We've got food and the guys will stick around. Not the first time we sleep rough so this may actually be better than what we expected. :-)

As the guide started to prepare dinner he called us to show us.

As simple as chicken, potatoes, onions and tomatoes

Then they made fire

We sat around the fire and drank some tea until we've manage to produce some hot coals

 Then they buried the "dish" under the hot sand where the fire was and put the hot coals on top of it.

 Once the bedouin dish was ready, they took it out of the hole, put the hot coals again back in the hole and stuck the pita bread on top of the hot coals just for a few seconds on each side, picked them up, shaked them a bit to remove the sand and dust and those large pita breads you see below became our plates.

 Below is the bedouin dish once it was done

 and on the next picture you can see how to eat it. You put the food on top of the pita bread and take some more bread to pinch the food out of your "plate".

It was really good and we ate until we couldn't eat any more...

And then we went to sleep... the blankets and pillows had a very strong smell of goat but at that point we were so tired that we couldn't care less anymore.

I suspect that was as real and genouine bedouin experience as it gets. :-)