Rewind: Petra/Wadi Rum/Aqaba

I'm going to take a quick trip back in time to the weekend before last, when I had my first Jordanian excursion to Petra, Wadi Rum, and Aqaba!

Early on Friday morning (July 22), my host mom drove me to a bus station in town, where I met five other students from my program for the weekend excursion we had signed up for. After buying some breakfast from a street vendor and wandering around a bit, we found our bus and boarded. Everyone else on the bus was also there for the weekend tour, but we were the only non-Arabs on board, which made things rather fun and sometimes a little confusing. We drove to Petra first, and after a four or five hour bus ride, arrived at the rosy ancient city ready to explore:

We only had a couple of hours at the site, and we wanted to make the most of them, so when a Bedouin man with two donkeys approached another student (Bess) and I with the offer to take us all the way to the monastery (the most famous site there) and back in time to catch our bus, we eagerly haggled a lower price and jumped on said donkeys' backs. The ride was amazing, and we got to see some marvelous things, but his promise fell through a little bit... The ride up took a lot longer than expected, and we almost missed our bus... but after yelling at the donkey owner (I'm not proud of that moment) and taking a super-speedy carriage ride back to the parking lot, Bess and I made it onto the bus, albeit an hour late (thus missing lunch and incurring the wrath of our tour guide.)

Then, the bus drove us to a Bedouin camp in Wadi Rum, a protected area in the Jordanian desert. We took a sunset jeep ride through the desert and returned to the camp as the sun was slipping behind the sandy slopes in the distance.

We had just begun to settle in when our tour guide told us we'd have to move to a different camp because that one wasn't ready. So... we walked out into the incredibly dark Jordanian night, hopped back into the jeeps, and headed to a new camp. The new camp was pretty crowded, but there was plenty of music and even some dinner late that night.

All was fun and delightful until it came time to go to sleep... because we weren't expected at that camp, there wasn't enough sleeping space, so while everyone else was in semi-permanent tents with beds and sheets, I shared a nylon camping tent with two other girls. Just as we were getting changed into our pajamas and laying down on the ultra-comfy tent floor, some teenaged boy with a bad attitude began to sort of attack our tent... he proceeded to hit/kick/yell at our tent until we called our tour guide, who told us not to worry because he would kill anyone who was bothering us. The pesky boy disappeared after that.

In the morning, we packed up and got back on the bus, which took us to Aqaba, our last stop. It's basically a Middle Eastern beach town on the Red Sea, and we were able to spend the afternoon eating lunch, swimming, and looking across the sea to Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. It was strange being one of the only women in the water, and I possibly got stung by a sea urchin, but it was quite refreshing overall.


It took us a good six or seven hours to get home to Amman, and despite the fact that I slept through most of it, I was exhausted by the time my taxi dropped me off. The weekend was full of surprises, some of which were a little stressful in the moment, but each and every one just provided more adventure and excitement... what a way to wrap up my first week in Jordan!

You can see the rest of the pictures here.