Tea at the Bedouin camp.
Our hotel in Jordan used to be an old Jordanian village. Our Bedouin guide picked us up at the hotel early in the morning and brought us to the desert. He took us off-road into the desert with his jeep.
First, he took us to visit his friend who lives in the desert. His friend is also a Bedouin. We drank tea with them and saw their animals. They take good care of the animals, unlike Petra (see Mom’s blog post). They own lambs, goats, chickens, camels, and falcons. And they live in a tent. At one point while we were drinking tea, we heard a cell phone ring. It belonged to our host, the old man whose camp it was. We were very surprised, because they had no electricity but they had a cell phone! We were allowed to see the mom and sisters, but Dad was not. He was only allowed to talk to the boys.
Visiting with Trouble the camel.
When we left, there were no roads, and the jeep was making deep tracks in the sand. Next, we drove to a stone bridge in the desert hills and we climbed up and down it. At one point, another Bedouin guide brought his people there, and he drove up the ramp in his jeep, and anyone who wanted to (we did) drove up and down the steep ramp in his car.
Desert vista. For scale, there's a tiny white jeep in the distance on the desert floor.
Next we went to a place where there were colorful rocks. Some were pinkish-red. They were pinkish-red because they were blush; our guide turned them into make-up for our faces. We found rocks that were purple and yellow, and also little bits of turquoise stones. Eli even found a crystal.
Rain in the desert
Next we went to a place where we found sticks and rocks and built a campfire to cook lunch. It was hard to find sticks because we were in the middle of the desert.
While we were hunting for sticks we found the skeleton of a camel who died because of eating plastic bags. We could see the plastic left in the camel’s stomach under the bones. Then our guide roasted very good onions, fine tomatoes, and the best chicken ever over the campfire. It was a great lunch!
Next we went to a place where there were colorful rocks that crumbled easily, and we threw them against cliffs to make paintings. It was amazing how many different colors of sand there were in the desert- always really bright colors. And no one else as far as we could see. No people, or roads, or cars, or electrical wires. It was beautiful.
Climbing the almost-vertical dune.
Then we went to a huge sand dune. We climbed up it (which is harder than you would think), and then we ran/rolled down. It was really fun to run down. We had sand everywhere, which is rather uncomfortable.
Our last stop was a part of the desert that is a dried up lake. The sand was much harder than the rest of the desert. Our guide put on some Bedouin music, and Eli and the two Bedouin guides started dancing. It was fun to dance in my socks in the desert! You can see a video here.
Then Salah (our amazing tour guide) drove us back to the border crossing to Israel. We were carrying a big bag of rocks that we found at Petra and in the desert.
Good-bye Jordan. Eli and Nell think the desert was amazing. It was a day we will never forget.
– Eli and Nell
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