Just like the title suggests, I went camping...in the desert. Shocking, I know. I'm surprised I survived to tell you all about it, but I can honestly say that I enjoyed it. Well, most parts of it...
The plan for the afternoon was drop our stuff at the tents in the nature reserve, then go on a "hike". So in case you guys didn't know or remember, Caitlin doesn't hike. Ever. My roommate Kirsten kept telling me "oh, it'll just be like a walk through the nature reserve. It's not a big deal; don't worry about it." Oh no, this was definitely a hike. There were two paths we could take: one was a scenic path and the other was to see the caves. My friends decided that the caves sounded really cool, so we were off to the caves. Only until we were 10 minutes into the trail did I find out that the cave trail was the intense hiking trail. Great. All I wanted was a leisurely walk and now I am literally on the side of a mountain climbing through caves. How did that happen?
Our program scheduled a trip to take us to Dana (a small little nature reserve), Wadi Rum (the desert), and Petra (an ancient city built into the rocks). So a group of 124 American students took off for a desert camping trip. How descete we must have looked!
After our little hiking adventure, we were told you could sleep in the tents or at a hotel. I think my hand went up before anybody else's for the hotel. After Matt's and my Umm Qais hotel mishap, I thought it could only go up from there. False. The hotel in Dana was pretty much a jail cell. It was a concrete room with three beds and a toilet. No mirror, tiny window, but they had a toilet! Success.
After hearing mosquitos buzzing and donkeys making their obnoxious sounds and dogs fighting, we fell asleep for maybe 3 hours. The next morning was rough, but we got up after our 7 am wake up call. By 9 we were on our way to Wadi Rum...the fun part.
The first thing we did was go on a jeep ride through the desert, making stops as needed to survey the scene and capture the desert images. It was absolutely amazing. Except that for some reason our driver was 12 years old, and we were always in the back of the pack. We would start out first after every stop, but soon enough we were watching all the other trucks speed by us! The last stop: tea in a bedouin tent! How classically stereotypical, but still. We are technically tourists who enjoy those things.
But what comes next is even more classically stereotypical: a camel ride through the desert. Which in theory sounds fun, but in reality is just painful. That's the only way to describe it. I was in a pack of 4 with Kirsten, Matt, and our Bedouin leader Abdul Rahman (more to come on him in a second). My camel's name was Esraa and let's just say she and I are not friends. Granted, she was pregnant and the last thing I would want is another 150 pounds on my back, but at the same time she needed to speed it up. Literally everytime there was a little tree or patch of weeds growing Esraa was stopped.
Anyway, that was the least of my concerns. My "saddle" (if you could even call it one) was kind of occupying my mind given how much pain it was causing me. For some reason everybody else was sitting comfortably on their padded saddles, while I was literally cringing and groaning the entire 2 hours because my saddle was a piece of wood covered by a light fleece jacket. Let's just say that it didn't work out very well. I literally could not sit or lay comfortably in any position for the next couple days, and I had bruises to prove it.
But all of a sudden in the middle of our camel ride, Abdul Rahman (who took a little too much of a liking to me) said "You sing or you jump." Umm I choose option number three: neither. Thanks. Then of course Matthew had to egg him on and say how wonderful of a singer I am and how much I love to sing. False. Nothing could be farther from the truth. But little Abdul Rahman was insistant, so I had to do it. For some bizarre reason, all I could think of was "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" so in the middle of the desert, there I was, cringing as I rode my uncomfortable camel while singing an American chidlren's song. Only in Jordan.
At the camp, we were assigned our tents, settled in (and by settled in I mean threw our bags on the mattress and unfolded the blanket. There's not really much settling in when it comes to tents in the desert. Then it was dinner time. Dinner was more of a feast of lamb and chicken cooked in the traditional bedouin way: buried and heated underground. It was ok, but buried meat is not really my idea of a good feast.
That night I actually slept better than I had in the hotel the previous night. It was a little cold, and my body wasn't going to let myself get comfortable after the camel ride, which should be really indicative as to how bad the hotel was. I really should stop complaining about that hotel...
Anyway, the next morning we were Petra bound. Petra is a city carved into the rocks of Southern Jordan and was the captial of the Nabateeans in th 6th Century BC. It was kept hidden until the early 19th century and was described as "a rose-red city half as old as time." The whole time I was walking through I could only imagine how it was in the 6th century, it must have been absolutely incredible. I mean it was absolutely incredible in the 21st Century!
I must say, though, it was a trek. A LONG trek. We had the option of walking up 900 steps carved into the mountain where to visit the Monsastery to see where the sacrifices took place, and let me tell you that was another hike and a half. What is it with all of this hiking?! I did feel accomplished afterwards though! Even though the Monastery was anti-climatic after seeing the Treasury and walking up 900 steps!
So after seeing a 6th Century rock city, riding a camel for 2 hours, being propsoed to by a Bedouin, 4 wheeling through the desert, eating a buried heat-cooked lamb, and sleeping in tents in the desert, I arrived back in Amman ready for a massage and ready to collapse in bed! Unfortunately only the collapsing in bed happened, but at that point, it was good enough for me!
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