How many people do you know who have traveled to Jordan? Maybe someone you know traveled with a church group. Visiting Israel and crossing the border to Jordan to see a few biblical sights. Or maybe you know a world traveler who adventured around the Middle East and knew enough to spend time in Jordan. I can say that we've never known anyone who traveled to Jordan, or even talked to someone from Jordan, or intending to travel to Jordan.
But we can say this. It should be on your list of places to visit. Like near the top. It is everything you could hope for when you're looking to explore a new place. It's easy to navigate without feeling anything like back home. The people are kind, caring, and still authentically themselves. The food is ridiculously good with enough variety to keep you trying news things for a while. The landscape is varied and remarkable. Beaches, mountains, desert, oases. And history buffs can dig that humans have been living and traveling here for thousands and thousands of years.
Literally none of this stuff was on our radar screens when the itinerary for this voyage came out and we signed up. And our lives are such that we didn't really get deep into a lot of research on any place we were going until days before arrival. And still, travel books and blogs (this one included) can't really capture what it feels like to BE in Jordan. Like all travel, it's a sensory experience. You build your memories with your noses, ears, and skin even more than your eyes. And Jordan leaves it's deep and beautiful mark on every one of your senses.
Our ship arrived before dawn and immediately we have surprise #1. Look at those mountains!
Just steps away from the water the land starts to rise in the dramatic and jagged ways. There's no vegetation on these mountains. They are chunky and sharp and big. We will be seeing a lot of them later.
The JL crew are off the ship! This stretch at sea was our longest. 11 days at sea. Still nothing compared to the 24 straight days on the Corona Cruise back in 2020, but still. It's all about expectations. Truth is, the hardest part of a long stretch at sea is the food. It's good food on the ship, but it gets really repetitive, especially for vegetarians. So where is our first stop in the port city of Aqaba? Grocery store to replenish the snacks and a restaurant.
A rooftop restaurant with our good buddies Melissa and Roundtree. Turkish coffee is the aficionado's drink of choice. One cup and you won't sleep for days. Good. Cuz we don't want to miss a thing.
Chris was on call for a good chunk of this port and work was a little busy on Day 1. So the JL's chose to separate so Jen and the kids could hit the town and have an adventure up north. Before we get to that though...
Here's the best meal Chris had in Jordan. It was a shawarma from a street booth. Crispy outer grilled flat bread, saucy, spicy chicken on the inside. The orange yogurt sauce made it even spicier. He fully plans on dreaming about this meal in particular for years to come. (PS - During college Chris lived just down the street from a Lebanese place called Santana's. These fries tasted just like those fries. Heavy on some kind of magical seasoning.)
This place was another cool find. Al Tarboosh. He makes hand pies stuffed with cheeses and spices. The whole family actually ended up here 3 different times. It was the perfect place to grab something in the morning before hopping in the car or in the afternoon for a snack. He'd throw some pies in the oven to heat em up and we would inevitably under-order, and then have to go back for round two. Maybe some food truck ideas here?
Aqaba is just a cool city to walk around in. Chris' second day in port had less work stuff and spent most of the day wandering.
So where were Jen and the kids on day two? Good question. It was time for them to get out of the city and head north.
Welcome to the Dead Sea. The lowest point on Earth. It took 4 hours to get there and Guthrie "sat" on Jen's lap all the way there and all the way back. (Jen created a 3 foot boundary around her body for the next 24hrs. Not that the boundary did much good, but the sentiment was there.) Get the suits on and hit the incredibly salty water!
The Dead Sea is not going to be around much longer. They have diverted practically all the water that could ever flow into the sea so it'll just evaporate over time and disappear.
After all was said and done, Wally may have summed the Dead Sea up best. "The experience today was fine. It was interesting. But in a few years I'll get to say I swam in the Dead Sea. It's really just about bragging rights."
Ok so with the family back together it was time for some fun (not more than an hour from the ship as Chris was still on-call) out in the wild places of Jordan.
Wadi Rum also know as the Valley of the Moon is a nature reserve that's been used in many movies (Start Wars, The Martian, etc.). It is one of the main highlights of the country. The most common way you enjoy this huge place is piling in the back of a pickup truck and cruising around. Two things before we get to the pictures though.
First, our good friend Jess (also from CSU/Fort Collins) happened to be traveling the Middle East and met us in Jordan for the entire time we were in port. Jess is a free spirit with a thick Fargo accent. She's been to a million countries and was probably planning on going to Jordan even before she knew we could meet up there. She's that cool.
Second, there is a difference between a Jordanian and a Bedouin. Jordanians run the country and are basically the dominant ethnicity. Bedouins are an ethnic group found everywhere across North Africa and the Middle East. In Jordan, places like Wadi Rum or Petra (coming up later) overlap with traditional Bedouin lands. Jordanians have tried to coax them out by building homes and offering free health care, but Bedouins have enjoyed doing their own thing for far too long to give up their homes. All this to say that once you are in Wadi Rum, you are working with Bedouins. They have a corner on the market as guides and service providers. They are laid back and unbelievably generous with their time and energy. So our driver from Aqaba turns us over to our Bedouin guide at the gate of Wadi Rum, Ahmed.
See! There's Ahmed and Jess!
Pictures cannot do this place justice. It's huge. The wide open spaces are gigantic and then there are these rock formations that look like they are bursting from the crust of the earth to the sky. It's reminiscent of southern Utah or Arizona. It feels like a national park in the US, but without the modern infrastructure.
It is honestly, just miles upon miles of this. Wide open spaces. Every time you turn your head it takes your breath away.
We stopped the truck at an entrance to a narrow canyon. A beautiful sandstone slot canyon where people had been coming for thousands of years.
Carvings like these were everywhere along the walls. You definitely got that feeling that you get when you realize you are standing in the same place as someone from long ago. One single human stood here with a tool, and saw this rock, and thought it was a good place to carve an animal picture. And now a family, so many years later, gets to see your work. In the midst of these striking geological formations, a really small human moment.
And the slot canyon made for great climbing.
You can't drive across a desert without seeing camels. Camels, camels, everywhere camels. Even new born camels.
Baby camels are really weird looking.
It's mid morning and time for a tea break. Literally everywhere around the world, you can always find a bunch of dudes, sitting around, drinking tea.
The kids were a little nervous about trying the tea. But we quickly found out how much Bedouins like sugar and all was well.
Before lunch, we had some time with a snowboard and a sand dune. Sand dunes are really hard to climb so each kid got about one ride on the board.
One person in our party preferred the peace, quiet, and warmth of laying in the sun...
There were only a few arches, but unlike Arches National Park in the US, you could climb on top if you wanted to. People with cameras stayed firmly on the ground.
So that's it for Wadi Rum. It's a great place. There were lots of encampments you could stay in overnight in the reserve. It was chilly, but we heard the stars were amazing. We definitely had the sense that we would have loved to hike here and explore the landscape slowly and quietly, but it's just so big you would need several days. And we're guessing it's unbearable in the heat of summer. And for all the grandeur and wide open space it's still the connections with the Bedouin people and the ancestors who walked this land that help you keep perspective. We're pretty small and insignificant, sure. And we exist for only the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. It really makes you appreciate it when you find really great shawarma.
Next post will be about Petra. It really needs it's own post. See you then!
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