Another great day in the desert

Wed, Feb 10, 2010
Wadi Rum

We had a great day in the desert today. I awoke about 6am so decided to go for a little walk. The sun was just beginning to rim the tops of the mountains, and there wasn’t another soul in site. It was incredibly peaceful to stand on the desert floor welcoming the new day.

We were scheduled for a jeep tour of the area and as we drove across the desert, the early morning sun cast beautiful shadows across the landscape. The rock formations are fascinating to watch and they change as the light changes. Some look like giant layer cakes, 15 layers deep, iced with thick glaze oozing over every layer. Others look like hieroglyphics etched into the sides of the steep walls. Still others look like skulls have been carved into the rock. Really fun to look at and imagine what might be lurking in the stone.

One of our first stops was a place that has Nabatean inscriptions scratched into the rock. There was some writing and lots of little scenes of camels and people. Yesterday we had been wondering how long it takes for the elements to re-weather a piece of rock face after there has been a slide that takes off the weathered front face of a cliff. The newly exposed rock is so smooth, it’s like a tablet. Today we learned that it takes more than 2000 years, because those Nabatean carvings were on smooth rock and have been there for a very long time. I suppose 2000 years from now, tourists will be looking at those carvings and the nearby rocks with Arabic graffiti and commenting on how interesting it all is. They’ll stand and speculate about what it means, and you wonder if maybe some of that old Nabatean writing isn’t just an ancient version of “Abdul loves Yasmina.”

We had lunch in a canyon and were able to explore for about an hour before and an hour afterward. It took us a good 20 minutes just to get around the first corner because the rock was so cool to look at and we kept stopping to photograph it. When we did start moving down the canyon, it got even more weird and wonderful. Jeff had gone on a ways ahead of me, and came to get me to be sure I wouldn’t miss seeing the massive rock formation that he had reached. I came around an outcropping of rock, and there it loomed in front of me. It was absolutely massive, and looked to me like the Mothership in some alien movie. “We will assimilate you. Resistance is futile.”

Later in the afternoon, we stopped at a large rock arch, which we were able to climb. It was more of a scramble than a climb. We made it to the top and have the photo to prove it, but I wasn’t sure how I would get back down. Decided the crab walk down, with my butt close to the rock, was the way to go, and I did just fine.

The last stop for the day was at a large red sand dune. Jeff sat down and got himself hypnotized letting sand run through his fingers. He would lift a handful and watch it drain out through his fingers, over and over. The two of us sat there like kids in a sandbox for the longest time just playing with the sand. Just as I began to wonder if our guide was thinking “what the hell can they be doing” we heard the truck start up and here he came up the side of the dune to pick us up.

Tonight is supposed to be much warmer than last night, so we have dragged our mats and blankets out on to the sand and will sleep under the stars.


Postscript (Thursday morning): sleeping under the stars was incredible. We piled lots of blankets on to our mats, so were nice and warm. The blankets are very thick, but much of the heavy batting has migrated to the corners. As we crawled under the covers, it felt like they weighed 50 pounds, and turning over in our sleep became a real challenge as we felt pinned against the ground. At one point, we were both struggling to move and got laughing so hard we were afraid we would wake up our guide. But when we finally got settled in, we found it difficult to close our eyes to sleep. Each time I rolled over in the night (or tried to roll over), I ended up stargazing again. Not the most restful sleep, but pretty amazing.