Luxury Nights Wadi Rum

Into The Desert

Instructions were a little vague for our arrival to Wadi Rum. We paid for entrance to the National Park and managed to meet our guide at the Village. They decided that since our vehicle was four-wheel-drive we could follow them in and drive our own way back out in the morning. Uh huh. So on the way in I have the genius idea of looking over my shoulder and shooting the various rock formations with my thumb showing which side to go on. Seemed like a foolproof plan. More on that later. If we had not had four wheel drive we would still be out in that desert. It was quite a ride. We wound our way through monstrous rock formations on two track sand roads. And arrived at the camp in about 20 minutes. The main path through the camp is paved with Marble or granite mosaic. It really is a luxury camp. Our tent had regular beds, air conditioning and a normal

bathroom.

Tour 

Ahmed, the guy who met us in the Village, turned out to also be the one that was offering us a four-wheel drive tour of the desert. We all piled in the back of his Toyota Hilux with padded seats on either side of the pickup bed and headed into the  desert. We stopped at about 6 Scenic sites hiked up some slot canyons with petroglyphs, climb to the top of a rock Arch, and ultimately stop someplace to view the sunset. After a couple of stops, Ahmed started piling a couple of flat rocks up as steps for our less than flexible women folk.  Very nice tour that cost us about a hundred bucks for the five of us.  

Desert Dinner and Entertainment

Dinner that night consisted of a large buffet with the standard huge salad spread that comes with almost every Arab dinner. And other very tasty dishes. Our waitress was from the Philippines and was very courteous. She crisply informed us that the only beer on the menu had 0% alcohol I didn’t hear it first I said what percent alcohol she said “zero”
Well OK.

We were invited to hang out around the Bedouin campfire after dinner and of course they would sell us some tea or coffee or a hookah pipe to smoke. We were one of the few guests to join the campfire at first and there were three bed Twins playing a drum and clapping and making percussion noises and creating music basically out of nothing. I have to say the music was not terribly sophisticated. But we joined in with gusto and regarding the hookah pipe, what happens in Jordan stays in Jordan. They spoke very little English and we spoke even less Arabic but we managed to have a conversation of sorts and they let me play the drum and honestly we had a great time. At the end of the evening the drum player pronounced that Linda, Mary and I were the number one guests. Which I took is a significant honor.
So Bedouin drumming was just a bonus. What we really came for was stargazing. Around 10:30 they finally shut the lights down. We had 5 bean bag chairs in front of our tents. We enjoyed a myriad of stars and the milky way ran clearly from north to south, although the sky was still not quite as dark as you might hope. Unfortunately, we did not manage to wake up in the middle of the night and check it out again.

Back to Tel Aviv

We had one minor mishap pulling out of the Bedouin Camp the next morning. I’m not going to put it into print so you’ll have to ask me about it. We could not really make heads or tails out of my photos coming in and so we had to use our best judgement and memory. I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. We actually got it right the first time and were, in fact, not lost in the Jordanian desert for or three days. We then commenced our long and arduous Trek back to Tel Aviv through the Negev Desert This included going through Jordanian exit crossing the border, doing the security check with the Israeli border, and then a four hour drive into Tel Aviv. It was tedious but uneventful. That ends our story of Wadi Rum luxury camping.

You can see All of our Wadi Rum Photos.