Val here.
From Israel, it is easy to travel to Petra, in Jordan, the beautiful ancient sight made more famous by the filming of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as well as Lawrence of Arabia.
Let me start from the beginning. Racheli, our Israeli friend and host and tour director, found an article in a Hebrew Journal lauding a wonderful desert camp in Wadi Rum, Jordan - famous for its beauty and nearness to Petra. Stunning quiet, tracts of sand, and rock formations surround a bedouin-style camp providing reed or canvas tents for adventurous guests. Arieh contacted the author of the article who happily accepted a deposit for the desert camp. Everything is included - the pick up from the Jordanian border at Aqaba, transfers to Petra and to Wadi Rum, all meals, walks in the desert, and warm Bedouin hospitality. And yes! It was all true!
Our son Avidan, his friend Yonni Friedlander (he is ON the camel in the picture below), Arieh and I took the bus down to Eilat. The next morning we crossed the Jordan border to be greeted by our driver. We were escorted by taxi - only after a welcome coffee on our way - to Wadi Rum and the Palms Desert Camp (a.desertworld@gmail.com). It was hot, dry, and exquisite in its simple beauty. We sat in the long open Bedouin style living room drinking mint tea and coffee and playing cards (FYI anyone?) Lunch was a sumptuous meal of salads, hummous and meat. How we enjoyed the quiet day, lolling on the comfortable long couch, desert sands surrounding us, enjoying the peaceful time together playing cards, talking and laughing. At 4 o'clock the guys went for a walk with a guide - I avoided the heat and read my book. At 6:00, the boss, Houda, came and suggested he drive me up the hill to join the boys and see the sunset. From a windswept desert hill we looked down upon the soon to be opened museum about the life and filming of Lawrence of Arabia. Each night we slept in a tent made of reeds woven together, the wind (and sand) sifting in as we slept on a mattress on the floor in great comfort and peace. Avidan and Yonni each had a canvas tent and a real bed - warm, but cosy. What a remarkable stay!
Let me start from the beginning. Racheli, our Israeli friend and host and tour director, found an article in a Hebrew Journal lauding a wonderful desert camp in Wadi Rum, Jordan - famous for its beauty and nearness to Petra. Stunning quiet, tracts of sand, and rock formations surround a bedouin-style camp providing reed or canvas tents for adventurous guests. Arieh contacted the author of the article who happily accepted a deposit for the desert camp. Everything is included - the pick up from the Jordanian border at Aqaba, transfers to Petra and to Wadi Rum, all meals, walks in the desert, and warm Bedouin hospitality. And yes! It was all true!
Our son Avidan, his friend Yonni Friedlander (he is ON the camel in the picture below), Arieh and I took the bus down to Eilat. The next morning we crossed the Jordan border to be greeted by our driver. We were escorted by taxi - only after a welcome coffee on our way - to Wadi Rum and the Palms Desert Camp (a.desertworld@gmail.com). It was hot, dry, and exquisite in its simple beauty. We sat in the long open Bedouin style living room drinking mint tea and coffee and playing cards (FYI anyone?) Lunch was a sumptuous meal of salads, hummous and meat. How we enjoyed the quiet day, lolling on the comfortable long couch, desert sands surrounding us, enjoying the peaceful time together playing cards, talking and laughing. At 4 o'clock the guys went for a walk with a guide - I avoided the heat and read my book. At 6:00, the boss, Houda, came and suggested he drive me up the hill to join the boys and see the sunset. From a windswept desert hill we looked down upon the soon to be opened museum about the life and filming of Lawrence of Arabia. Each night we slept in a tent made of reeds woven together, the wind (and sand) sifting in as we slept on a mattress on the floor in great comfort and peace. Avidan and Yonni each had a canvas tent and a real bed - warm, but cosy. What a remarkable stay!
The next day - off to Petra. Petra is "an archaelogical, anthropological, and geological phenomenon" (from http://www.desertecotours.com/) For me, it is an aesthetic revelation. The huge buildings dug into rose desert rock which date from the 6th Century B. C. are gorgeous.
From Wikepedia: Petra was the impressive capital of the Nabataean kingdom from around the 6th century BC. The kingdom was absorbed into the Roman Empire in AD 106 and the Romans continued to expand the city. An important center for trade and commerce, Petra continued to flourish until a catastrophic earthquake destroyed buildings and crippled vital water management systems around AD 663. After Saladin's conquest of the Middle East in 1189, Petra was abandoned and the memory of it was lost to the West.
Petra was rediscovered in the early 19th Century by an explorer and was named a World Heritage Site in 1985.
All you need to know about Petra - and wonderful photographs are available on the internet. Google Petra and you will get virtual tours and more studied and accurate information than I will ever be able to give you. What can I add? That Petra is dramatic and stunning, not only for the man-made carved buildings, but for the striated colours on the rock. You walk through sharp rock canyons that expose the break in the earth caused by an earthquake. That the horse carriages, camels, and saddled horses, though we didn't use them, add to the atmosphere: you feel like a visitor from ancient times. That it is another wonderful place along with Angkor Wat, that you should be sure to visit if time, money, and inclination lure you to visit the most dramatic ancient ruins of the world. And that Avidan and Yonni were wonderful to be with - their enjoyment and wonder enhancing ours; their recollections of the movies and television photographed here were more vivid than ours.
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