Jordan - Wadi Rum, Crusader Castles and Dana Village

Wadi Rum:

We could have taken a group tour to the desert of Wadi Rum, about 45 kms from where we were staying, but we are somewhat allergic to group tours. So we got there and came back on our own, with the combination of local buses, walking and hitchhiking on the back of a pickup truck. For a mere $40, a private taxi would have taken us there, waited three hours and brought us back, but where is the fun in that, right? (I.e. we are cheap.)

Anyway, riding camels in the desert of Wadi Rum was one of my favorite experiences on this trip - the scenery was majestic and we had two very charming camel guides.

This is Bill having picnic lunch with our guides Hussein and Bado:

They both claimed to be 15 years old, but I am guessing Hussein is 12 and Bado is 10. Hussein was definitely the leader of the two - he solemnly told us "if you have a problem, you let me know" and made Bado put back some food at lunch when he thought Bado was taking too much. I told Bado "there is plenty, please take more" but he wouldn't budge.

The ride lasted about two hours. We made a stop so that our guides could look at the airplane that flew over the desert.

We also made another stop at a Bedouin tent shop to drink tea (Bedouins are traditionally nomadic people that live in goat-hair tents and graze animals - well, they used to, I think a lot of them have settled down in villages now.):

This is a little boy we passed that was walking home from school (the black speck on the right is the boy and the long black shadow on the left are the tents):

The Wadi Rum pictures are fuzzy because we had dropped our camera and broken it the day before, so these pictures were taken with a disposable camera. Fortunately, we dropped the camera when Bill was trying to pass it to me so it is impossible to tell exactly which one of us is to blame. Otherwise, the person that dropped the camera would have had to go home.

Crusader Castles:
Karak castle, the battle place between the Crusaders and the Muslim army of Saladin (please refer to the movie Kingdom of Heaven for details):


They shot arrows through this:

Cannon balls at Shobak castle:

Dana Village - a charming 15th century stone village that we visited: