Yalla, Let's Go On An Adventure! Otherwise known as My Weekend Was Better Than Your Weekend.

So, this weekend...
Did you explore a nature reserve covered in very, very climbable rocks?
Did you climb these rocks and caves as though they were a playground?
Did you ride a camel and sleep in tents in the desert beneath the stars?
Did you watch and participate in a faux Bedouin wedding?
Did you see one of the new Seven Wonders of the world?

No? I thought not. But I did!

Okay. I'm done with the blatant and obnoxious bragging. Probably. Now on to the ever so slightly more subtle bragging. I will start with a picture:

This is the Dana Nature Reserve, as seen from the top of a cliff. Dana was the first spot we visited on our "Southern Triangle Trip," or (courtesy of Jill) the "Southern Rhombus Trip," considering we went to four places, not three. Okay, now I'm going to attempt to go chronologically.
We left Amman on Friday afternoon and took a bus for four hours to the Dana nature reserve. None of us really knew what Dana was, so we were kinda un-enthused about the day and were really just looking forward to Wadi Rum on Saturday. Boy were we ever wrong. Dana was possibly the best part of the trip, actually... well, better than Petra anyway, but maybe not better than Wadi Rum. Dana is an eco-reserve with nature hikes and supposedly endangered animals, but we didn't see any. We had to hike down about a mile from the parking lot to the camp smack in the middle of absolutely gorgeous mountains and canyons:

Once we got to the camp, we got to go hiking. Most people headed for the shorter trail that had some foresty bits, but me and some other people walked back the way we had come toward some caves. Oh man was this a good decision. The trail was a little scary and I almost fell down a cliff, but it was totally worth it. Once we got to the caves, we got to climb around and play in them. The only way to describe their awesomeness is with pictures:

Later that night I climbed a giant rock that was so easy to scramble up that I didn't think about getting down until halfway up. Oops. Getting down was a lot harder than getting up and I scratched up my hands a bit, but it was still pretty awesome. After that, we were supposed to have dinner, but it was about an hour late due to--according to a program leader not to be named--"lazy bastards." In any case, the food was delicious when it did come. Most of us stayed in tents that night, but a few people stayed in a hotel a few miles away. No one really wanted to stay in the hotel, but since Dana is an eco-reserve, only 70 people could stay the night, so the program coordinators majorly pimped that hotel ("You can smoke shisha there, you can't do that at the camp!").

On to Day 2! Woke up early to head to Shobak Castle and Wadi Rum. Shobak Castle is one of the largest castles in Jordan and its so imposing that it has never been taken by invaders, but we weren't told that much about it beyond that. It's basically a typical castle ruin, with some awesome arches and turrets and tiny windows for archers. It was pretty neat, but we only spent about half an hour there because we were running late.

Anyway, Wadi Rum. Wadi Rum can be described as nothing short of awesome. After eating and watching a short movie about Wadi Rum, we all piled into the backs of pick-up trucks to race across the desert. Well, most trucks raced; ours puttered behind most other trucks. We stopped every ten or so minutes to hop out and explore sand dunes and cliffs and fantastic rock formations. Also, it turns out that running uphill in the sand is really difficult.

 Entrance to Wadi Rum. 

 Pickup truck caravan. 

 Climbing!

 Arrakis. 

 The itty bitty figure is me. 

At the halfway point, we were served tea at a Bedouin campsite and then we switched to camels. Let me tell you, camel riding is so much cooler than horseback riding. And I'm not allergic! Camels' limbs are a little bit like giraffe limbs and they look really cool when they walk. They get up with their back legs first, too, so when I first got on, I thought I was going to topple over its head. We were all hooked up to a couple of other camels at the same time, with a guide leading them. The guides were pretty great; mine kept turning back to talk to the camels or kiss them. My camel's name was Shilou and she was fantastic. Super chill and tame, the guide even let me guide her for a little while! I let her stray too far from the rest of the pack though, so then he took the reigns again. There's a special way to ride camels too, the Bedouin way. You sit kind of cross legged on the camel, so your legs aren't spread so far apart and you don't feel like shit the next day. It made camel riding decently comfy.

 Camel caravan. 

 Here's a picture of me on a camel, Dad.

Jamel Shilou. Habibi Shilou. 

We got to the camp around sunset. It was pretty fantastic, but honestly a little disappointing in comparison to Dana. In Dana we had tiny tents with mattresses and some blankets, but that was pretty much it. At the Wadi Rum camp, we not only had biggish, almost Harry Potter-esque tents with beds, but a kind of party area with couches, hookah, and a DJ. We were also pretty close to a highway and a couple of gas stations, which kind of hurt the "out in the desert with Bedouins" illusion. Still, we listened to some good Arabic music, danced, and even had a faux wedding as well as a birthday party. A friend of mine and a guy friend of hers had been joking about dressing up in traditional Arab garb and sending a picture back to his parents as a wedding photo, as though he had married an Arab girl while in Jordan. It helps that she's Brazilian, so she could pass for Arab. One of the program leaders, Ahmed (who is awesome) was part of this, so at the camp in Wadi Rum he organized a fake wedding between the two. There was a whole procession of us dancing and celebrating the wedding, singing traditional wedding songs and everything. They even got a guy to dress up as her father giving her away. It was also another guy's birthday, so we had a birthday party with cake and sparklers. We had tasty lamb cooked the Bedouin way--buried under ground:

The chef taking the lamb out of the ground. 

We got up at early o'clock the next morning to get on the bus to Petra. It was a long bus ride. We got to Petra before noon, and it involved a whole lot more walking than I was expecting. Along the road to the Treasury (the most famous building in Petra, the one in the Last Crusade) there were tourist shops with Indy's face on them, selling fedoras and stuffed camels. There were also small children selling postcards, which was kind of depressing since every time we told them we didn't want to buy anything, they would either look really sad or say things like "You dropped something... your heart." We got this all through Petra; people desperately hawking jewelry and tourist trinkets or donkey rides, shouting that they had had no business all day. It was really hard to say no, but there was just no way to buy something from every vendor.

On to something less depressing... most of the walk to the Treasury was gorgeous; even better than most of Petra itself. There are winding passages and cool rock formations all along the way. Here's the beginning of the walk:

Almost there....



And then my camera died. Damn. Right before the Treasury. Fortunately, if I left my camera alone for long enough I could turn it on for a second and take a quick picture before it died again. So I have one picture of the Treasury:

We wandered through the Petra (yes, there's a lot more to Petra than the Treasury) for another couple of hours. Petra is a pretty big city, built by the Nabbiteans in the 7th century BC. It's mostly covered in caves and ruins that resemble the Treasury, but a lot smaller. The caves are actually tombs, since Petra was originally built to be a cemetery. The last thing we did at Petra was a big long hike up a mountain to the city's highest point, the Monastery. The climb was rough, guys. I still hurt and I blame Petra. In total, from the bus to the top of that mountain and back, we walked ten miles that day. But it was totally worth it. The Monastery looks a lot like the Treasury, but with a little less detail. After snapping some pictures of that, we walked further up the mountain for the real reason we hiked up all that way: the view. It was amazing. Unfortunately, due to stupid camera, I could only take one picture, and I took it of me at the top with the Monastery behind me:

So no pictures of the gorgeous view. But there were canyons and mountains and rocks... It was worth the hike.

We got back later that evening, had some falafel and went home. I took a very long shower due to ALL the dust in Jordan being on my body, particularly in my hair. And that was my weekend, folks! I'm exhausted now, but I'm pretty sure that it was the best weekend ever, totally worth the tireds. :D