Southern Sojourn

We’re back from an epic venture south of Amman. Sorry it's been so long since I updated! On Friday we woke up at 4:30 AM (fun fact: the sun is definitely up that early here) and caught a bus to our first stop: Petra. Movie buffs will recognize it from Indiana Jones and Transformers. The rest will just recognize how beautiful it is. The ingenuity and skill of the people who carved this structure into the rock face is unbelievable. We trekked through some slot canyons until finally it appeared before us. After gawking at it for some time, we trekked around more ruins, passing countless donkey and camel, and slogging through serious stretches of sand. I have never been so hot, sweaty, and dirty in my life. I was clearly built for the Pacific Northwest.

Next, we journeyed further to Wadi Rum. This vast desert is accented with massive rock formations and inhabited by Beduoin tribes. We were driven over and around the dunes in some fairly janky pick up trucks and topped off the night with dancing, feasting, and stargazing.

After a satisfactory jaunt in the desert, we headed south to the water. Aqaba is a beach town on the Red Sea from which you can see Israel and Egypt. We spent a few hours on the beach, jumping off the pier and trying to stay cool. That night we wandered about the town, checking out shops, eating delicious tandoori chicken, and sitting on the pier. On our last day we spent the day lounging by the pool, only moving to fetch ice cream and cool drinks. Ideal, right? We bonded as a team, enjoyed long conversations and feasting in the back of our bus, got so dirty I thought I might never be clean again, and got a taste of more of what this beautiful country has to offer.