I'm a Bedouin Too

After arriving at the Queen Alia Airport in Jordan, we took a cab to the Mariam Hotel in Madaba, actually closer to the airport than Amman, which we skipped altogether. We ate at their in-house restaurant, where every entree featured French fries. We were definitely out of Turkey. They agreed to substitute rice for the fries for me. We were well taken care of the next morning by their day manager, the spunky and resourceful Reyna, who figured out a way for me to benefit from the free rental car insurance, even if we paid up front by cash. Now Madaba is known for its historical mosaics, which I wanted to see, but Barbara wasn't particularly interested in them. So I took the car "for an hour" to visit their museum and archaeological park, each of which was constructed around mosaics in situ. Although I had a (rather simplified) hotel map of the city, I considered it a miracle that I found both places--with no street signs, few people speaking English, and crowded streets, many of them on-way. The mosaic floors especially at the Archaeological Park were quite impressive, and definitely pre-Christian, one of them showing a party scene with a bare-breasted woman.
The way back to the hotel was torturous, however. Of course, I got lost, but I did manage to fill the gas tank, which had been delivered to us nearly empty. I was half an hour late getting back, and Barbara was quite angry. She had moved her suitcases downstairs, and I had to run up and get mine. Soon, though, we were on the road--the  broad and lightly trafficked King's Highway towards Aqaba, which would deliver us to Wadi Rum in about 4 hours. We were headed for an ethnic and geological experience at the Bedouin Lifestyle Camp for two nights, which Barbara had found.
The town of Wadi Rum was about 20 km off the highway, and we were greeted there by a man identifying himself as Attallah. When we said we were registered for the Bedouin Lifestyle Camp, he said he represented a competing enterprise, the Bedouin Meditation Camp, whose storefront was right in front of us. He even offered to credit us with whatever we had prepaid to the BLC. Barbara insisted that we stay with the original reservation, after which he laughed and confessed that he was the BLC's director, and that he had been putting us on. A deadpan artist, I thought, rather rare in the hotel biz. This was going to be a very relaxed, friendly experience.
We had signed up for the camel ride and were assigned to two camels, to be led by a boy of about 11. Barbara was in heaven. I was in pain. With the galumping of the camel, I never could find a comfortable position to sit in; my groin was tense the whole time. I had attached my GoPro video camera to the saddle horn, but it wouldn't stay on, so I gave it up.

 

 About 45 minutes into the two-hour ride Attallah pulled up in a 4x4, and I took the rest of the ride to the tented camp on four wheels.
The Camp was a rather stolid looking place, with a row of tents for sleeping that faced the 150 foot cliff, a wondrous piece of geology in itself, with the communal eating and gathering tent on the left, and the communal bathroom & showers on the right.

After settling in the first order of business was to pile everyone at the camp into the four 4x4s and head off to see the sunset. Riding over the tire tracks in the sand at about 30 mph, the Bedouin drivers showed off by standing on their running board while steering, which confirmed a kind of wild-West feel to the place. The sunset viewing site was a gently sloping rock with fantastic geological flourishes all around. I found them irresistable and immediately set out to frame them into compositions. This was only the beginning of my romance with the rock formations of the Jordanian desert, which would culminate four days later in Petra. They looked like sinister frozen drips, casting shadows on the recessed surfaces behind. They mad me think at times of the style of H. R. Giger, of Gustave Moreau, of Edvard Munch, of Jean Dubuffet--not in the subject matter, of course, but in the rich chaos of their lines.

The cloudless sunset was magnificent.

That evening we all gathered in the communal tent for our dinner, but first there was traditional Bedouin music on the oud and silver drum. Two of our hosts got up and danced and then invited us to join them. Soon almost everyone in the room was up and dancing, having caught onto the simple step that made us feel as though we had been brought up in the community. 

Then we were all invited outside to see the meal in the "kitchen," but when we arrived there was just a low mound of sand. The cook proceeded to shovel the sand away, revealing a cloth that was removed, then a metal covering, underneath which was a three-tiered tray of our cooked food: chicken, caramelized onions, and potatoes. This was brought inside and served alongside several types of cut-up salads and the inevitable humus, always delicious and very smooth. I got to talking with three young women from Worcester, Massachusetts, one of whom was a budding photographer.

The following day Barbara and I took their all-day jeep tour of the desert, along with a couple from Vevey, Switzerland, Amanda and Benoit, and one from Bahrain & London, two English people, Josh and Lucy. We bounced along in the back of the truck, holding on for dear life, as our driver took us to seven magnificent desert spots, that included some astonishing Nabatean-era petroglyphs (2000+ years old), a sand dune we could "surf" down (but very laborious to climb up), a little shop selling desert and Dead Sea cosmetics and some beautiful fabrics alongside a wall that was a part of a dwelling that T. E. Lawrence had stayed in, two natural arches, and a narrow canyon with more ancient petroglyphs that had served as a refuge at various times in the past. And through it all the fantastic shapes on the rock faces looking like voracious abstract sculpture.

To be continued.