We left the house for the four hour drive south at 8:30, in time to coincide our arrivals with our friends from Jerusalem who were driving up from an overnight in Petra.
The King’s Highway connecting Amman to Aqaba on the Red Sea was completely turn up and made driving like a spectacle out of Grand Theft Auto, 18 wheeler’s hurtling down the wrong side of the highway, random barriers, shoulders, not to mention pedestrians popping up out of the middle of nowhere. The drive was long than we had intended and we arrived after our friends. But after proceeding through the visitors center and paying our 1.5 JD (the residents’ going rate) per person, we drove a few more km to the parking lot in Wadi Village where we were met by our Jeep which would 4x4 us out to the camp.
The Jeep was actually a tricked out Toyota FourRunner. It was the only vehicle in the entire village, giving the rundown landscape a disorienting “Children of the Corn” feel, as though every vehicle was a clone of the other. But given the terrain, the mode of transportation made sense. It was either FourRunner or camel. You decide.
We were met by a striking man in a long white robe. I’m sure the gown has a traditional name but I don’t know what it is. It was surprisingly immaculate given that everything else in Wadi Tum was covered in several centimeters of red dust. He had the eyes of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in “Pirates or the Caribbean”, piercing and ringed in black as though circled in mascara though he wore no makeup.
He loaded our luggage into the front seat of the Toyota as we loaded into the back l, squeezing onto two bench seats on either side of the flatbed truck. We then bounced over the last few meters of rough asphalt that was Wadi Village. The road ended and the desert began. We were soon sliding over red sand.
Wadi Rum looks like the surface of Mars. In fact, the Matt Damon movie “The Martian” was filmed there.
In addition to the traditional Bedouin tent, many of the more upscale tents have taken the Martian theme and run with it. Hence, the dome tent, a round white pod. Most have their own facilities and air conditioning. You can really spend as much or as little as you want to on accommodations in Wadi Rum. We opted for the former for our first sojourn to the red desert.
The Jeep maneuvered across the desert floor, navigating around and between colossal red rock formations rising on either side of us like stone giants. The Jeep tumbled by the occasional random caravan of wild camels before pulling up to our camp, Memories Aicha Luxury Camp.
We were guided to the sheehsa/coffee area where we were reunited with our friends from Chennai. Neither of us had lunch yet so we let the kids scramble up the rock escarpment which rose steeply on either side of the tent city while we waited for lunch to be served, a family-style serving of maqlooba, a Jordanian chicken and rice dish. “Maqlooba” means “upside down” in Arabic and that is exactly how the dish is prepared.
After lunch, in order to avoid the somnambulism brought on by such a heavy meal, we went on Jeep excursion to see some of the nearby sights, our family in one Jeep, the other family in another.
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