Lebanon has awe-inspiring historical sites to visit and so does the area. Jordan is just a hop-skip-and-a-jump plane ride to the East so less than 30 minutes away. Before Syria was in so much turmoil, many people would drive there which took around 8 hours give or take. One of the reasons I said yes to moving to Lebanon from the US was that I envisioned traveling around the Middle East. This was the conversation between my ex and me: "What do you think about living in Lebanon for a while?" "Sure, why not? I can go to Jordan, Egypt. I'll snow ski every weekend. Sounds like fun!" ........yes I know, I was an incredibly naïve person. Anyway, I finally got to see Jordan when my family traveled there.
My children were still fairly young with my daughter 7 and my sons 10 and 12. As I usually do when I'm planning a trip, I bought the Lonely Planet travel book for Jordan and scoured it for information and details. I wanted to go during the kids' Easter break which would give us a week there. I announced to my ex that I wanted our family to go to Jordan. I didn't wait for his answer; I just went to the travel agent and arranged for plane tickets and a guide and car for our trip around the country. And what a trip it was.
We landed in Amman at night and went straight to the hotel to sleep as we had an early start the next morning. We woke up, ate breakfast at the hotel and then went north to our first stop: Jerash. What a beauty it is. The kids and I loved it. It was exciting to go around, examining the ruins, examining the ancient rocks, and reading about the cities history. Next we went to the crusader castle Karak, also an amazing place. We peered through the look-out holes, pretending to spot raiders and making up stories of vanquishing our enemies. The castle was a wonder to explore.
After Karak, we went to Petra. We stayed in a luxurious hotel that night and had a fully loaded breakfast in the morning with chefs making everything to your taste from waffles to omelets to other dishes. (If you have children, you'll know that keeping them happy, content, and even-keeled while traveling means keeping them well-fed with lots of snack stops). After we ate, we went to the ancient city and ruins. We had requested and paid to ride horses into the main city which is about a 2 kilometer ride. It was a hoot. You ride through a weaving canyon of layered colored rock. Incredible! Petra city is huge and so magnificent that I find it difficult to describe using only words. I looked around at all the tourists when they first saw the main entrance and their reactions were pretty common: awed with dropped jaws in shear wonder. To see all of Petra, you need a minimum of 3 days. We spent only one full day but that was enough for my family. After a few hours, my daughter was tired from walking and climbing. Luckily, there were plenty of donkeys to rent for rides, and we all rode them out of the city for a great end to the day.
A trip to Jordan is not complete unless you stay in a Bedouin camp and sleep in one of their tents, so that was part of our trip too. We met a Bedouin guide at a highway grocery store, piled into his jeep, and off we went into the Wadi Rum desert. The colors, the rock formations, the vistas of undulating sand - such an organic wild environment of texture, color, and sky. Being a painter, I was in heaven thinking about all the possibilities for creating. I took tons of photos, but I was also trying to memorize the scenes and feel of the desert. As is a usual part of a jeep ride through Wadi Rum, we stopped to have sweet tea and watch the sun set and then drove to the encampment. Our route to the camp included traversing straight down a huge sand mountain, so steep that those of us in the back of the jeep, me included, flew up smashing our heads into the ceiling and were flung around the back like rag dolls. I'm afraid of heights so that experience left me shaking. I'm sure I let out some expletives.
The Bedouin camp was splendid with 50 or more tents and toilets and showers. It took a bit of a maneuvering to shower and dress and not get sand in our clothes, but we managed. Our tent was big enough to sleep eight people and had Persian carpets on the sand ground and draped tapestry for the ceiling. It was lit by kerosene lamps which set off a golden glow letting the colors of the carpets and tapestries dance about. It was impressive even though the smell of the kerosene was strong. The camp was definitely "clamping" and not "camping".
All the people sleeping at the camp were treated to a traditional dinner and entertainment which was belly dancing. In the early morning, the Bedouins will prepare chicken and lamb with potatoes and vegetables loaded with spices putting all the food in huge pots and then burying these in the sand. The food slowly cooks all day in the hot sand, so by the night time, the food is perfectly cooked: delicious and tender. Ingenious.
The entertainment was just so-so. The belly dancer was an Easter European woman, and our guide said that if a Jordanian girl ever tried this, her family would kill her. He was quite serious when he said this, so I believed him.
Now in my travel book, it warned to bring warm clothes to sleep in the dessert because at night the temperature would be freezing. The book explained that the hot air near the ground would rise and push the cold air higher up in the atmosphere down to ground for freezing temps. I prepared so had all of us bring warm clothes but when we slept, which was around 11:00 pm, it was still pretty darn hot. But around 2:00 am, we all woke up together shivering from the cold. There were heavy wool blankets on each bed so after putting on our warm clothes, we crawled under these.
The next morning we woke early around 7:30 am to have breakfast. After dinner, we were excited about what the Bedouins had prepared. Alas, it was a disappointment. Breakfast included hard-boiled eggs, Arabic bread, jam, tea and coffee. My second son was darn right irritated and scowled, "This is the worst breakfast I've ever had!" Comparing to the Lebanese breakfast of labneh, cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, and mint, olives, fried eggs, Lebanese bread and a variety of succulent croissants..... Well you get the picture. I told my son that once we got to civilization, we'd get "a proper" breakfast.
For our last destination, we stayed at health spa with hot springs which of course are used for healing purposes. It was nice to relax, sleep and eat well from the long days touring.
Our Jordan trip is to this day one of the highlights of my life. I cherish my memories and often think back on them. You will be happy to know that my son that was disgusted with the Bedouin breakfast has turned into an accomplished traveler, easily managing to travel with a small backpack and sleep on any couch or camp out. I will return one day to Jordan, I'm sure. In fact, there is a great midnight race through Wadi Rum I've always wanted to do and plan on doing it.
My advice: go and experience this amazing, wild, mysterious stunning place. You won't be disappointed, even if you have hard-boiled eggs for breakfast.
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