A.B. Away: Aqaba and Wadi Rum

(Lesley) We enjoyed 4 days in Aqaba. We found a great little restaurant where we ate at least one meal a day. For breakfast, we bought fruit, a box of Fitness cereal and a litre of milk. We actually stayed in two different hotels in Aqaba. Our first, Moon Beach, was great, but pricier than we liked (35JD). After two days we moved downtown and saved ourselves 10JD a day by staying at the Al-Amer which was very central and the desk guy was super friendly. It wasn't hard to head south to the beaches in the afternoon for some fish and coral viewing so we snorkeled everyday. We also found good nougat, excellent baklava, and a Safeway store where bought peanut butter and some snacks for our departure to Wadi-Rum.

Wadi-Rum is difficult to do on the cheap. In fact, Jordan is hard to do on the cheap; it is not a backpackers destination. The food is reasonable and some of the travel costs are pretty reasonable but the sites are much more expensive than sites in Canada and the US.

Back to Wadi-Rum... We stayed in a tent in Rum Village. We went for a hike from the village in the late afternoon. We had tried to do a hike from the Visitors Centre earlier, but we had our packs and no one would let us leave them in a corner of their office; the reception guys told us to leave them with the security guy, the security guy said no and suggested the restaurant would keep them; the restaurant said no and suggested a shop, who sent us back to the reception. In the end, we left them by the jeeps and headed out to the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, but we didn't go for a hike, just a little stroll. We watched the Wadi-Rum video in the projection room then hitched a ride to Rum Village where we did hike once we left our bags in a tent. The sand was deep, red and dry with little purple flowers poking through. We saw the mountainous rock formations with the setting sun on them -spectacular! We had a great sleep that night; the stars were very bright and so later, was the moon.

The next morning we got a minibus to Petra where we plan to spend the next 4 days. The King is on his way to town, tomorrow. Perhaps we will see him at Petra. That would be fun! Maybe he'll want to have his picture taken with us. Our hostel here is great: there are lots of travellers. Some have just come from Syria, others Egypt or Israel. We still aren't sure where we will go next, we have a plan A, as well as a B and a C plan.

Well onto some pics: Time to snorkel; Three wet snorkelers; Aqaba Castle;