Wadi Rum in a Day

One of the countries I traveled to while studying with Semester at Sea was Jordan. Jordan was unlike anywhere I have ever been. The Jordanian culture is so rich and I was able to learn so much about their culture during my 5 day visit. There is so much to do while in Jordan so my friends and I really had to narrow down what was important for us. We all decided we needed to experience Wadi Rum. A few days upon arriving, we booked an overnight excursion where we would sleep in Wadi Rum.

The itinerary included the tour company picking us up around 9 am on day 1 then driving to Wadi Rum to explore the desert via a jeep tour. But, everything went wrong this morning. We slept on the ship the night prior to save money but the shuttle to take us from the boat into the city of Aqaba was shut down. We had to wait over an hour for the shuttle to take us from the ship into the city and we thought we had completely missed the tour. Turns out, the tour wasn't leaving Aqaba for another 3 hours. My friends and I were extremely disappointed since we wanted to explore Wadi Rum all day. Like any bad scenario, it turned out to be just fine. We got breakfast at a cute little coffee shop where we had amazing coffee, and if you know me then you know how important coffee is to me. We also got to do some more shopping in Aqaba even though we explored the city the day before. After aimlessly walking around Aqaba for a little longer, we got back on our tour bus. We absolutely loved our tour guide, his name was Methqal, and he was only a few years older than we were. I immediately started bugging him about sand-boarding. It wasn't included on the original itinerary but it was something my friends and I really wanted to do. He made a few phone calls but told us no promises. We then had a 2 hour bus ride before we arrived to our destination. We stopped at a pit stop and the locals wrapped the traditional headscarfs, hijab, on me and my friends before we got to Wadi Rum.

When we arrived, there was 8 jeeps waiting for our group. Methqal walked over to one of the jeeps and pulled out two sand-boards. He said they were about to take us to one of the highest points in the desert. We drove around the desert for about a half hour before arriving to the hill we were going to sand-board down. We had to walk up the grueling hill, straight up, before we got to the peak. My 6 friends sat at the top taking in the view that left us all speechless. We all took turns trying to sand-board and sled down the sand. It was one of my favorite memories all of semester at sea.

We left after we absolutely could not walk up the hill one more time. We rode around Wadi Rum for a few hours, getting out and climbing the dunes and boulders. At the very end of the day, we watched the sun set behind all the boulders surrounding us in the middle of Wadi Rum. We put on our hoodies and wrapped ourselves up in the blankets they provided, as we drove to our campsite. Upon arrival, we were shown to our private bubble. This was easily one of the coolest places we stayed during our four month travels. It looked like we were on Mars. We went to dinner where we enjoyed Jordanian traditional dishes such as mansaf, hummus and falafel, and lamb. For dessert, we had the most popular Jordanian dessert: kanafeh. After, we went into a carpeted tent area. The locals that lived at the camp danced with us, they showed us local dances and we showed them our American dances. The tent was an incredibly vibrant environment with everyone requesting songs and sharing their culture through dance and songs. We were the only Americans there surrounded by various European and Middle Eastern cultures. We stayed up until 2 am talking and dancing with the strangers that turned into friends.

The next morning we woke up for sunrise around 6 am, we barely got any of sleep but that was very typical when we were in-port. We completely survived off of adrenaline and iced coffees. We had a fresh baked breakfast, said bye to our new friends, then got back on our tour bus with Methqal. We were now heading to the Taj Mahal, one of the seven wonders of the world.

Wadi Rum pictured below.

Sunrise in Wadi Rum

Sunset

Dancing at Overnight Camp

Where we slept in Wadi Rum