Day 3 - Petra and Wadi Rum

I couldn't get enough of the way it looked so I tried to capture it in the pics, in the third you can see part of their old system to funnel wager around to prevent floods and store water for droughts

Of course the true reason it's a famous site is things like this: Al-Khazneh (The Treasury), it's here where we "lost" out to some of the people that live there that swarm tourists for money, expensive souvenirs, or experiences like a donkey ride to the monastery or a camel ride

By that I mean they had a phone showing a specific vantage point they knew how to get to that we would not have known about, you can see a tiny human on the top of the first pic, then a few of the climb up (not pictured: do not climb signs and fencing - that helped us climb)

The high up vantage really let you feel the scale of what these 1st(?) century builders accomplished

The guy that helped us up (after getting haggled down to 5 - from 15 jod) also took a bunch of pics of us there while my mom waited down(stairs)

Unfortunately they weren't allowing us to go inside which apparently once upon a time you could, after that we went back and relaxed drinking an amazing cold drink (I got another mint lemon) until dad and his wife walked back, they got a little further

Then we went to some tourist trappy restaurant buffet that was fine and we were hungry but otherwise wouldn't recommend, now on our way to the sand dunes at Wadi Rum

Some of the roads that explain why Mars movies are filmed here

I did make it and it was really cool but I'm wiped so will tweet out under this thread tomorrow during the long drive back while updating about the actual next day on the other

Our ride into the camp was on a pickup with some seating on the flat bed which was a fun change of pace

Once we made it, the camp very much looked like little martian bubble habitats, had a neat sci-fi vibe but I must admit I was disappointed it wasn't the ones that had a clear window on the top of the bubble to see the night sky

The inside was not necessarily fancy by normal standards but for being in the middle of the dessert it did feel quite decadent, each one had a bathroom and AC

However at this point we dropped things off quickly and bolted towards the pickup again to get a ride to watch the sunset, I really love how the setting sun's light made some of these rock...juttings? Almost golden contrasted against the shadowed sections

We had some stops on the way to points of interest like this stone with the face of Lawrence (of Arabia fame) who was part of the Arab Revolt, and some stones that have historically been used for make-up, and the Alameleh Inscriptions which we were told were ancient highway signs

Finally we made to a spot in the middle of the sand from which to watch the sunset! Caveat that my phone camera is a very poor substitute for seeing sunsets but liked the way it was framed by the mountains a lot (the driver knew what they were doing)

Then of course we took a bunch with us in them!

Finally dying sunset palette pics

Bonus disappointed fiancee

This was our driver and the pickup

Then we got back just as they were unearthing the lamb and rice they cooked underground by lighting the coals, putting the food in and then covering it and letting the heat cook things through

Some pics of the place they out it and the buffet, overall buffet was only so so but the babaganoush variety and the selfsame rice and lamb mentioned above were standouts, oh! Also a spicy cold tomato-y side dish

Then there was an outdoor sit-down with Bedouin music and tea (which was very steeped and very sweet and not really my kind of thing) but the vibes were a bit off for me, music didn't click and it didn't help we were down find of the fire

Music sample

Then some of us decided to go to a "pay more" thing we were approached for to go see the stars farther from camp with less light pollution, sadly fiancee didn't go because they told us it was a round trip of an hour and she was a bit tired and didn't think it'd be worth it

I say sadly because, spoiler, it was really gorgeous and wish we could have shared the experience, will have to so something similar one day. Basically my dad and his wife and I went and go to the waiting area, paid and waited for people from other camps to arrive

This was already like 25 mins of the alleged 1 hour round trip, then they gave a 20 min presentation about space which was actually very well researched and presented, surprising me as I got the impression it'd be much more hand wavy from the people that fetched us at camp

The guy presenting clearly had a passion for space which I empathized with, for me most of the presentation was stuff I knew already but it seemed like a really good intro to a more solid foundation for someone that hadn't really looked into the sense of scale of the universe

After the presentation we went outside and they had 4 telescopes, 1 for Jupiter, 1 for Saturn and the other two for some clusters/nebula. Luckily it was a moonless night which really meant looking up you saw so many stars, as a city boy the experience really is breathtaking

The milky way was also there and easy to see and they had a powerful laser they could use to point at stars to describe things (maybe the sand in the air made the line so visible?) so got to see how to find Polaris from the big dipper and scorpio

I got to try out astrophotography with some success

Some more, if you know a good post processor let me know as I'm sure more is hiding in the images

Super delayed when finishing this thread but I do want to share this kind of experience with her, and wish parts of the trip could be less stressful for her cause she had a rough night due to some family stuff