Wadi Rum and then to Tel Aviv

 This morning, we packed up everything and were on the road to Wadi Rum by 7 am. The drive down to Wadi Rum was mostly the sort of desert we’ve been seeing over the last 2 weeks. Dry, with patches of green/grey scrub, and not sandy. The desert at Wadi Rum is quite different—very dry, fine sand, with a pinkish tinge—and mountains that look like a moonscape rise above the sand—this area is 3,000 ft above sea level. 

The 16 of us to a two-hour off road excursion over the desert—there was a stop to climb a huge dune, another to drink tea and ride camels, and a third to look at a humped mountain that had been used in a movie set.

One thing I noticed was how quiet it was—just the sound of the wind. No humans, no cars except us, our guides and the pickup trucks we were in…

We had an excellent lunch,and now we are on the way to Tel Aviv. From Wadi Rum, we descended to Aqaba, the southernmost city in Jordan— within sight of Israel, and not far from Saudi Arabia. Now, we are driving north, approaching the Dead Sea on the Jordan side.    It’s a 5 hour drive from Wadi Rum to the border crossing at the same place where we entered Jordan on Friday. Again,  we will need to switch to a different bus, along with all our luggage.  (Politics! 😞) Maybe this time, we will get on the right bus?

We are passing lots of agricultural  endeavors now—we are below sea level in the Jordan valley, and it’s lots warmer—75 degrees F at our last stop. We’ve come to the Dead Sea—lots of mining of potassium. The Dead Sea is slowly dying. 40 years until it’s all dried up. The Jordan doesn’t:’t produce enough water…. The southern part is the shallowest, that’s where the mining is. Nothing grows in the Dead Sea—it’s too salty—so the water is very clear. There are no birds..no fish…and very few people along the seashore here….but as we moved further north to the deeper part of the Dead Sea, there were a number of hotels and resorts. Still no wild life.

A little later…

We’ve just come through Jordan’s check point, had our passports checked, once again visited the restrooms in the “VIP” lounge—possibly the worst of this entire 2 weeks—no TP, optional toilet seats, wet floors. Yuck! But if you gotta go, you gotta go. We said goodbye to George, our excellent guide, dropped him off, and drove through what I would describe as a No Man’s Land. And now we are waiting on the Israeli side. It’s busy, so we may be waiting a while….then we’ll take all of our luggage out of this bus, put it through a metal detector, then load it into a different bus with a new guide and bus driver who will drive us 1-1/2 hours to our hotel in Tel Aviv. Ugh. Politics.

Still later…

We are in our new, much smaller bus one the way to Tel Aviv. It’s not designed for 16 women and all their luggage,  We made it work, but it is cozy indeed. We went through two check points getting to Tel Aviv…more ugly reminders of the difficulties here

Even later…

We finally made it to Tel Aviv, and I am in bed after a later-than-usual dinner and 2 glasses of Kosher red wine! The bathroom is tiny, but the bed is comfortable. All good!

We have a 5:15 am wake up call and leave for the airport at 6 for our 10:30  flight to Istanbul…next time I post, I hope we will be back in the USA! Pictures to come later. We are going to bed!