The Yum Yum Factor

Normally, Shack's "weekend" here in Jordan falls on Friday and Saturday but, as luck would have it, this week he had Thursday and Friday off but had to work on Saturday, the day before The Kid and I hightail it out of here to return home to the cold and snow. Because we didn't really plan on suddenly having his weekend move up a day, we rented a car and spent Thursday in the Wadi Rum but it was too last minute to book an overnight camp out so that left us without definite plans for Friday. We woke up, the sun was shining and we just decided to do what we always do. We hopped in the car and drove north, towards the Dead Sea. Instead of taking the main highway (#65) we took the smaller, two lane #65 highway that runs north towards Amman and runs along the Israeli border. It's also the road that Shack takes every day to work in the mountains so he was pretty comfortable with the route up to a point. The scenery is not as dramatic as it is on the other ...

I arranged for a trip to visit Pharaoh Island, located a couple hundred meters from the coast of Egypt, in the Red Sea. For this trip, you have to book at least 24 hrs ahead because the tour company takes your passport to  the Egyptian Consulate to get you cleared to visit, so keep that in mind. I don't think anyone is totally comfortable with the idea of handing over their passport for a day or so, but it was fine and we got it back about a day and a half later. I am glad that I didn't have much time to mull it over because I am not sure I would have actually just handed them over to the cute Jordanian desk clerk at the Hilton if I hadn't been kind of caught off guard. 

You  can't come all this way to Jordan and not go into the Wadi Rum. Wadi means valley in Arabic so It's the Rum Valley but it is nothing like any valley I have ever experienced before. We all watched Lawrence if Arabia before Shack left to come to Jordan to get everyone excited about this trip and now, as our two week visit draws to a close, we finally spent an afternoon in the desert. 

They say it doesn't rain this time of year but it rained today

We are in Aqaba, the South Beach of Jordan. Aqaba shares the northern tip of the Red Sea with Eilat, Israel both enjoying the hot, arid climate, beautiful beaches, hummus and sea breezes.

Shack's photo of the final reveal of The Treasury Last night we ripped it up a little so we were a bit slow going today but we finally got ourselves together and started off to Petra.