Wadi Rum, part one: 4x4s

So, ever heard of this Wadi Rum thing? It's only the second-most-well-known place in Jordan. (Right after that Petra thing.) CIEE, which offers its students a number of trips to its students throughout the semester, gave each of us a choice between two overnights: Petra or Wadi Rum. Petra, for those of you - okay, almost all of you - who haven't been there, is easy to do on one's own. You can transport yourself there, find your own lodgings (Wadi Musa, the town outside Petra, is pretty much just a string of hotels, restaurants, and convenience stores), and be your own guide. But Wadi Rum is a different story.

It's not as easy to get to, not as easy to get accommodations, and overall not as easy to do on your own. That would be why almost ninety students (out of the 110 or 120 in the program) chose to go to Wadi Rum. Big group - but good group.

We started our adventure Friday morning at the university as we loaded into the buses. Really nice buses. Think middle school band trip. Plush seats, air conditioning, curtains you can slide over the windows, and all of that other good stuff. Four hours of that. After arriving at what looked like the middle of nowhere, our buses stopped, and we got out to go on our 4x4 tour. "4x4" is a loose term. No fancy Jeeps here. We had old pickup trucks with benches bolted into the truck beds. Classy, but still rugged. We split into groups, six to a truck - yeah, a pretty big caravan.

Pictures of each side of my truck.

This was the general feeling throughout the 4x4 ride. It turned into a race at some point...

You see, our truck was near last - and at one point, completely dead last. We were not okay with this. We wanted to be first, to lead the pack. Of course our driver is just a random guy we don't know at all. We also didn't know how to say "faster, please" in Arabic. But I think he somehow got the drift of what we wanted. The turning point was when a girl in the truck ahead of us lost her hat in the wind. We stopped to pick it up (oh no! losing ground!) and drove up next to her truck, passing it while both vehicles were in motion. Neck and neck, our truck ended up edging past theirs, and my friend Cameron and I pulled off a moving high-five between the two trucks. One spot closer to the front...

We got our NASCAR on at that point. The rest of the day, we were egging our truck on to pass the others. We (Americans) were loving it, with trash talk between the trucks, enthusiastic cheering whenever we were able to pass someone, and desperate cries for revenge whenever we were passed. And our Jordanian drivers loved it, too. I guess if you're leading the same 4x4 tours through the same areas over and over again, you have to entertain yourselves. With much revving of engines and smashing of pedals, they got in on the spirit of competition, too.

These are some of the people from my program at our first stop on the tour.

And our trucks at the second stop! Note that we're still holding up the back end here - but we weren't going to let it stay that way. One might compare this to a pit stop. It was like everybody else stopped for four tires and we only got fuel. Sweet. Although the stops were fun and filled with walking and climbing and sand dunes, said sand isn't very kind to camera lenses, so I didn't get any pictures from those adventures. I guess I'll just have to settle for a verbal explanation.

Not at this particular rock bridge, but at a second one, we were allowed to climb up and over it. (The people responsible for our safety felt that the first one was a little too big. Pshh. Where were they when I was lowering myself down a 200-foot waterfall in Wadi Feid?) After the up and the over, we found a big sand dune on the far side of the hill. And what do you do with a giant sand dune? Run down it, of course. Wheee! At the end of our fantastic run, during which none of us faceplanted, we discovered that we were... at the bottom. Whoops. Only one way to go from here. Up again! And down again! And sand angels! And climbing more hills! Clambering all over stuff may in fact be my new hobby.

This is what one of my friends affectionately coined "the mom photo." It's for when your mother complains that you've been doing so many exciting things, going so many places, seeing so much but you just don't have any photos of yourself and shame on you!

No shame on me.

After leaving the two natural bridges, we drove on, eventually coming to what looked like a giant parking lot. The sand had, for whatever reason, blown away, and I think it was just a flat rock plain. Flat and open. Our drivers took it as a cue to race even faster. Drag strip, anyone? We lost, sadly enough. To make up for it, our driver then turned left away from the regular road onto the "scenic route," also known as the bumpy cut-through. After much winding and speeding, we did a 180, went back to the flat area, drove up another very large sand dune and parked way, way too close to the edge of it. As in, "Oh man, is our truck about to fall off?"

Fun stuff. We did some more sprinting down and up the (even bigger) sand dune. To be more accurate, we sprinted down and went for a more trudging sort of action on the way back up. Sandclimbing is hard work - we definitely earned our suppers. My friend Sarah and I then decided to logroll down the dune (so fun!) and then make even more sand angels. After hanging out and having tons of fun on the dune, we piled back in the truck and drove down it. No kidding. Two people in the cab, six in the truck bed, and we barreled down a dune. Oh, yes.

These last three photos are from where we stopped at the end of the 4x4 tour to watch the sunset. We were within walking distance of our camp, and proceeded there at dusk. And that's where I think I'll leave for now. Look out for part two, coming (hopefully) soon: Bedouin camp.

Oh, and one more picture just for funsies. This sign is definitely theftworthy.