Camels, Bedouins and Rum

This is me riding a camel in Petra and IT WAS AMAZING! It has been just about my favorite part of the trip so far. The guide I had let me take the reins and ride it all my myself for about 10 min. Getting up on it and getting down on it was the best part because camel get up back legs first and sit down front legs first, so it is a really bumpy ride. I was a little nervous at first but that didn't last long because the guide spanked the camel and it took off at a full run- it was GREAT! I think I had pretty lazy camel though because I tried to race these guys on a donkey (which are ALL over in Petra) and they totally smoked me! Jon didn't ride one- I'm not sure why- I think he was scared;)

Petra was beautiful- actually beautiful doesn't do it justice- breath-taking, awe-inspiring, the most amazing thing I've seen in my life. You know the end of the third Indiana Jones movie, where they go to get the holy grail and they go through this big canyon and they find a huge temple carved into the rock-- that is Petra. There are these enrormous temples and tombs carved into the rocks all over and they are beautiful. We hiked around for about 8 hours and we didn't even see 1/8th of all there was to see.

After Petra we went to Wadi Rum and camped out at a bedouin camp (it was one they had set up for tourists) and it was fun. They had all these white tents set up and it looked like a world war two military camp- Jon really liked it. The next morning they took us on a jeep ride into the desert and we went "off-roading" over the sand hills. I was suprised at how beautiful the desert was, I was expecting a barren wasteland but it was quite the opposite. When we actually got out there I was suprised by how un-harsh it seemed. I don't mean that I would like to be stranded out there with only a camel-- but I can see how people would want to live there. The bedouins have really adapted to life out there and it is amazing to see how they manage to make it out there.