9 June 2012

The trip was really great. Thursday night we went to a little village to sta. We stayed up way to late dancing and talking. I think I might finally have the beat down for dubka! I can do all sorts of dubkas now. Someone from our group also apparently used to give Salsa lessons and so I also learned a bit of that.

There was a group from Romania staying at the same village and they were up with us the whole time. I talked to one of the girls for a while. They are thee on a program with an NGO to work on the environment. In Jordan, it’s usually pretty clear to see that the environment isn’t at the top of everyone’s radar: there’s glass and trash everywhere, the idea of recycling is ridiculously foreign, twenty species of mammal have gone extinct in the last 100 years. Recently there’s been a push and in places like Dana, it pushes a bit harder. It’s a huge nature attraction, especially for bird watchers apparently. They really want to preserve the nature.

That night we climbed up yet another mountain, but this time not all the way to the top. We were able to see the sunset and it was so pretty. That’s such an understatement. You could see the valley stretch into Israel and the village to the left as the sun fell below the mountains to the right.

The next morning we made our way to the wadi and started our hike. It was beautiful as usual. I’m really going to miss canyons and mountains, I think. From this trip, though, I’ve solidified my dislike for rocks that I discovered at the first wadi. My shoes are not made to make friends with all of the tiny, pointy rocks. My shoes are those special hiking sandal things, which were absolutely great for water which was also necessary, but, man. Rocks.

It was a really great hike aside from that. A bit hot, but the scenery was so beautiful. I heard that it was about ten miles I think? We were out there for a while. Halfway through we stopped for lunch, and I am so impressed with how well that turned out. We all helped prepare it, but Abu Yazin brought his son, Yazin, and his nephew, Abdullah, to help this time, and I can’t believe how well it turned out. It might be the best food that I’ve had hear, which is saying quite a lot. We stopped in this neat little cove and just ate there.

The rest of the hike took forever. And unlike the first part it wasn’t through as much rock. There was more water, but a lot more sun. That’s a funny point, though. There was supposed to be water up t our chests, but it disappeared somewhere in just about two weeks. That was really strange.

Probably one of the cooler experiences I’ve had on the trip was when we were on our way back, there was this group of Bedouin guys that stopped our little group for tea. It was really cool to listen (I talked, but not as much). I could understand almost everything. That tea was so delicious, too. Then to get back to our bus, we met up with some people from this other little village to drive us back. In the ride I talked to that man for a while in mostly Arabic. I wasn’t exactly the most exciting conversation partner that he has ever talked to, but it was efficient.

Then we were able to go to the Turkish bath, which was so amazing. I’ve never felt so clean in my life. So clean.