We left Petra around five o’clock and drove through dramatic scenery eventually coming into the Wadi, or valley. At one point, we stopped and looked out over a big pipeline that brought water from a lake inside the mountains. This water goes all the way to Amman .
We drove past some of the tourist Bedouin camps and eventually coming to a small village of Bedouins
It was dusk and we rode into the area known to all from the film, “Lawrence of Arabia.” It was as dramatic as in the film. We passed camps with names, such as Palm Camp. Many looked very fine and alight with individual tents and buses bringing tourists. But, Ali continued on going deeper into the dark night. We ended up far away from all signs of life where we met one non-speaking Bedouin making our dinner. It was absolutely black, except for the gas lanterns and the star lit sky. There was a toilet that worked beautifully about a block from the campsite and a trickle of running water.
Gita and Aron taken with a flash as it was so dark. I was able to call Helen from way out here on the desert. Her voice was crystal clear!
We lay outside on plastic cushions and drank our bottle of wine while we waited for the food to come out of the pit in the ground. The picture below shows the apparatus that cooked the food in the hole in the ground.
Chicken and potatoes cooked with oil and tomatoes eventually appeared from the hole in the ground. The hot dishes were served with as assortment of mezza salads. We enjoyed our meal and then ordered our breakfast and soon were asleep on the plastic cushions and bedouin rugs under the stars.
Morning sunrise woke us up about 5:30 . Aron was taking photographs and I walked around on the rocky hills. Breakfast was lebnah (a thickened yogurt), pita sprinkled with a spice called zatar, cherry jam, hardboiled eggs, tea with canned milk. The lebnah spread on the spicy pitas bread with the cherry jam was especially good.
Here we are eating our breakfast--Gita, Aron, Ali's son, Mario, and Kevin.
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