Jordan - in the desert

After 10 days in Israel, our next destination was the neighboring Kingdom of Jordan.

Wadi Araba Border Crossing, one of only three land crossing between the two countries, connects the Israeli city of Eilat with Jordan's only coastal city, Aqaba.

This picture was taken in no man's land between the two border terminals. Felt a little weird... although Jordan and Israel have diplomatic relations since the 1994 peace treaty, you could still feel that they're not exactly close friends yet.

Again, we got fairly lucky and were able to get all the paperwork done quickly and without any problems. Some people, so we heard, get detained and questioned for several hours for no apparent reason. So we even found ourselves with a few hours of extra time in the afternoon and went snorkeling in the Red Sea. :-)

The next day, we went to see Zedane.
No, not him ... ->

Him! The guy in the middle is  Zedane Al-Zalabieh, and he organizes trips to Wadi Rum - the "Desert of Mountains".

Our tour guide on the right introduced himself as "Alex" - although he later admitted that he just picks a name that's easy to pronounce for tourists. For tour groups from Italy, for instance, he's "Luca".

So, ready for pictures from the desert? Here we go:

We reached our place for the night, Zedane's Bedouin-style camp in the middle of the desert....

... time for Sylvia and Angela to relax.

Sunset...

The amazing thing in the desert is: it's so unbelievably quiet!

Chicken, potatoes, and onions for dinner...

... and the best part of all: sleeping outside under the free sky!

Never seen so many stars before.. amazing!

<- the next morning...

The desert trip was one of the absolute highlights of our travels so far! If you ever have a chance to visit the Middle East, don't miss Jordan and the Wadi Rum desert!

Coming up next: Petra, Indiana Jones, and Amman. :-)