Bedouin

Into Jordan, a different world again. We stayed for one night in the port of Aqaba and drank Turkish coffee outside in the evening whilst watching Arabic soaps projected onto a big white wall. The Turkish coffee: "Black as hell, strong as death and sweet as love" was just that and really not to my liking. It was the only thing all the men around us were drinking.
We moved on to Petra the following morning. Petra is an ancient city cut out of the rose red rock by the Naboteans 2000 years ago. The entrance to Petra is magical. The way is along al-siq which is a gully created by tectonic forces and you can see the matching veins in the rock walls rising either side as clear evidence of where the stone was wrenched apart. After about half a mile this natural wonder opens out and you see the Treasury appear in all its majesty in front of you. The town also includes a theatre, royal tombs and a monastery. One of the Bedouin led me past a "No climbing" sign up to a peak opposite the Treasury. We sat in one of the caves with some Bedouin, drank sweet tea, listened to the Pipe boy play and watched the sunset. I was enchanted.
We visited an area of desert called Wadi Run and stayed in a Bedouin camp. We played drums and their traditional stringed instruments and danced into the night before retiring on our flimsy mattresses laid out underneath the desert sky.