Day 123: Wadi Rum aka Where They Filmed The Matt Damon Movie “The Martian”
Last day in Jordan, but we still had stuff to do before taking off for Cairo. No rest for the weary!
Adnan and Hessan took us out of Petra and drove us to Wadi Rum, the legendary Jordanian desert. We were there just long enough — about two hours — to get a taste for how spectacular this landscape is and grab a few photos.
Teddy and I spent a nice stretch in the Moroccan desert once and know how magical these settings can be when you go far enough out and get to see all the sunrises and sunsets. We’ll just have to come back to get that with Wadi Rum.
For this trip the kids got to take their first camel rides. We recalled from past experiences that the camel-ride thrill wears off quickly, so we trimmed our original one-hour ride to 20 minutes, and it was def the right call. At about 18 minutes both were eager to move on to something else.
Next up was a ride in the back of a white Toyota pickup truck. We sat on benches facing each other and held on tightly as our driver Sammy zoomed up and over dunes. For two kids who’ve spent a lot of time staring longingly at kids riding in the backs of pickups all over South America and Africa, this was a dream come true.
Wadi Rum is is where they filmed the Matt Damon movie “The Martian,” if that gives you any idea of the setting (our pics aren’t doing the place justice at all). Looming red cliffs and rocks that look straight out of a Road Runner cartoon.
We stopped at a bedouin tent setup for a complimentary tea (and made-in-China trinket shopping), which we enjoyed. James had two cups!
We ate lunch at a nearby hotel’s geodesic domed buffet restaurant, where James got ejected soon after eating because he was restless and bugging his big sister. He and I walked out to wait in the van. While there, James and Adnan the driver played catch with a stuffed animal for like 15 minutes.
(Add Adnan to James’s fan club, btw: I saw him taking selfies with James and Willa and, at one point, called James over to FaceTime with his grown son. It sounds creepy when I write that out, but all these fans are just adoring, kind people who see James as a son or little brother or grandson and just want to be around him and play with him.)
The next three hours were spent driving back to the Jordan airport. Grammie wrote up TripAdvisor reviews on her iPad (if you’ve ever wondered who the hell is investing all that energy in thoughtful reviews….), Willa and James slept, I wrote some blog posts….
The outdoor scenery wasn’t much to write of — empty, beige and, unfortunately, covered in plastic trash. Jordan admits it has a big litter and waste management problem outside of Amman (don’t worry Jordan, you’re not alone from what we’ve seen this year).
Goodbyes were sad at the airport! We’d grown very fond of our guide Hessan — we liked his “been there done that” veteran-ness and candid “this is good/this isn’t worth it” style of talking about our tour itinerary. Nothing to prove, genuinely liked us, had lots of funny stories about past groups. And of course was loving and kind to our kids, which goes a long way with the parents when it’s genuine.
Waiting for our flight to Cairo would have been better with a beer, but that wasn’t going to happen here during Ramadan, so we sat at a Crumz coffee/snack bar and chatted over Perriers while the kids finally got their beloved iPads (had been begging since Wadi Rum).
The call to prayer sounded loudly throughout the terminal as we boarded our flight.
Next stop: Cairo!
Landed about 8:30 pm (back an hour) and had the same airport arrival drill as Jordan — guy with our name on a sign (“Sullivan Family”) who handled our visa paperwork, shuffled us past the line and put us into a waiting van, this time with driver Abdul. That bit is very, very nice.
The drive in to Cairo was a thrill — even at night on a 30-minute highway ride, you can tell what kind of city this is. Teeming, pulsing, old, new…10.2 million people….loved what we saw in the small window.
Our hotel is the Steigenberger in Tahrir Square and the most notable thing about the hotel is that…you can smoke in the lobby!! This is endlessly fascinating for us. Smoking? IN THE LOBBY? Thankfully we’re not precious about cigarette smoke at all — I mean, we don’t love it but whatever. It’s just such a throwback. There are clearly European tourists staying here who are relishing this opportunity.
The kids were zonked (and Willa had been crying about some mystery leg injury we never got to the bottom of — shocker: it was gone the next morning). We checked into one room and had to move into a bigger one next door because they had the kids sharing a tiiiiny fold-out sofa bed.
By midnight we were all asleep and “ready”… to wake up and do more touring the next morning.
Misc: We aren’t doing school here in the Middle East — no time — but we’ve been doing lots of reading. Knocked out a bunch of Egypt-related books!
