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Tom and Jerry, Sun-lit Scenery, and Porn: Just Another Trip to the Desert

You may recall in Morocco, we rode camels into the Sahara Desert and stayed overnight in a Berber camp.  You may also recall that we were glad we went, but said, and I quote, that there is “not a chance” that we would ever go back into the desert again. Famous last words.

Into the Desert We Go….Again

One of the main attractions in Jordan is Wadi Rum, a desert area in the southern part of the country where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed.  In addition to the sites from the movie, the desert is renowned for its interesting rock formations rising up from the sand.  At first we planned to skip seeing Wadi Rum.  But the more that Sean read about it, the more he wanted to go.  So somehow he talked me into seeing the desert again.

We both agreed on one thing: no camels this time.  Ideally, we wanted to just take a jeep tour for the day, but when we read that public transportation in and out of Wadi Rum is a bit difficult to find, especially for a round trip on the same day, we decided we would spend the night.  (As it turns out, there were others on the bus to Wadi Rum that were just planning on being there for the day, so it obviously can be done).

The only bus from Wadi Musa to Wadi Rum that we could find left Wadi Musa at the ungodly hour of 6:30, so we found ourselves in the desert at 8:00 a.m. with plenty of time on our hands.  We had reserved two spots at a well-rated camp run by a Bedouin family the night before.  Nail, the son of the mysterious Obied, a man we heard much about and even talked to on the phone but never saw in person, picked us up in his fancy new Toyota truck (a.k.a. our “Jeep”).  I’m not sure exactly how old Nail is, but I would wager that he is in his early twenties.  Nail appeared to be on the vain side. To our continual amusement, he kept checking himself out in the rearview mirror and fiddling with his head scarf to make sure it was perfect.  Even though we were in the desert and no one was around, except us.

A Typical Saturday Morning

The campsite

When we got to the camp, we were the only guests there.  We looked at each other.  Now what? It was only 8:30 a.m.

Sitting around, watching the vast expanse of sand and rock

We sat around for a while, and around 9:30, Nail asked us if we wanted to come with him to run a few errands in his village, which was just outside the Wadi Rum protected area.  Not having anything better to do, and not wanted to sit around and swelter in the desert all day, we agreed.  First we got gas.  Next we picked up vegetables for dinner in a shack covered with crates of vegetables.  Finally, we dropped off some of the vegetables at Nail’s family’s home.  All of this took quite some time, because Nail appeared to know everyone in the village.

At Nail’s family’s home, we were invited into the living room.  Although I was dying to, I didn’t take any pictures while we were there because it felt intrusive.  The room was bare except for a carpet, a couch lining the room that essentially was cushions on the floor and propped up on the walls, and a television.  We ended up hanging out there for a couple of hours.  Nail kept asking us if we wanted to go, but we both were relishing the opportunity to see how a family lived in a small desert town.

The village near the Wadi Rum protected area

Nail’s little brother and sister – around 7 and 8 – sat watching cartoons on the television.  Tom and Jerry was on most of the time, which is a favorite of our friends’ son.  In between watching television, the little boy and girl hung out with us.  We played with legos and play-doh.  The little girl played some game with me that I suspected she had made up, which involved putting little bits of Kleenex in your hands and the crooks of your elbows in a certain order that I was never able to master.  Sean played match after match of checkers with another of Nail’s brothers, who was in his teens.

Meanwhile, women came and went.  Even though we were there, some of the women who had entered wearing a full face covering removed them once in Nail’s parents’ home. It was obvious that family ties were important, based on the presence of extended family, the way Nail spoke about his family, and their closeness in their home. In the privacy of the home, Nail’s mother sat and hugged her children, including Nail.  In the background, in the kitchen, a tween-age girl, presumably another sister, hurried around performing domestic duties enrobed in a head scarf.  No matter how many times I saw women with the full head scarves or face coverings, I still could not get used to it.  I could not wrap my mind around the fact that the adorable little girl in pigtails, a pink shirt and jeans would someday soon need to cover her head or her face from the world.  If it wasn’t for the womens’ dress and roles, the whole scene could have taken place on any Saturday morning, almost anywhere in the world.

Except it wasn’t anywhere in the world. It was in Jordan, and it was September 11. The news at home, I had read the day before, was running stories about the outrage certain people felt about the proposed placement of a Muslim mosque near the former site of the World Trade Center. How ridiculous, I had thought.  Yet the whole time I was watching Tom and Jerry, I couldn’t get over how surreal the whole thing felt. Back in 2001, I never would have guessed that 9 years later, I would be spending the anniversary of that horrible day in a Middle-Eastern, predominantly Muslim country, sitting in a Bedouin family’s living room, watching cartoons and playing games with Jordanian children.

Cruising Around the Desert

In the late afternoon, after we left Nail’s house and ate lunch, we took our “Jeep” tour, complete with super-authentic air conditioning and super-loud Arabic pop music blasting. It felt wrong to not be experiencing the desert in the open air, but then I remembered that I hate sand and wind and decided to embrace the music as a soundtrack to our desert exploration. We bounced and flew along the sand for three hours, viewing the rock formations in the late afternoon sun and some of the famous landmarks.  The reddish sand dunes in the Sahara in Morocco were impressive, but the rocky scenery in Wadi Rum was quite amazing.

Wadi Rum rock formations in the late day Golden Hour

Sean and me at Um Kruth, a rock bridge

The one who is not a fan of heights at the top; I stayed at the bottom to photograph. Not because I was scared, no siree! (Actually, it was because I wanted to spare the other tourists the spectacle of my klutzy self scrambling up the rock in my flip flops).

Bow-Chicka-Bow-Wow

Later that night, we were joined for dinner by two other guests (hello, Diana!), Nail’s friends, more brothers, and his uncle.

Digging up our chicken and vegetable dinner, which was buried in the sand

Most of the crew at the camp

The guests had to leave right after dinner, leaving Sean and I sitting around the campfire with our Bedouin hosts. Our hosts smoked flavored tobacco from the shisha and we drank tea, a.k.a. Bedouin whiskey (suspiciously similar to Berber whiskey we had in the Sahara) while being told how wonderful it was that we were experiencing Bedouin culture in the silence of the desert under the stars. After tea, I didn’t feel like talking, and laid my head down, silently lamenting my inability to see such stars, once again, due to all of the bright lights around the campsite and wondering what silence they were talking about, since their cell phones were constantly going off and they alternated playing Arabic music from Nail’s truck or through the tinny speakers of their phones. Suddenly, Sean asked me, in a strange voice, if I was ready to go to bed. Once we were in our tent, I found out why he was ready to turn in so suddenly. Unbeknowngst to me, Nail’s uncle was looking at pornographic movies on his cell phone, and felt the need to show them to Sean not once, not twice, but three times, with commentary like, Nice, huh? or Check this out. Sean had nodded politely, but then he escaped since he had no interest in sitting around the desert with a group of men watching tiny pornographic movies on a cell phone.  I was shocked that the uncle would show Sean these images, especially with me right next to him.

This strange event capped off a very surreal day.  The porn screening was at odds with the family-centered atmosphere we observed earlier, and was in interesting juxtaposition to the covered women and strict rules of Jordanian Muslim society.

Early morning sunrise

We rose early the next morning to watch the sun rise and to hightail it to Aqaba for a proper shower and snorkeling as soon as possible. In Morocco, the sunset was the highlight of the desert experience.  This time, it was the sunrise (definitely not the awkward porn screening!)

Wadi Rum sunrise

Wadi Rum sunrise

Wadi Rum rock formations in the early morning Golden Hour

It was interesting how the Berber and Bedouin cultures are so similarly marketed to tourists, yet reality does not always live up to the advertising.  Nevertheless, as it turned out, our second trip to the desert was even more memorable to than the first.  What we experienced on September 11, 2010 may not be the authentic Bedouin cultural experience they market at the tour center, but for better or worse, we did get to see how some of today’s Bedouins live.

Kruger sunsets

Day One, near Skukuza Camp:

Day Two, Olifants River:

Day Three, near Shingwedzi

The Golden Hour at Kruger

One of my favorite bloggers, Karen Waldrond – a lawyer turned photographer – refers to the magical time at the end of the day when the daylight is waning and everything glows as The Golden Hour. The Golden Hour is my favorite time of day. Here are some shots from three different Golden Hours at Kruger:

Bulungula, Part One

There’s a place on the Wild Coast of South Africa that I am sure will stack up to be one of the most memorable and most unique places we stayed on this trip.  The place is Bulungula Lodge, an eco-friendly and fair trade lodge totally off the grid located in a remote area of South Africa.  The Lodge is the type of place that can restore a little bit of my liberal, tree-hugging, idealistic heart that practicing law killed off with cynicism.

The Lodge was created by Dave Martin, a well-traveled man originally from Cape Town who wanted to put his ideals into action. Created in 2004, the Lodge is a partnership between Martin and the local Nqileni village, made up of Xhosa people. The village owns the riverfront/oceanfront land occupied by the Lodge, and 40% of the Lodge itself. That means locks aren’t needed on the doors of the huts for the guests and people won’t hassle you for money, because everyone has a vested interest in the business. The village selects the neediest people to work at the Lodge, such a widow who needs the income. In addition to the creation of jobs at the Lodge itself, the Lodge spawned a number of 100% community-owned and operated businesses. Guests have the opportunity to engage in horseriding, canoeing, or fishing with a guide; eat at a pancake restaurant in the village; get a massage; go on a tour of the village; spend time and work with the village women; or learn about herbs from the herbsman. Other than the Lodge, there is no other place for employment anywhere in sight. Many of the village men live in townships in Johannesburg most of the year, working in the mines and sending meager incomes back home.

The journey to get to Bulungula Lodge is part of the experience in of itself.  The lodge is located somewhere somewhat near Coffee Bay on the Wild Coast of South Africa, an area with relatively unspoiled coastline and some of South Africa’s poorest people.  Once you turn off of N2, the main highway – which already is not all that developed for miles – any sign of commercial life disappears, save for a gas station, one Spar grocery store, and later, a local general store or two scattered about.  The first road wasn’t too bad, that is, until it started to resemble the moon.  We spent a good half an hour swerving to the left and right, trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid the giant craters in the road.  Once we turned off the crater road, it was dirt roads the rest of the way.  The “roads” were in such bad condition, it wasn’t possible to drive faster than, say, 10 miles per hour.  The drive made me fully understand the meaning of bone-jarring.  Every bone in our bodies rattled and jangled as we bounced along in our little rental car for close to 3 hours(!) at a ploddingly slow pace, praying we wouldn’t get a flat tire or a giant gash in our gas tank.  To top it off, I had the need to pee well before we turned off the N-2, which made each bounce extra fun.

One of the dirt/rock roads to get to Bulungula

Two white people in a tiny, decidedly non-4×4 rental car inevitably attracted much attention.  Small children began to run out to the road, waving frantically at us and jumping up and down.  Older children tried to look indifferent or intimidating, but inevitably one of them would sheepishly wave hello.  Women carrying bushels on their head would turn and stare.  As we suddenly became completely in the minority, we became very conscious of our white skin. And the fact our vehicle must have looked asinine trying to traverse roads not meant for ordinary cars.

Obviously there are no street signs.  Our directions were along the lines of “turn at the second fork in the road” or “look for the building with the sign hidden behind a tree.”  Luckily, there are few roads, which mean few places to get lost.  Not so luckily, we still couldn’t figure out where we were going.  We had picked up a cell phone for the first time on our trip only days before, and we put it too good use calling the Lodge over and over to ask, Now where do we go? This did little good; conflicting information between the map, the directions we got the day before from the owner of the Lodge, and the directions we were getting in a very thick accent over the phone caused me to end each call in frustration, turn to Sean and say, I really have no idea where we are supposed to turn.

Another of the dirt/rock roads, even deeper in

Eventually, by sheer luck or pure accident, we found the general store where we were supposed to park and walk the rest of the way.  A big change for Bulungula recently had been the addition of a new dirt road heading back to camp.  While the owner had told us on the phone the day before that non 4×4 cars could make it down the new road without a problem, the person we spoke with at the Lodge during our drive in indicated that the road was too muddy to try to drive it.

We started hoofing it with our packs, and quickly attracted a following.  A group of young girls from the village began following us and giggling.  I talked to them, even though I had no idea whether they knew English.  I suspect they didn’t know much, but they did know the days of the week, which they proudly recited for me.  When they saw my camera, they got excited.  I had heard that the village kids liked having their pictures taken so they can see themselves on the screen.  When I inquired, by motioning, whether they wanted their pictures taken, they immediately lined up and posed for the camera.  Their expressions turned serious, but you can see in the pictures a hint of a smile poking through.  Afterwards, I showed them their pictures on the screen, and they resumed their giggling.  They continued to follow about 5 steps behind us for the next ten minutes or so, but lost interest somewhere along the way.

Village girls we encountered on way to the Lodge

Two more. They sang, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday...

Meanwhile, with a backpack digging into our full bladders, and no idea how long we had to walk, Sean and I were gravitating towards cranky fast.  An older sedan came bouncing down the road and slowed to a stop in front of us.  Want a ride?  I bet we are going the same way! In the car was a couple from East London, South Africa, who spoke English and Xhosa and were staying at the lodge for the night.  Thank goodness they picked us up; it turned out we missed the shortcut (which no one ever told us about).  The drive down the new road took at least another 20 to 30 minutes, and included several more calls to the Lodge to find our way and picking up one local villager to show us the rest of the way.  The kicker was that the new road was no worse than any of the other dirt roads we took that day, and other than the fact it would have taken us forever to find our way, we could have made in down the new road in our rental car.

Finally arriving at the Lodge meant two things: we finally saw why it was worth the agonizing drive…

View of the Bulungula River entering the Indian Ocean from the grounds of Bulungula Lodge

…and we finally could get to pee – in the compost toilets, of course.  To be continued…