Dana Nature Reserve

After Wadi Musa and Petra, we got a taxi to the village of Dana, right on the edge of the Dana Nature Reserve, Jordan's first nature reserve. I know, it looks like a bunch of piles of rock, but those piles were people's homes for a long time, since the Ottoman Empire. Nowadays, only two families live here. Everyone else lives in the village of Quadisiyya about 3 km away and built just for these people when the government decided to preserve this area.

Dana reinforced the fact that Jordan is way different from Egypt. First of all, there's a lot more water here. More water means things like trees and plants.

We stayed at the Dana Tower Hotel. Our guide book didn't really like it, at least that's how it seemed to us, but folks on the internet seemed to love it and since it was the cheapest thing there, we decided to try it. It was a pretty nice backpackers' stop. The food was awesome and the rooms sweetly done up. The beds were OK and while there was no heating in the rooms we got plenty of blankets, which was great because it was really frikkin' cold while we were there! (non sequitor- I got to play with more puppies there! This time, a litter of 9!!!)

Our first afternoon there we wandered about and met a few of the locals. We got some nice views of the old village, perched right on the edge of a canyon- Wadi Dana. This part of Jordan is so different from what we've seen so far. It's almost like being at home again.

In the evening we hung out in the "tent". It is a big common room with a heater (+) and lights (+). Trying to warm up, we met a few other travellers and swapped stories. Again, I met with folks who couldn't believe I was American, even a Belgian basically said I was a bit more brown than your typical American. :-) Anyway, after a tasty buffet meal served up in the same room, Froody and I went to bed and huddled together under about 4 blankets.

The next day was very cold and very, very windy. After discovering that hot water was not forthcoming at that time, we dressed and headed for the communal tent. We had some more nice conversation around breakfast, with lots of hot tea. Froody and I had decided to walk the entire canyon (having only one full day in Dana), which is about 14km and arranged for a car to pick us up at the end. Luckily, a Spaniard and a Swiss chose to join us and we had a pretty nice walk. (Hmmmm...that sounds like the beginning of a really bad joke, "A Spaniard, a Swiss, and an American were walking around one day, when...)I was very glad as it warmed up, even though it meant carrying all my layers most of the way down.

It was interesting how much the rocks changed during our walk. Froody and I kept on saying what a shame it was that we didn't major in geology. I wished I could read the stories the rocks were telling us.