Today we headed off to Dana, a nature reserve, which extends the length of a canyon dropping from 1200m above sea level to 50m below sea level. Its the beginning of our descent to the Dead Sea.
Before we left Wadi Musa, we went to the spring that is the source of the water that was used in Petra. It wasn't very exciting. Also on the way out of Wadi Musa we saw some tress that are 5000 years old. That was a little more exciting, the idea that they have been around since the time of Moses himself (if he existed).
After that it was onto Dana, past some more great scenery and a very cool Crusader castle, although we couldn't get into it, and then we got to the top of the canyon. Before we went to the visitor centre we stopped for some photos at the top. We should have been warned by the fact that the trees at the top were growing at a 45 degree angle, but we weren't. When we got out the wind in our faces coming up the canyon was amazing. A few hats had to be recovered.
We then made our way to the visitor centre and attached lodge, which we hoped would be our residence for the night. It was a really spectacular location, perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking a drop of about 800m into the canyon. But it turned out this wasn't our lodge, ours was down in the valley itself. We were going to drive around and then back up from the other end. However I got an idea that it would be cool to walk down the valley to the lodge. But we needed to find a guide, and we were having trouble getting information about how far it was and how long it would take. After about an hour we got a guide, who didn't actually look like he could hike a canyon, but it was our best guess. Anyway we sent the bags on and began to walk.
So off we went down into the reserve in the midday sun, which was probably not the best idea, but was better than walking uphill on your own in the midday sun, as we saw one girl doing. We descended the first 500m or so pretty quickly, it was quite steep, and then we were down in the reserve itself. It is supposed to have all sorts of animal life in it, but we saw very little, a few birds and a couple of wild camels. Most of the animals lists as living in the canyon were nocturnal, sand cats, foxes, and so on, and of course the one we all would have loved to have seen, the porcupine. I'm going to trust that these animals exist as we didn't see any evidence of them.
After 3hrs of walking the sun began to go down, and I began to get worried about the speed we were going, which was a lot less than my normal walking speed. The other problem was that I couldn't get any information from our guide, who didn't speak much English, as to how far it was to go. He seemed to indicate at 3 that we were halfway, which would mean it would be 6 when we finished, and at 4 it was still many kilometers. It was beginning to look like it would be dark before we finished, which was slightly concerning, but then we turned a corner and there was a bedouin tent with a pickup truck beside it. So worst case scenario we could pay for a lift out.
Once the sense of not being stuck in the dark was past, it was a bit more relaxing. We actually got held up a bit by the goats being herded back to a bedouin village and then after we walked through it we were magically at the lodge we were staying in. Although we didn't know it, and it looked closed. But again we were hampered by our guides lack of English. However eventually the lodge staff turned up, amazingly with our luggage, and we got checked in.
The lodge itself was pretty nice, it was an ecolodge, which meant they were running it with no carbon footprint. This meant we had little electricity (all lighting was candles) and the only hot water was heated during the day (so showers were in the evening not the morning). But other that that it was fine. The food was vegetarian, but I guess I could put up with it. After all there had been some days when the vegetarian in our party had little choice in her meals. Actually the food was very good, again like all our food and accomodation on this trip, better than you would expect from the description (a hikers lodge in a nature reserve)
The best part of the ecolodge was the rooftop terrace, which we made good use of. We saw the sunset, which is supposed to be spectacular, but actually was very cloudy. Afterwards sitting up there it got cold very quickly. With the interior courtyard you could look down on, the fact that it powered down at night, and the sound of the camels in the background (which sound a lot like sandpeople) it felt like the Lars farm on Tatooine. I was fully expecting C3PO to come along and tell me the R2 unit had escaped into the desert.
Because of the cold, and the fact that we were all fairly exhausted after our hike, which we discovered was 15km, so 4.5 hrs wasn't that bad a time, it was a fairly early night. It is amazing how when you have no electricity you do adjust your sleeping patterns to the availabilty of sunlight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_(Crusader_castle)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Nature_Reserve
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