a stroll through the desert…
despite our dodgy tour, complete with a jeep that had a bad radiator, and a tour guide that couldn’t speak english… wadi rum was amazing!!! rock climbing on the cliffs that surrounded us, the sunset from the top, bedouin whisky (it’s tea), and sleeping under a sea of stars at a bedouin camp is an experience i’ll never forget…
indiana jones ring a bell?nerida, eric, and i traveled to jordan to see petra. it was awesome! the best writer could not adaquatley describe how incredible it was… we looked for the famous indiana spot, but we wern’t sure that we found it, so we ended up just picking a temple carved out in the rock and deciding that it was definitly the place. souvineer from petra anyone?
happy times…the highlight of the day…hiking up 850 stairs to the highest point of the mountains surrounding petra…following the brightly spray painted arrows to the official “lookout”, and finding there (again, on the top of the seemingly most remote and highest point), a beddouin tent that accepted visa….hmm…no one else in the country accepted credit cards!!!
last week, five friends and i embarked on an adventure that no sane person would do… in fact, the only people who do what we did, are typically americans. hmmm… figures….what crazy adventure did we get ourselves into?
we hiked part of the israel trail! (three are still at it)
starting at tel dan, near the lebanese border, we hiked for five days, through extreme heat (all the while in john, narida and rachel’s work out world), past cobras (YES john!), irate bulls who were ready to charge, slept next to herds of wild pigs and a pack of wild jackels, over mountains dodging bees, through valleys surviving at least 13 near death experiences, wading through springs; not to mention drinking the dodgy water, and illegally scaling fences (”rolly things”).
we now officially have a new standard for the meaning of filth, as well as an enmatched appreciation and love for a shower and clean pair of chonies….if you think i’m exaggerating about the level of dirt and grease we had clinging to ourselves, let me enlighten you with a few examples…
rachel, noticing the wet sheen of dan’s hair says, “dan, wow! you got to wash your hair this morning? where?!!?dan, “umm… my hair isn’t wet…”
while digging into a jar of salt free peanut butter (what the?)… tom: “guys? do i have peanut butter on my face? i feel like i have it all over my face…”“tom… that’s not peaunt butter buddy, it’s called four days of caked on sweat…”
having a stench so persistent, that your nose somehow acclimates to the smell… every once in a while though, a nice breeze comes through, and you get whiff….acclimation is not a consistent phenomena…
getting on a bus after five days of hiking and seeing people actually get up and get off the bus….i now know what it literally looks like to have people turn up their nose at you..
“ummm… i feel like a giant piece of candy… if you were to drop me on the ground, everything would stick to me…”
you know that the dirt is caked on pretty well when the dirt on your ankles matches your dark brown pipers (eric)
eric, “when i went up to fill up my water bottle in the room, there was a large dog inside, and the soliders started yelling at the dog to get out because he stunk so bad… i just kept thinking to myself,’ man! that dog is getting blamed for my stench!”
now, that’s just the stench talk, but there was so much more…. now on to the illegal moves, it’s so much more interesting than body odor…
scaling fences for parks that are definitly closed… this happened on several occassions….
the first scaling was a bit tricky, the fence was really high, but everyone made it over okay, no near death experiences there.
the second happened when we lost the trail for a bit… we thought it went through a park, so we again, we had to scale a fence only this time it was one of those round about fences that prevent people from going out the same way they come in… very interesting, a tad bit dangerous. once inside we realized the trail did not go through this national museume/park… on our way out, we ended up running into an employee (whoops)…park ranger man “how did you get in here?!”john…playing the dumb american, except how does that really work because he was speaking in english, but nevermind that…john “confusedly” replies, “rolly thing????”park ranger, “what?!?!?! isn’t the gate locked?!!”john (exact same reply complete with the hand motion), “rolly thing???”
third illegal move….sleeping at a park in a kibbutz…the grass just looked so inviting…here we were, all tuckered out from our third full day of hiking, and we just wanted to eat and sleep. we decided to have a “picnic” in the lawn… and then just ever so innocently, (and slyly) roll out the sleeping pads… very sly, very sly..
over all the trip was incredible. john’s work out world through the sheville (israelli trail), showed me that our bodies, if we push them hard enough, are capable of much more than we would guess. not only that, but we can tolerate not only phisically, but emotionally as well, a lot more than we think we can. i mean, just think how many rocks we had to crouch behind, and how many meals of hummus and cucumber we ate! a lot, and a lot…
