Flight from Egypt

OK, the departure from Egypt wasn't so dramatic as a flight. But I'll get to that shortly.

The visit to the Coloured and White Canyons was beautiful. Jenn and I were picked up by our driver and our guide at 8 a.m. last Friday and joined a small group in a minivan. There was a Dutch couple, a Belgian Flemish couple, a Kiwi and the two of us as passengers. We visited the Coloured Canyon first. The canyon starts wide and becomes very narrow so that we had to walk through some very narrow fissures, climbing up and down the rocks in several places. It was refreshingly cool because it was shaded.

The challenging part of the day was the long drive from the Coloured Canyon. From there we drove for over two hours through the heat until we got to a small Bedouin community at an oasis where we were fed lunch (meat stewed with vegetables, served with rice and flat bread) and rested before hiking the White Canyon.

We left Egypt in our truck on Saturday. We drove to an ugly port city on the Gulf of Aqaba and took a ferry ride, about three hours, to the city of Aqaba in Jordan. We spend the night camping outside of town, then we drove to the Wadi Rum the next day. The Wadi Rum is a beautiful dry area with great rock formations. We took a three-hour truck ride through it yesterday, climbing rocks and exploring deep cuts into the rock.

Last night we camped in the Wadi Rum, then this morning we drove here to Wadi Mousa. Tomorrow we will visit the ancient city of Petra, which I anticipate will be one of the highlights of the trip.