Today followed the pattern we'd been following for a few days now, hiking mostly along river bottoms and sandy terrain, then a short up and down over a ridge to the next wadi. And, like yesterday, the day was hot. I actually used the word "hot" in my journal, so you know it was hot.
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| Packing up lunch for the day's hike |
I also wrote in my journal that I picked up three bags of trash today. You know it's an uneventful day on the trail when I have to write about how many bags of trash I managed to pick up. (And I still only filled up half the page of my journal!)
One new thing to report, though.... running water! Along one of the creek bottoms was clear, fresh running water--the first we had seen on the trail.
At the end of the day, we had a two-kilometer road walk into camp. It was a paved road too. We had crossed a few occasionally, but actually following a road for two solid kilometers... this was new for the trail. Not really exciting to report, but there you have it.
Lama made an announcement that one person, at least, would likely consider good news--she looked at me as she said this--saying that the location we would be camping was known for scorpions so to be careful watching out for them. Keep your tents zipped closed at all times and be sure to check your shoes for stowaways if you leave them outside of your tent.
Scorpions! Yes! Let there be scorpions!
The location certainly looked promising. The area had lots of rocks scattered all about, the perfect hiding place for scorpions. I'd definitely do a search once it got dark.
I joked with other hikers that I was willing to do a "tent check" for them before they went to sleep for 2 JD (Jordanian Dinar) per tent. (About $3/tent.) And with Karolina, I joked that if we found any scorpions, we should throw them into people's tents. After the first one was found, everyone else would be scrambling to get money for a "tent check." (But when demand goes up, I might have to start charging 5 JD/tent.)
In the meantime, I spent much of the afternoon playing a Flemish version of Go Fish with Ruth and Kristien. Kristien was Flemish and brought the game with her, and she got a great laugh out of Ruth and I trying to pronounce the Flemish words on the deck. Often, we'd have to resort to describing the picture on the card that we wanted.
After dinner, I grabbed my blacklight and headed out in a hunt for scorpions. I searched for the better part of an hour, scaring a couple of people who went off to the outskirts of camp to use the bathroom. "Don't come any closer!" someone would shout from the dark. "There's some bathroom business happening!"
Also a good reminder that not all rocks I might look under would have a scorpion.
So I'd steer clear and search another area. Given the hot weather and perfect environment for scorpions, I had high expectations but after nearly an hour of searching, I came up empty-handed. The campsite was clean of scorpions.
With that business failure, I called it a night and headed off to sleep. There was a lot of excitement in the air, however, because tomorrow.... tomorrow we would reach Petra!
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| This was a novelty.... flowing water! |
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| The dragonflies seemed to really like the water! They were everywhere once we reached water. |
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| We found a geode! |
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| We kept our eyes open, but didn't see any camels crossing here. |
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| Sunset over camp |
1 comment:
Maybe you didn’t find any scorpions at that capmsite, but I remember finging another cool thing: desert roses! I mean rock/crystal formations called desert roses. They were very small but still very pretty!
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