24th February 2006 Red Sea Cruise

We were up much later than Carole and Peter, who joined us for coffee while we ate a late breakfast. We then collected cameras etc. and headed for deck 2 to find the coach and go to Wadi Rum.
Madeleine was our tour guide for the day, a Jordanian who gave us a history lesson on the way. This is the area that Laurence of Arabia lived in and also the location for the film. Miles of lovely pink and gold desert later, we transferred to 4WD jeeps that looked old enough to have been driven by Lawrence himself, but were driven by local Bedouins instead. We clambered into the back of the jeeps and sat on cushions which almost covered the rust, and set off to the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Mountains. Interesting point; T.E. Lawrence, {Lawrence of Arabia} when he wrote his autobiography, called it The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Wadi Rum is an incredible area we stopped at the mountains for a while to walk, climb and take pix, then we got entertained by Bedouins singing and dancing for us.
Our next stop was another desert area with around forty Bedouins with very skinny looking camels. We watched as other people were persuaded to go for a ride.
I saw a huge blue beetle and filmed it for a while as it looked very much like the lapis lazuli scarabs that they sell.
We were driven on to the area where Lawrence lived and were shown tents like he would have lived in. The scenery is wonderful, mountains and huge gorges, two King�s heads and Lawrence�s head were sculptured into the rocks here.
Carole and I went into a Bedouin tent, where they were selling trinkets, herbs etc. There was a large camp fire inside where the Arabs cook, and lovely rugs everywhere. Granny was asleep in one corner! We could still smell the wood smoke on our clothes the next day.
We headed back and had an exhilarating roller coaster ride down some steep sand dunes to our last stop of the afternoon. A large Bedouin camp in a lovely oasis where we were given �tea and piscuits� as Madeleine so quaintly put it. We sat in the sun eating yummy sesame seed piscuits, fresh dates and figs and drinking lemon tea. A couple of Bedouins entertained us playing mandolin and drum and singing and of course we could buy trinkets from the stalls set nearby.
The Lido restaurant was serving an Arabian Buffet that evening so we decided to try it, a very good dinner, some decent shiraz and we were happy. It�s early to bed for all of us tonight as we leave for Petra at 7.30a.m. and need coffee and breakfast first. On returning to our cabin Ionella our cabin steward had sculpted our towels into two swans with their heads meeting forming a heart, ahhh!