Welcome to Mars!
Mike has had an interest in space travel since he was a kid, and now he works for a company whose mission is to make humans interplanetary by colonizing Mars. So when Salam sent me this article, I knew we had to go! Wadi Rum is the UNESCO World Heritage Site in the south of Jordan, a few hours drive from Amman.
We stayed in Martian Dome 15 at the 5-star Sun City Camp in Wadi Rum. I found this booklet at a store in LA and thought it would make a good prop. See an aerial video of the resort here: https://youtu.be/ZYDo_8Tb_mo
Our dome room had air conditioning, a large bathroom and beanbag chairs that we pulled onto the front porch to listen to the silence at night and view stars and planets. The free mini bar had cold Coca-Colas and the camp even had a Tesla charger, likely from Elon.
Our Bedouin driver raced through the desert like a maniac and I loved it! At one point he drove us down a sand dune as steep as a black diamond ski run.
We were lucky that the weather was perfect for our sunset visit in Wadi Rum. The tourism helps with jobs for the local tribal families. The Wadi Rum desert used to be the bottom of an ocean millions of years ago, before a shifting of the earth’s plates. The sand is red from iron in it.
Dinner was cooked underground, as it was back in the day, when a sheep or goat might have been stolen and the thieves who didn’t want the cooking on an open fire to give away their game.
See that tiny white Jeep to the far left? Yeah, we had to hike up a steep sand dune to get to the top for this photo. About 1/4 of the way up, I thought “there’s no way we’re going to make it”. But we did! There was a bus of Chinese tourists at the top, but they all left and we had the place to ourselves. A young french girl had raced up ahead of her group that arrived after us, and kindly offered to take this photo.
Sunset is definitely the time to be in Wadi Rum. There were caravans of camels and jeeps in the near vicinity. Our Bedouin driver kept a pigeon in a cage in his truck, for use with trying to capture an live eagle. Apparently it’s quite difficult to catch a eagle, and they are very valuable. Our guide Ashraf took this photo of us.
Video of our jeep trip through Wadi Rum and the desert here…