Valley of the Moon: Jordan

Sunset overlooking our camp site in south Jordan. Wadi Rum occupies 270 square miles of Aqaba province, a protected desert that serves as a cultural center for Zalabia Bedouin tribes and was the original movie set from Lawrence of Arabia. Locals refer to this area as the ‘Valley of the Moon’ for its desolate, cratered surface where rusty-salmon colored sand quietly blankets the horizon to infinity and beyond. The sand…ohhh that sand. It got EVERYWHERE. Eyes, nose, throat, ears, hair, camera lens! And for this reason I packed one and only one lens so as to avoid ANY temptation whatsoever to unseal the shutter for a different lens and risk exposing the innards to more dust. Inevitably that fine powder still found its way into the zoom lens which started to sound a little “crunchy” within a few shutter clicks in that dusty desert air. My shoes (originally grey) and my socks (originally white) were stained a burnt red color by the end of our trip and my first shower back from the camp site left red “victory rings” around the hotel tub that, well, I am actually quite proud of. This girl doesn’t usually rough it this far off the beaten path!