Mujib Gorge

This past weekend, our whole apartment and a few others from our program decided to take a litle jaunt down to Wadi Mujib. Its a slot canyon with a river running down it, much like the narrows in Utah. It was so awesome, and I'll get into the details of the gorge soon, but first I need to explain a little about getting around Jordan.
First of all, there is no planning. Even if you wanted to, there are no means for making arrangements ahead of time. So what you have to do is just go to a bus station, and hope that you can convince someone to take you where you want to go. Everything has a price, and that price can ALWAYS be negotiated. So when a group of 11 americans with matching backpacks and shorts arrive at the bus station early in the morning, every bus driver with nothing to do sees a dozen walking gold nuggets. They converged on us and the haggling began. The most aggressive one was also the shortest. About halfway through our haggling with him, another much larger arab came up behind him and affectionately threw his arms around his neck, in a very rested position, occationally kissing the shorter arab on the back of his head. What a way to undermine your friends bargaining power. It's really hard to take someone as a serious negotiator when they're in a spooning position with another man. It didn't take long for another bus driver to offer us a reasonable price which we took.


The Gorge is AMAZING. If anyone has ever hiked orderville canyon in Zion's National Park, you might have an idea of what this trail is like. It has beautiful high canyon walls and a clear river that is the perfect temperature. You could really just hike and play in this canyon all day and be perfectly happy. There are waterfalls that you can slide down, waterfalls to bath in/get pummeled by, cliffs to jump from. It's really awesome. I wish I had a great way of explaining the beauty of this place, but I don't, so I'll just try to hilight a few things with pictures!