Wadi Bashing
What a shame that everything is not perfect at all times in our lives. Most of us come to expect and deal with the imperfection on a day-to-day basis, but on vacation it suddenly takes on expanded importance. We got “dumped” here at the Wadi Rum Sun City Camp at 1 PM today. Other than taking a hike, we had pretty much done everything that Wadi Rum has to offer. I wish I could tell you that our tour guides were being flexible and attentive to our needs by giving us a free afternoon, but the truth is that they had an axe to grind, as they say, and needed to get to Aqaba so that one of them could catch a bus back to Amman. In this case, I would say that the tour clients, namely ourselves, were put last on the priority list. With six hours to kill before dinner, and no TV or Internet in the rooms, we basically were left to take on some simple pleasures like resting and reading, and re-packing and finding something to fill up the passing hours. What that really did was give us the opportunity to review all the things about our trip that we like the most and that perhaps displeased us the most. Suddenly high on that displeasure list was being left at Sun City Camp with an empty afternoon with nothing to do. Kim thought that we should have stayed another night at the Movenpick Hotel in Petra and that they should’ve driven us back so that we could take advantage of the Petra-by-Night tickets that we had but were unable to use yesterday because we were just too tired from our walk through Petra. Once she said it, that certainly seemed to me to be a far better schedule, at least from the perspective of us humble clients.
The structures we are staying in are called Martian Domes, and they are touted as being luxury accommodations at this supposedly five-star encampment. Now I know Glamping is not really supposed to be high luxury by most people’s standards, but this was sold as part of a luxury tour package and it was certainly described as though it was top-notch accommodations. We all agreed that the accommodations were adequate, and while the beds seemed OK, that the bathrooms seemed roomy and efficient and that the views from our Martian Domes was quite spectacular, everything else about the accommodations were, as I said, less than perfect.
We were bored enough that we decided to head up to the lobby, an hour and a half earlier than our dinner time in order to use the Wi-Fi, which is only available in the lobby, and to play cards to pass the time. This was not the first time we had played cards on this trip, so it was not an extraordinary event, but it is the activity that we have undertaken as a filler activity more than a purposeful activity. It was while we were playing cards that the scene at the Sun City Camp suddenly changed. It had been fairly quiet in the lobby and reception area until then, but suddenly several buses pulled up with high school kids from Berkeley California on a trip through Israel and Jordan. We were all kids once so there was nothing wrong with that per se, but one does come to expect that a luxury accommodation is not one that’s like a spring break accommodation. And, by the way, this week is spring break week.
We had been told by our guide Jamil to make sure to see the chefs unearth the cooking meats they were cooking below, ground in the barbecue pit area. When those chefs came out and lit up the barbecue area, obviously preparing for this exhumation, it occurred to me that with 100 teenagers crowding around to watch this ritual, it might not be a bad idea to simply walk into the dining room and start down the buffet line, even without the smoked meats coming from underground. It seemed to me like we were heading towards a bit of a cluster arrangement at the buffet line. Sure enough, once the meat was out of the ground, all of the other guests at the Sun City Camp rushed into the dining hall, and what we had imagined as a civilized dining experience turned into a madhouse with teenagers climbing all over us, and one another to get at the buffet line as though they have never eaten before. Everybody was running through the dining hall, trying to find a table to suit their groups needs. Fortunately, my advance planning paid off because we got a good table by the window and I at least got my plate filled with what I wanted from the buffet other than smoked meats, which I really wasn’t in the mood for anyway tonight.
The hotel dining room took on very much a high school cafeteria feel about it as the students, their chaperones, their teachers, and the other miscellaneous guests all worked up a storm of conversation and pitter-patter, making the evening meal suboptimal to say the least. The food was actually OK, but for some reason I had lost my appetite and Kim had had her stomach lock up, which happens once in a while, so neither of us really ate very much from the buffet. Overall, the four of us would’ve rated the dining experience a C minus at best.
That combined with our general sense that we had been abandoned at the sun city camp earlier in the day, made us all put the whole Wadi Rum, Martian Dome, Glamping experience at the bottom of our list of adventures from this trip. While it seemed like a quirky and fun thing to do, it was, in reality, a bit of a bust all around, so we decided to just call it a night, head back to our geodesic-domed Martian tents and try and get a good nights sleep so that we could get out of here in the morning and go to a real resort at the Kempinski Ishtar, on the Dead Sea. Kempinski generally runs a very nice chain of top quality hotels in Europe so our expectations are high, less so because of the activity of floating in the over-salinated Dead Sea, and more, because we are expecting the hotel accommodations and the dining experience to be several notches above that of the Sun City Camp.
Oh, and one othe Sun City Camp bonus….during the sunny afternoon the A/C didn’t work in the domes and now at night, the heat doesn’t work and it’s desert-freezing in our little geodesic world of torture.
When I traveled in the Middle East in the late 1980s, I remember there being several activities that were always suggested for any of us who wanted to stay over a weekend when there wouldn’t be any business meetings organized. This was in the days when Bahrain was the center of the Gulf nightlife and the Emirates like Dubai and Abu Dhabi we’re not yet in full ascendancy. Someone was always suggesting that we go on a “goat grab”, which always sounded to me like a greased pig contest. Or it was always the traditional Abra boat ride in the Gulf that seemed too sedate to bother with. The most intriguing activity offered up was a form of dune buggy riding where you were taken out into the desert where there was nothing but sand dunes, and given a dune buggy to run around and jump over hills and down the sides of sand dunes. This sort of cavorting was called by the British “wadi bashing”, presumably in reference to the fact that you were using your dune buggy to crash around and perhaps level some sand dunes,
I think our experience at Sun City Camp has given us a new meaning to Wadi Bashing. If offered this Glsmping experience, take a pass.