Our stay at Dana begins just outside of the park, on a little canyon perch just outside of the village and the park at the Ein Lahda camp. “Bedouin” camps are extremely common throughout the country – these are more or less groups of wool tents over steel sub structures, carpeted floors with mattresses and one stark hanging light-bulb. A stay in a camp usually includes a communal breakfast and dinner – the breakfast being (universally) hard boiled eggs, flatbread, marmalade, labneh, tea, Nescafé, hummus, halva, and piece of something like Laughing Cow cheese. Dinners (universally) are Maqluba (aka upside down, aka upside dawen), a mix of chicken, cauliflower and yellow rice, steamed and then decanted as you would an upside down cake. This is served with labneh, bread, and maybe a couple of salads.

The hospitality at this camp was good but a little awkward. There was the host, an older guy with the most English and those famous hazel Jordanian eyes, that stumbled through explaining the recreation on hand – “you take the road, one kilometer, you buy ticket. You can make 3 hikes…”. There was the younger kitchen manager, and there was a severe man whose job consisted of sternly telling you to eat more food by pointing at you and screaming, “MORE”. The camp was simple, the views were beautiful, a shower was available, and the tents were comfortable.

After a late arrival and a night’s stay, we were very excited to get an early start and hit one of the more high profile trails in the Dana complex, the Wadi Dana trail – a 14km canyon hike that descends from the village of Dana to the Feynan Ecolodge at the bottom of the Wadi. Darwish put a lot of energy into talking us out of getting our permit at the station laid out in the guidebook, insisting it would be “more relaxed” to pick it up at the trailhead 1km down the road. It reeked of commission, but we didn’t see the harm in it, so we headed down to his guy. At the station down the road, the man there spent a lot of energy trying to talk us in to hiking his hikes, and even suggesting we should cancel our reservation to stay with him. Eventually I lost my temper, explained that they we’re getting in the way of us doing what we came halfway across the world to do, and that we were wasting the cool morning hours with this nonsense. The man conceded and apologized for the hustle. He sold us the permits and offered to arrange a ride back from the end of the trail at a very reasonable rate.

Arriving at the trailhead, we made very quick friends with the fellas running the shop there. The older man was very excited to show us the rooms he was building – they’d be ready in a few months, but wanted to show us Americans as he thought they would be to our taste. He explained that he had spent a lot of time in the states, especially New Orleans, and he loved it. He was right about the rooms, they were beautiful. And so was he. After losing a haggle with his son over a scarf to shield Lucy from the sun, we were given a consolation price of a few sleeves of crackers and sent on our way.

We hadn’t made it 5 minutes down the canyon before a voice overhead called to us. The voice came from one of two men perched on a rock accompanied by a dozen or so goats. The man pleaded for us to stop, to turn and come back up the hill to where he was. I met him halfway. It turns out that this rather pungent Bedouin in fatigues and a keffiyeh acted as something like security. He asked to see our permits. He insisted that the permits we had were not for this trail, that I had to get them at the guesthouse in the village. Lacking any communication tools between us, I pointed at the price paid line on the permit, and basically just kind of shook the thing at him. After a characteristically loud Arabic phone call, he finally consented and asked to photograph the permit. In the end he had a rather gentle demeanor and the whole thing was settled satisfactorily – we parted with a handshake, and we resumed the hike.

The old man at the camp said the hike would be comfortable enough, but that it would warm up as we descended the canyon. He said we’d be shielded by the sun by intervals of trees and gardenous areas. I’d decided that day not to bring the guidebook – if I had it with me, I would have read quite the opposite. The Wadi Dana trail is, in fact, almost entirely shadeless. Mercilessly sunny and shadeless. 14km of merciless shadelessness, heat and knee grinding downhill walking.

This is a hard hike to describe. There are its parts, and then there’s the experience. The parts consisted of long hazy views, incredible wind and rain sculpted sandstone cliffs unlike anything we’d ever seen, occasional lizards, a few unusual plants, and mercilessly sun beaten trails. For the most part, the experience was peaceful – we were grateful to be away from people for a minute, and the hustle and hassle of the morning was long gone. The last two hours, however, the sun shook its fists at us, and we staggered down the trail, wearing as much as drinking the 9 liters of water we brought along.

After 4 and a half hours, the trail bottomed out into the valley, and we began making contact with civilization. First a few abandoned Bedouin tents.. then a few goats.. then a few Bedouins. We waved off an invitation to tea as we passed a tent… the kind of thing we would not have normally done, but our melting brains were having none of it. We passed a group of Bedouin teen boys, wrestling each other into the dust under the shade of a canyon wall. The most recent winner of the matches making himself big in front of me, proclaiming his strength.

Eventually we made that final turn and the attractive facade of the Feynan ecolodge came in to view. A van was sitting in front of it as the man at the permit station said it would.

The driver would initially be rather grumpy about having had to wait for us, but warmed up as we got underway. In a country no more than 4 hours drive in any direction, a 2 hour drive through pothole country isn’t on any drivers wishlist, but even he seemed to crane his neck at the incredible views as we climbed our way up the steep grades on our way back to camp. We made two stops for him to force water, pineapple juice, cookies and ice cream into us. We made a third stop for him to pick up clean towels that he was shuttling in to the village, a stop that included a series of arguments with children over what Lucy collected was a short count of towels. We made a fourth stop to photograph some roadside camels. As we made the final turns for Dana village to pick up our car, the driver was happy as pie, singing in a luscious baritone, “Welcome to Jordan, Welcome to Dana… Welcome to Camel… Welcome to Camel”.

The next morning we had a quick standard breakfast before our short ride to Petra. We tipped the kitchen crew, who I think must not have been accustomed to being tipped, for they ran out to our car before we could leave with arms full of water and juice. The stern “MORE” man smiled and waved until our car disappeared down the road.