Jacob and I walk into the hotel lobby fresh from a hike in Wadi Mujib, the pockets of my wicking, quick-drying REI pants still soaked from our hike up a canyon of waterfalls. Jacob plunks down his soggy passport on the hotel desk. Even after two hours of careful airing and attempted resuscitation on a condiments rack during lunch, its damp pages are limp from our swim through the Mujib gorge. One of the dashing young Jordanian men in a suit at the reception desk touches the book gingerly and …

#1
Salt, sand, sea and sun
I don’t even have to swim
Just float with my rum.
#2
Mango juice, book in hand
Toes in hammock swinging, breeze
Fresh from Palestine.
Check out our photos of the Dead Sea on Flickr!
www.flickr.com/photos/jpatton/sets/72157617944649775/

“Welcome.  Welcome to Wadi Dana.”  Those were the first, middle and last words we heard during our weekend in the Dana Nature Reserve, a breathtaking valley of desert off the Dead Sea Highway in southern Jordan.
We entered the valley via Bedouin car, which basically translates into a man in dishdasha driving a questionably functional Datsun 4×4 on an equally questionable gravel road.  Our young driver had a skinned fox complete with tail draped decoratively across his dashboard with the eyeholes sewed shut, which he proudly exhibited to Jacob as I …

Okay, so I will now feebly try to describe the awesomeness that is Petra and I will fail.  Miserably.
Have you seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?  Remember the oh-so climactic scene when Harrison Ford races a horse to the Treasury and finds the Nazis there with the Holy Grail?  Well that is Petra, except that there are no Nazis hiding out in the Treasury and no be-jeweled cups to be found.  But you know what?  As far as I am concerned Indiana Jones can stand down, because there is …

DO NOT…
… Kiss in public. From what we gather, this is the equivalent of tastelessness exhibited by flashers in the New York subway. So now when I part from Jacob in the hotel lobby we just smile awkwardly, sigh in frustration or do a hand pounce.
… Attempt to give a taxi driver your street address. For some reason, street names here are unknown to every member of the local population except urban planners. Instead, resort to directions such as “Turn left at the Military Intelligence building, continue to the roundabout …