Camping at Little Petra

Little Petra is pretty much exactly what it sounds like – a smaller version of Petra.  Used in ancient times as an overnight stopping point for travelers on their way to the city of Petra, it is now largely overlooked by tourists (despite being free to visit and virtually empty.)A bedouin family lives in a tent just outside of Little Petra, and one of their sons took us on a rudimentary tour of the smaller site.  Always looking to entertain the tourists, this guy helped us climb up and around the ruins and told us stories about the various caves.  At one point he painted my eyes with traditional kohl eyeliner, and then offered John 20 camels for me.  (John politely refused the offer.)  You can see the boy’s brother playing a flute in one of the caves in the image on the right below.

Oleander grows everywhere in both Petra and Little Petra.  While our tour guide graciously offered for us to stay the night in his family’s tent, we declined in favor of the campsite we had already booked for the night.  The camp was just a short drive from Little Petra, tucked behind a formation of rocks in the desert.  I use the term campsite very loosely here.  It did not look like this…Nope, no caves or big dirt sites for us.  This was luxury camping.  More like an outdoor hotel, this campsite had a full working bathroom and kitchen, dining tent, fire pit surrounded by comfy bedouin seating, and several private tents.  Our tent had a full bed and nightstand inside, and was decorated in the fun bright colors that characterize bedouin culture.  At night, the rocks beside the campsite were lit with dozens of little lights, creating a gorgeous (but completely un-photographable) ambiance in the darkness.After a day of exploring Petra and Little Petra, it was lovely to hang out beside a campfire with other travelers chatting and smoking shisha.  Also known as hookah, shisha is wildly popular in Jordan.  Every cafe, coffee shop and restaurant offers it, and you can hardly eat a meal in this country without the smoke of Double Apple Tobacco wafting around you.  While we are far from being smokers, it seemed culturally relevant to try shisha while in Jordan, and sitting under the stars beside a fire on big comfy cushions seemed about as perfect a place as any. We each had about two puffs to try it before deciding that it was (not surprisingly) not our thing.  Camping in the desert, however, felt more like our thing.  Anticipating another night of campfire chats and stargazing, we left the next morning and headed south to the desert of Wadi Rum with the intention to camp for another night.