For those of you just joining us, we’re writing about each stage of our recent hiking trip from Dana-Petra and we’re doing so for a couple of different reasons:
1. The fun of telling and being told stories.
2. As a guide to help other hikers follow the same itinerary we did.
Now on to Part I:
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It was a typical bright fall morning in Amman as we set off on our expedition. Ali and I had been up all night trying to get our new camp-stove to work. That saga really deserves a whole story in itself. Suffice it to say that Jordan is a land of contrasts. Yes, Amman has a 24-hour Safeway, but no, not a single piece of the camp-stove equipment sold by said Safeway seems to be compatible with any of the camp-stove fuel sold by the store. Anyway, future campers in Jordan beware. I’ll probably return to the saga later.
Back to that beautiful Ammani morning.There are a couple of ways to get from Amman to Dana: renting a car and taking the bus. Since we were doing a one-way hike, we decided it would be best to go by bus. Much as whether one enjoys Marmite is the true test of one’s Britishness, I think the ultimate test of whether someone is a native of Amman is whether he has mastered the city’s bus system. There are no maps, schedules, or information booths of which to speak. The bus schedules listed in Lonely Planet are not correct! (Heavens!) After some detective work, we were told that there were two buses a day to Qadsiyya (Dana’s neighboring village) that left at 7 and 9 am. We showed up in time to catch the 7 am, but we didn’t end up leaving until close to 9. In short, I would recommend visiting the bus station the day before you leave and checking with the bus drivers hanging about the place. You still won’t be guaranteed a bus, but you’ll probably arrive at more accurate information than through any other method.
The bus drive took us from the hills of Amman, through the northern Jordanian desert, to the jagged mountain ranges of the Great Rift Valley – a wondrous series of wadis and surrounding mountains that stretches from Syria to Mozambique. The majority of Jordan’s most stunning natural sites are located in the great valley. The nearer we got to Tafila, the closest significant town to Dana, the more frequently the bus driver stopped to catch up with friends and discuss his curious cargo of nine Americans decked out in über-chique camping gear. At one point, just about ten minutes away from our destination, now in the heart of Tafila-country, he decided to stop for about 30 mins to make fun of a local man for buying a pink shirt. All those interested are invited to share their favorite Tafila jokes in the comments section 
Dropped off high above Wadi Dana, we walked down the road about 6 km to get to the entrance of the Dana Nature Reserve. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to take a moment to offer the highest possible praise for the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN), the organization that runs the reserve. The RSCN is an independent, non-governmental organization that has been given the responsibility by the Jordanian Government of safeguarding the country’s natural treasures as well as facilitating responsible access to them. The RSCN also does a very good job of making sure its sites contribute to the local economy (through the sale of crafts and herbs from the reserves). They run several sites in Jordan and the two that I have been to (Dana and Feinan) are both fantastic. I can’t wait to go to the others.
Looks like I’ve rambled on long enough for now. In my next post I’ll discuss the Dana Nature Reserve and our travels through it in more depth. Also stay tuned for a series of “travel advice vignettes” from Ali. For now, I’ll leave you with a photograph of the view from the RSCN campsite in Dana. Imagine waking up to this in the morning:
