By now you must have noticed that this blog operates on Jordanian time…
Rummana Campsite
Anyway, let’s continue on the trek toward Petra. As I mentioned last time, the Dana Nature Reserve is one of the most spectacular places one can visit in Jordan – and a lot more peaceful than swarming Petra. There are two places to stay in the reserve, one in the North (Rummana Campsite) and one in the South (the Feinan Ecolodge). At both sites you have to use the accommodations provided because the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN), which runs the reserve, wants to make sure that humans have as little impact on the reserve as possible – while still being able to thoroughly enjoy it. Dana’s accommodations are very nice indeed and thus also relatively expensive for Jordan (if you’re comparing it to budget hotel prices in Amman; if you compare RSCN prices with how much it costs to stay with the Bedouin in Wadi Rum for example, it’s about the same).
We decided that the first hike of our Dana-Petra trek would be the popular walk from Dana to Feinan through Wadi Dana. Crucially for us, this is one of the handful of long hikes one can do in the Dana Nature Reserve without an expensive guide. I recommend this hike for the first day of a multi-day camping trip because it is a relatively easy, downhill, 5 hour hike – and it ends at the incredible Feinan Ecolodge (more on that later).
View of the Route to Feinan through Wadi Dana from Dana Village
If you stay at the Rummana Campsite (which I absolutely recommend you do) keep in mind that the “official trail” to Feinan actually starts at Dana Village. In order to get there, you can hire a guide and hike for 5 km / Time: 4 hr or you can ask for the campsite to arrange transport by car (warning, even if it isn’t stated explicitly up front, RSCN will expect payment for the car ride – see Travel Vignette #1 on haggling).
Starting at Dana Village, our trek through Wadi Dana to Feinan took us from an elevation of about 1200m (4,000 ft) to 200m (650 ft). The initial descent consists of about an hour on a steep zigzagging path down to the floor of the wadi. A couple of villagers I met on the way down say there’s a beautiful natural spring right around where the path meets the wadi floor, but we were too focused on reaching Feinan to go looking for the spring on this trip. As we walked through Wadi Dana we passed through small groves of (what the guidebook told us were) oak, pistachio, acacia, and ziziphus trees.
Hiking Through Wadi Dana Toward Feinan
The closer we got to Feinan, the more signs there were of the presence of a Bedouin community (it turns out that around 50 Bedouin families live in the Feinan area). First we ran into a couple of goat herders who were quite amused at the antics of some members of our team upon the sighting of a scorpion crawling into someone’s clothing. Later we were called in for tea as we passed the first of several tents. As we sipped our tea, we noticed that a couple who had been hiking behind us were being invited into the next tent. Ah the Bedouin tea checkpoint system, obviously if the first tent doesn’t get you, then the second one will 
(cf. forthcoming vignette #2 on Bedouin hospitality). We stayed in the tent drinking tea for quite a while, talking with a group of mostly teenagers. Some went to school, some herded goats. If a Bedouin family invites you in like this, I thoroughly recommend sharing some food as a polite gesture of thanks for the tea. Our delicious trail mix (even one companion’s otherwise inappropriate party mix) was very popular indeed.
As I sipped my tea, I wondered whether I had met these young men before. I camped in Feinan in 1998 and had also spent time in a couple of Bedouin tents then. Most of the people I was having tea with now would have been small children then – like me. Maybe we did cross paths.
Eventually we had to leave, sunset was approaching and we needed to get to the Ecolodge. We were assured (correctly) that the lodge was just around the corner. Perhaps the best aspect of the Dana-Feinan hike is that you’re rewarded at the end with the Ecolodge. You’re just walking along, following a turn in the wadi (as you have many times over the course of the hike) and then suddenly – it appears!
Feinan Ecolodge
I’ll talk about the Ecolodge a bit more in the upcoming post on the wonders of Feinan (including a brief retrospective on 1998).
