Zion National Park- Narrows

Over the last three days we made a quick visit to Zion National park as we got a permit a few months ago to hike up to Angel’s landing.

If there is one picture that will stay in my head for a long long time after this trip, it is this one.. she did not know I was clicking it. The sunbeam that hit the pole as though it was a magical light saber and the beatific smile of content…

We left early on a Friday morning from San Jose to Las Vegas, rented a car and drove to Zion. Took this photo from the flight while crossing over to Nevada and was worried that we might have to tredge through ice and snow.. Fortunately none of that in Zion.

It took us a little over 2 1/2 hours. We stopped right at Zion Guru to get the rented gear to walk through the Narrows. This process took us 30 plus minutes. We ate a quick packed lunch right after, then parked the car at our hotel and had to take a shuttle into the park visitor center which added 20 minutes. Then another shuttle from Visitor center all the way to the last stop which took another 40 minutes.

Two things threw us off. First, we were very disappointed with Avis. The van they gave us was smelling of cigarette smoke. Apparently a big problem in Vegas these days with returned rentals. There are signs everywhere on the van that say 450$ cleaning fee. Still no one checked. We could wait an hour to go back inside and try another van (minivans are not easy to come by) or start driving. So we called, complained and kept driving in hopes that there would be some other Avis location en route where we could swap cars. Time was precious. While some of the folks were doing the talking, I covered my nose and mouth and kept driving. We stopped at one place to get some chlorox (the van was dirty in the back) and febreeze and sprayed the car with no reprieve. Then we kept windows open and tried everything. This cost us another 30 minutes.

Then the clock changed forward an hour and our heart sank. It was also confusing as where we go through a sliver of Arizona state where the clocks flip back and forth. We had miscalculated the time difference. The extra 30 minutes we took could make a difference on how far we went in the Narrows. When we started hiking from the Temple of Shinawava shuttle stop it was almost 2:30 in the afternoon. The last shuttle back to the visitor center leaves at 7PM and the gear shop closes at 8PM. That meant we had 4 hours to hike up the river and get back with a 30 minute cushion in case of any emergencies.

The plan was to turn back after two hours no matter where we were. We had the gear, so the water being cold was not a problem. Now that we had all resigned to the time limitation, we made the most of it. The plan was to walk fast, but the beauty of the place and the experience made it impossible as we had to stop and take photos. Photographers had to walk faster! Doing this on a hiking trail is one thing. Doing this while wading through water and slippery rocks is a higher level challenge.

Happy wife makes for a happy life. She was smiling all through this trip and that made my day. Haven’t walked this fast anywhere in recent times. Here are photos of us..

and here are the few clicks of the scenery…

and a video highlights reel..

None of the images above or the video do any justice to the actual experience of walking the narrows. We went a little past “wall street” towards Floating rock, which was another 5 minutes away from that point maybe.. but we did not want to take a chance. so we came back. If you visit Zion, see if you can take the extra day to start on this early in the morning so you can spend a good 6 hours and catch everything. 4 hours is too tight.

Do not miss this experience though. Our first visit to Zion was in 2004 December (predates the blog) and our little one wasn’t born yet. With Jr. in a stroller we could only walk across a bridge from Zion lodge to the lower lake and stop by along the road to take photos. There was no shuttle then. You could just drive through the park. To think that 20 years later we could actually do this trip and hike to all these places is a dream come true. Kids are 20 year projects! The last twenty plus years flew by fast with the focus on getting them to be adults. Now we get to see places together with friends. We are lucky to have the energy, means and the one or two days off here and there each year to be able to do this.

Given the blog only goes forward in time and you can trace back from posts that easily I will write a summary of the trip after finishing all the posts with links to all posts.

In spite of the time crunch we made it to the last shuttle and returned gear on time. It was back to our cabins to have a packed dinner and go sleep. I did fall down once within sight of the place where we get out of the water. Had to walk a mile in wet shirt in the cold. A few tylenols later things were fine.

We saw folks walking without any gear. They did not go far but still they are blessed to be able to handle the cold.

Do not miss this experience if you are in Zion. Plan well ahead.

Glamping in Mars.. the Wadi Rum desert

The previous post in this series is here..

We raced out of Petra towards Wadi Rum desert to catch the sunset there. It was supposed to be the highlight of the evening.

We stopped at the mountain sides to see the desert from a distance for two minutes. Rest of the time it was just driving. We saw the original railroad that the Ottoman Empire had that was bombed out by the locals to help the British divide and conquer them.

After 2+ hours we showed up at the camp.

The terrain here is out of this world.. a lot of Alien movies are shot here. Martian was also shot here. Everything has a red glow to it. The sand eroded rocks formations look unique.

The person at the reception told us that we were the only guests in the entire camp for the night, thanks to flight cancelations and state department warnings! He was sad. He said normally the place is full two days before Christmas. Today we were the only visitors for not just this camp but most of the camps on this section of the desert.

Our guides realized there was not enough time to catch an open jeep ride or camel ride to go see the sunset from the dunes.. So they said "just go up to the top of the hill in the camp and you will get the view!".

We walked up, took pictures, saw yet another group of cats there and walked back down. It was eerily silent.

They would turn on the hot water for 30 minutes to an hour just for us given the camp was empty. We agreed on a time and it worked out. There was a dining tent and a post dinner fireside tent. We were the only visitors. The cooks were from Egypt and both of them did a wonderful job serving us vegetarian dishes. Did I mention the cabins were really nice inside! 

Got my paruppu sadham and roti (the Jordanian version) and was happy! We had some good tea next to a fire, joked around for 30 minutes and it was time to go sleep. It was freezing outside and the cats kept trying to get into the cabins. Some of us were already showing signs of allergies thanks to the cats and we were running low on Claritin supplies!

The night sky is supposed to be amazing here.

We were able to see a star studded sky with our naked eyes after they adjusted to the dark, but there was simply too much light pollution from the camp itself. They refused to turn off the flood lights. Then there was light from all the other camps. We spent an hour sitting above the last cabin on the hill to take these pictures. Most of them are 10 second exposures..

a sample..

A gallery of night sky portraits..

By this time we got worried texts from the ladies on why we didn't come back. I tried to clean the skylight filter on my SLR as it was showing hazy images.. only to drop it on the floor in the dark. That "clink" sound of glass breaking was not good. Guess San is going to find out that I broke a 50$ filter by reading this blog..

We had a good nights sleep but we all had to set an alarm to catch the 30 minute hot water window before breakfast. I woke up earlier and ran up the hill again to catch some golden hour photos before sunrise. They were "meh".. and by the time everyone assembled, the sun was up!

A candid shot of a scared San.. she is afraid of all dogs and cats and animals in general.. these cats were very aggressive and woud hiss at us and try to scratch!

A better pic after I shooed the cat to the side.. 

A video highlight of Wadi Ram!

we drove out of Wadi Rum (Valley of the Moon is what it means) after saying bye to the camp..to some amazing views in the haze after a simple breakfast. There was no milk for tea. Apparently cows milk in an alien concept here. The cheese they have is all goat cheese. It was good.

It was a 3+ hour drive to our last destination..

God one ups Money - Ad Deir Monastery in Petra

The previous post in this series is here..

Our last stop was the Ad Deir Monastery. We had been told by folks who went before us, not to miss this place. It was not easy to get to as it was a strenous hike. It was good the kids decided to go for a mule ride as did their parents. The other four made it slow and steady. There are vendors every 500 meters or so trying to sell the same stuff to weary travelers. It definitely made the experience difficult. 

When the mule guys started bargaining with us at the Cafe saying it will take you 1 hour to go up but we can go in 20 minutes on the mule, it was not believable as they had to walk along the mule anyways! so "if the mule handler could walk up in 20 minutes, so could we" was our logic. For the most part it is true. San beat the mules. I was 5 minutes behind the mules. However, it is an exhausting hike. So it was wonderful to get to take in the views and do some photos and videos! The ladies had been praticing the same move at every place to do a collective "Reel" and we did that here as well. I am to edit that masterpiece but haven't gotten to it yet!

The slideshow of all the cats and mules we saw in Petra

The Nabatean people knew how to cut solid rock from the mountain face into large pillars and halls. They had a whole city within the canyons with excellent control of their most important resource .. water!

They had a script that was the starting point for the Arabic script. Somehow like everything we saw in Egypt, this too disappeared over time!

This is a popular world heritage site. It is usually crowded like crazy around Christmas time. However, given the conflicts in the area and flight restrictions, the place was empty. Hotels and shops were deserted. There were hardly 100 tourists that morning. No wonder every vendor was trying to get us to buy something there.

there is a vantage point a little higher up where we get better views of this amazing carving.. 

After the monastry we all came down walking to the Nabatean cafe. There was a lion key entrance which was on the map but we could not see it on our way up. San, myself and our niece were walking ahead by a few hundred meters. She was alert and said "Athimber, that lion thing is somewhere here to the right!". Her sense of distance was amazing. Sure enough inside a small gap we found this sign for Lion Triclinium. There was no path and you had to climb up rocks to get to it. Ran there solo to get these pics.

It was a pleasant walk down in the canyon shade..

At the cafe folks in the group ordered some fruit juice and gave it rave reviews. So far this day was going great and on plan!

Wanted to just walk back to the entrance. My estimate was it would take us an hour to get to the entrance if we walked fast on flat terrain. The group was tired as a whole. So we decided to walk to this shuttle and take it to the entrance. 

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There was a 20 minute hike from here to a shuttle stop. This whole Free shuttle is a borderline scam.  Originally was going to forget about this experience. But as a warning to others have to put it here. The shuttle is supposed to take 20 minutes to get back to the entrance with a stop at a Bedouin village. First of all no one mentioned the strenous hike up a hill go to go a shuttle stop. There are no directions to this stop and no signs of where it it! We even crossed more structures outside the site while walking..

The shuttle stop is a clearing under a tree.  Once we got there, luckily for us the van got full right away. so the driver and the guy in charge said "we will go stop at this bedouin village and keep going". Once we sat in the van, he tells us "we have to wait at the village for 15 minutes and then take off. that is our rule". Everyone in the van was tired. No one planned to get down. So we told him, "we are exhausted. we will sit in the van for 15 mintues". He said "okay. that is up to you". 

We go the place and there is a walkway with a string of shops. A guy at the shops tried to force us to get down. He said the "rule" was you had to get down and shop before the van took off. The rules kept changing every 10 minutes!

Every group within the van had people who were injured or too tired to get out. This guy was just off like a psycho. Maybe he was already having a bad day! He turned off the AC in the van, closed the windows and tried to force us down after he made the driver get out. A french family (where the mom was clearly suffering a foot injury.. she could hardly get into the van) told him "no. we are not getting down" and this guy got all jumpy and treatened to take folks out and "shoot" them if we don't follow his rules and started using abusive language in front of everyone. He was shouting "I will f^%k you all up!" in front of all the women and kids.

Then he called the driver out and sat in a bench to have tea. We had already sat there in the hot van for 20 minutes. One of the families managed to call their guide and driver to that point to pick them up. They had really small kids. There was an altercation there on how they were not allowed to get in.

After this he was showig us a cheers sign with tea in hand smiling while we had tired and hungry people sweating in the van. So I took his photo as he tried to go all out to show us he is boss. Finally a bedouin woman came up to me and said "you took a photo or video. I am a bedouin woman. You cannot take my photo". I told her that I was taking his picture and she happened to be in it as she was supporting his bad actins. But I respect women and children unlike them and deleted the video in front of her. Then asked her "are you a good person? He clearly is not. Tell him we have tired women and children in this van and he needs to let us go, now!". She talked to the jackass and finally the driver started the van after we had wasted 30 minutes there.

If you are planning to take this "free shuttle", know that they expect you to get outside the van, walk around, buy things and only then you get back in. Given these guys control the van, they can hold you hostage in this place. The regular cars cannot come in there. You are better off walking back to the entrance from the Nabatean cafe on a flat trail back through the canyon. it would have taken us maybe another 20 minutes. 

This 30 mintue experience thanks to one mans rudeness, turned the 6 hours of amazment that the Petra site had given us. All it takes is one person to spoil a trourist experience. The folks in Petra should make sure that their rules are advertised clearly. They should definitely take this guy and that driver away from any customer interfacing job or at least train him properly. 

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We all told each other to forget this and move on. When we were finally picked up by Zaid and Ala at the entrance, told them that they should have come with us inside Petra, even if they didn't come to the monastry. That might have saved us time and pain. Having paid guides who don't come with us is pointless. 

We stopped at our hotel, loaded the bags into the two vans and were off to the next stop a good 45 mintues later than planned. We were all hungry. Zaid said we could go to the City of Petra and grab some Falafel sandwiches to go.

Again, we made a mistake. The guys at the store didn't understand English. We needed vegetarian stuff. We lost 20 minutes trying to order. A student customer who spoke English, managed to translate for us. We gave feedback to our drivers/guides that at least one of them should have come with us instead of staying at the parking lot with the folks who didn't want to walk. All I wanted was some Pita bread and fries and that translation took longer!

We realized that in Jordan our guides were going out of their way to make sure we weren't seen with them during walks. It was weird. Maybe it had something to do with the issues going on locally! If your guide is not willing to walk with you anywhere, think twice before going on your own!

Finally we were back in the van and off to our next stop.. both drivers promised a race with the sun to make up for the bad experience.