A dream come true! First time Jordan! A country with a lot of desert and culture.
Another men scorpion searching trip with Cornelius.
We want to do a full loop in Jordan. It starts in Aqaba and goes up to the north of the Dibbeen Forest. There was a lot to see and experience.
We met a lot of nice people, ate well and much more. We were on the road a lot, looking for habitats during the day and searching at night. Exhausting but passion makes everything possible.
For every trip I always buy a perfume in the duty free shop that suits the country. It is applied more often every day. The point of this is that I have a real flashback at home when I apply the fragrance and can remember some things and experience again. I chose Versace - The Dreamer. It smells sweet, oriental and somewhat spicy. Perfect!
Enjoy all blogs!
So, in the evening we checked into our main Hostel Room 17 Youth, in the Al Awdah Street in Aqaba, for 265€ for 9 days. It was a simple but nice hostel with a shared bathroom and nice owners.
However, the hostel has currently had to relocate its Headquarters due to Corona and is now with a new Hostel near the Dead Sea. Found under Safi Kitchen Hostel, also found under Booking.com. He (Ismail D Oshaibat) is currently also offering Agritourism experience and hike tours on Wadi al hasa there. Very nice guy - enjoy it!
Of course we were hungry and walked down the street to get something to eat. Luckily another shop was open and we ate our first Shawarma. It was very delicious!
We didn't have a car yet and were looking at our route for tomorrow. It should go to Wadi Rum. And we are very excited to see how it is there.
2nd Day: Wadi Rum & the surrounding area
We took a taxi to Europcar in Aqaba to pick up our booked car that we booked through Sunny Cars.
It should be a Citroen C-Elysee - Automatic. And it cost 341€ fully insured for 9 days.
The process went pretty quickly and we drove off. But unfortunately the car always turned extremely high, up to 5000 revolutions. He didn't upshift on his own. Cornelius said that was normal...we exchanged the car with the statement that the car doesn't shift and revs too high.
So we waited outside by the car until an employee came and changed the car.
We drove off and had the same problem! People on the streets were already looking...until I realized that this is a semi-automatic car and you just have to put the lever in automatic.
Tadaa...we can drive and we had to laugh a lot about ourselves.
So time for breakfast...
Falafel Sandwich
So this is our Route...
We still bought a good sim card, snacks and water for the beautiful...
Wadi Rum
Wowww! So nice to be here!
Wadi Rum is a Protected Area and since 2011 UNESCO World Heritage site.
Let's see what we find behind the mountain...
Orthochirus sp.
The find was great and we marked the spot for a night search, which will probably not be until tomorrow, because today we wanted to drive further down to Al Mudawwara to look for scorpions there at night.
Ok, next spot...
Along the Wadi Rum Road
The Wadi Rum Road has a few potholes so you have to be careful and that can be tricky with the scenery. One of the most beautiful routes I've driven.
New spot new luck...
Bugs
It's getting late and the light are just great.
We searched here for 1 hour and found...
Sandfish Skink
Leiurus hebraeus
Habitat was pretty sparse...we didn't find many scorpions. It was getting darker and perfect for searching at Al Mudawwara. Here we go.
On the Road
The most beautiful time of the day is the golden hour, the sunset.
In Al Mudawwara we searched on the rocks and mountains there, which were surrounded by sand dunes. It was really exhausting at times.
Here is our first find of...
Leiurus jordanensis
A really, really huge female.
We only found one animal here and continued our search across from the mountains. There we found more Leiurus jordanensis under bark, Buthacus macrocentrus in a treeroot and...
Androctonus sp.
Yes, we spent a few hours here. It was very windy, exhausting and it was getting colder. We drove back and stopped at a random spot and found again...
Buthacus macrocentrus
Those were the first wonderful days.
We are fascinated by Jordan and it all works out well with the police and military. We were free to explore and take our time. Unfortunately, the sun sets quite early, but then you have more time at night and can start a search early. Look forward to more blogs with lots of scorpions and much more.