The last few days have been a whirlwind in Jordan.

We spent a night in Wadi Rum, which is in the Sahara Desert, surrounded by huge rocky outcrops. The landscape is so different there that it is where they filmed The Martian with Matt Damon.

It was lovely drinking a bad Jordanian wine outside our tent while watching the stars.

We then made our way to Petra. This is the most popular tourist destination in Jordan by far. On the way, we stopped for lunch at a place called "My Mom's Recipe". They cooked us a rice dish which was like a biryani, with chicken, potatoes, eggplant and cauliflower all cooked in a large pot with rice. They carried the pot over to our table and upended it onto a platter. There was enough food for at least 10 people. Between the four of us, we hardly made a dent in it. We felt bad that there was so much wastage, but Mahmoud assured us that the leftovers go the poor people in the area.

After we left the restaurant, Mahmoud stopped the car and Fadi ran out into a cake shop. He returned with a massive cake and gave it to Lidia. It was Mothers Day in Jordan and he had also seen that her birthday was at the end of the month. Such a nice gesture, but we had just eaten a massive rice dish and couldn't really eat any of the cake.

Mahmoud then drove us to Little Petra, which is a small canyon with Tombs and shrines carved into the mountain. Apparently, this is like Petra, only on a much smaller scale. He tried to take us up a rocky mountain path to a lookout, but we were wearing smooth soled shoes and with the sand on the rock it was like wearing ice skates on a glacier, so we gave up and came back down.

After checking into the Movenpick right across the road from Petra, we freshened up, ate some dinner and then went across the road to experience "Petra by Night". There was a small hiccup with the tickets and we had to ring Fadi who had to come down with some manifest because of some stupid tourism rules in Jordan, but once we were over that we headed into Petra for the 30 minute walk to the Treasury. It was very dark and there was a trail of candles in paper bags lighting the way. It was serene and peaceful, apart from the overwhelming smell of donkey s*** in parts.

We finally made it to the treasury. It was very dark and there were about 1,000 people already sitting on the ground amongst the candles scattered throughout in their paper bags. We found a space and both sat down, Lidia leaning against a candle and almost setting herself on fire.

We sat in the dark listening to a singer wail out a Jordanian song that reminded me of the noises I made when I had food poisoning on a Cambodian river cruise. Then a flute player came out and was playing some tuneless song as he wandered through the clapping crowd. It was a nice atmosphere.

After about 10 minutes, Lidia said to me "What is that smell?". I think we're sitting in camel piss! I turned on the torch on my phone and sure enough, we were sitting right in the middle of a big puddle of camel piss. We quickly moved, but it was too late. The smell was all over us like nametags on a schizophrenic. It was on our pants and our hands.

We had to sit through the end of the flautist and then some old guy came out and started banging on about a dream he had that made as much sense as a Trump tweet when all we could dream about was soaking in a tub of Dettol. This went for another 10 minutes, after which they finally turned the lights onto the Treasury building. We quickly took our 10 photos and started the 30 minute walk back to our hotel, both smelling like a bush dunny.

But apart from that, it was fantastic!

The next day we started early. Leaving the hotel at 6:45 to go straight to Petra and explore in the daylight. Fadi met us at the entrance and we went straight down to the Treasury again, deftly dodging the puddles of camel treasure on the way. We arrived early enough to avoid most of the tourists, so we took some amazing photos of this magnificent monument.

We then walked though Petra, which is extensive. It was founded in the 1st century BC and at it's peak had 300,000 inhabitants. Their homes, tombs, churches, etc. were all carved into the mountains. A 1,000 step hike took us to the top of the mountain, where an impressive building called the monastery is carved into the mountain-side.

We then hiked back down the mountain just as the main body of tourists for the day were heading up. Some of them were riding donkeys and horses up the mountain, and we felt sorry for those poor animals having to haul fat western arses up the trail.

By the time we arrived back down in the main town of Petra, there were thousands of tourists everywhere. There were donkeys, horses, camels and horse-drawn carts flying around everywhere. We were so glad we went early and avoided the crowds. After a 5 hour hike, we were back in our hotel by 1:00