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The late afternoon golden light made everything seem surreal. The rock was warm, the desert as inviting as velvet, in the background a Bedouin walking with his camels, whose long shadows were gently dancing and losing themselves between the rocky shapes of the dunes. Those were the things my though dwelt on when the car in front of us stopped. A bit puzzled, having realized that our finally reached destination was in the middle of nowhere, I stopped too; Drive, Parking, Neutral, Parking. God if I hated not to drive with manual change. The guy who just got out of the pick up ahead had already an amused smile on his lips, probably laughing that two girls were taking several minutes only to park a car, who can blame him. That was our tenth or maybe eleventh day in Jordan and for that night we got a pretty hectic accommodation, a genuine Nabataean cave close to Little Petra, we just weren’t expecting it to be a real three meters squared cave far away from every beaten path or form of civilization. Few meters separated the access of the cave from us, walking in I just couldn’t avoid to notice an iron chain with a massive locker which enabled to close the cave door –that consisted in a rusty sheet metal –not from the inside but from the outside. Danger! was shouting a voice in my head. I looked at my friend searching for approval but she was evidently more focused on the lack of electricity, current water and any other facility to notice the locker, so I just looked back at our host: a tall and big Arabic guy, probably in his 30s, raven hair, bronze skin, tinkling bracelets, and two magnetic black eyes darker than the night, framed by an even darker kohl, that immediately inspired sympathy and fascination. As the sun was getting down we decided to go to wadi musa to have dinner, but just after having asked if there was a toilet and having got as answer a concise “The nature is our toilet”; if it is true what they say that the travel starts where your comfort zone ends, we were for sure travelling. The dinner was excellent, but it was nothing compared to the emotion of going back home, driving under the diaphanous moon light along the sinuous curves of a land which recalls its past and eternal splendour in every single thing, and even more stunning was the view by night of the canyon our cave was located in, where we find our host sitting in the back of his pick up playing the flute under the stars while waiting for a friend to bring him dinner – kind of a local deliveroo. They invited us to join them, sharing food, smoking, protecting our bodies from the desert cold with sheep’s wool blankets. Everything just felt so natural, like I’ve always been there, as one of those ageless rocks, a sense of transcendental freedom rarely tried before, a feeling of communion with nature overwhelmed me and instantly deleted any other concern and fatigue of the day before. The next morning –after a sleepless night due to mosquitoes bites and jackals howling –we woke up at 6 am to admire the sunset and to go trekking until the back entrance of Petra, our host drove us half way, careless of the sloping rocky dunes he was literally climbing up with his pick up. I don’t even remember the last few words we exchanged with Sahed, but I will always carry into my heart the darkness of his eyes contrasting with the ruby red and orange of the landscape. Those for me are the colours of Jordan.