Cooking a la Petra

Monday 17th December - evening,

...We are well on our way through our second bottle of wine. My head is spinning from too much walking, too little sleep, too many viruses, too much sun, and too much alcohol, however, I am still having a lot of fun; we all are. We are on a cooking course with Natasha - the Belgium girl we met in Dana who is living in Kabul - and a French couple. I am chopping garlic and onion, Marcus is chopping tomatoes and Merryl is skinning Aubergines. God knows what the others are doing. I finish my garlic chopping duties at lightning speed. For my reward I am giving the privileged opportunity of reducing the tomato stock. Who cares though, I am onto a new glass of vino. Floydy eat your heart out!...

We had arranged the night before to take part in a cookery course that evening, at 8:30pm.

We got back to the hotel to find Natasha, the other traveller from Dana, staying there. She decided to come on the cooking course and gave us a lift into town. The cookery class was great fun. We met a French couple who were living in Yemen who gave us some great tips on travelling in the country. The chefs were really good and friendly and we had a great evening, drinking red wine and learning how to make hummous, moutable, oven roasted chicken and potato casserole, and several side dishes. We all managed really well despite being knackered and drinking far too much wine. At the end we were forced to eat what we cooked. This actually turned out to be very nice. We were all pleasantly shocked. Afterwards we were dragged upstairs to be sold some authentic Jordanian craftware; and suckers that we are we bought some. We got back and crashed. Tomorrow we leave for Wadi Rum.